Exploring the Modern South

JOSHUA LABOVE

“You learn to forgive (the South) for its narrow mind and growing

pains because it has a huge heart. You forgive the stifling summers

because the spring is lush and pastel sprinkled, because winter is

merciful and brief, because corn bread and sweet tea and fried

chicken are every bit as vital to a Sunday as getting dressed up for

church, and because any southerner worth their salt says please and

thank you. It's soft air and summer vines, pine woods and fat

homegrown tomatoes. It's pulling the fruit right off a peach tree and

letting the juice run down your chin. It's a closeted and profound

appreciation for our neighbors in Alabama who bear the brunt of the

Bubba jokes. The South gets in your blood and nose and skin bone-

deep. I am less a part of the South than it is part of me. It's a

romantic notion, being overcome by geography. But we are all a little

starry-eyed down here. We're Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara and

Rosa Parks all at once.” - Amanda Kyle Williams

Understanding the modern American South

We will look at the South through a variety of lenses over the course. What does Southern identity mean

today? Is it political? Cultural? Geographic?

Democracy and

RightsJanuary 8

We begin by thinking about the state of the

South in 1964 and the laws that made for an

unequal and segregated region.

Geography and

InfrastructureJanuary 15

The South is a loosely conceptualized

geography, with great diversity—from

Appalachian mountains to Carolina

Lowcountry and the Florida Gulf Coast.

Foodways

January 29

Food—preparation, eating, and sharing—is

a staple of the South. To speak of Southern

foodways is to speak of the people and

history of the region.

Cities and

UrbanizationFebruary 5

From the shadows of lush antebellum

plantations, the South has rapidly

urbanized—new cities that reflect the

changing and globalizing role of the region

and the United States writ large.

Arts & Culture

February 12

The region has long been a breeding

ground for creative output—from the sounds

of BB King to the pages of William

Faulkner.

What do we mean when we say ‘The South’?Where, precisely, does the South begin or end? Is the South a political assemblage? Or does it represent something else?

v

We will spend much more time discussing geography and some of the micro-regions that

comprise the South, with particular attention to the way geography, topography, and agriculture

have informed culture and identity throughout the South, but for now, it is helpful to keep this rough

map in mind and remember that the region is at once expansive and eclectic.

s

c

FL

L

A

KY

South

Carolina

Florida

Kentucky

Louisiana

A Diverse Region

Law & Geography: a Primer

Law is inherently spatial—it works with/in a particular space. By making law, we are often engaging in

making political space. For whom? To what end?

How can law and policy

make and change our relationship to space?

Law and space are reflective of power relations between individuals, the state, material space,

and institutions.

Law makes space as space makes law through jurisdiction and scale. In the South, this means

making fractious, ad-hoc spaces of segregation and disenfranchisement.

Ad-hoc laws create a chaos dangerous for African-American, who find their mobility is limited

and challenged by evolving legal understandings of what, where, and how segregation can occur.

While some towns may have deployed poll taxes, others may have used law to limit access to

public space, employment, or social services.

The State of the South in 1964

What was the regional discourse? How did laws, culture, and discussions locally connect or conflict with

other geographic scales?

What role does the

South play in the US

in the 1960s? Today?

How do (discriminatory) local laws make space?

How does the creation and contestation of laws—both in their legislative creation

and their juridical challenges—serve to define particular spaces, limit access to

space, and challenge mobility? What kinds of power relationships are embedded

in the enactment of such laws?

Local Laws and an Unequal SouthHistory texts often talk about ‘the South’ monolithically and the laws as uniformly

exclusionary, but in reality exclusion and discrimination was crafted through a range of

laws and polices at every level of government and public life.

Jim Crow LawsA bit of a broad-’catch-all’ for exclusionary local policies

2

1

Limiting Access to Polls and VotingPoll taxes and exams sought to limit black voting

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4

Exclusionary Amenities and Housing PracticesCities experiment with ways to keep African-Americans away

‘Dixiecrats’ and the Southern ManifestoPulling from Plessy, Southern Democrats try to maintain separate but equal.

Case Studies in Exclusion

How did a multiplicity of Jim Crow laws, exclusionary funding, and devolution from the federal government

produce exclusionary geographies for African-Americans?

By devolving education to the States, the

federal government accepted that some

states would maintain separate and distinct

facilities. But were they equal in any

measureable terms?

Education

State conventions throughout the South

developed so-called “Black Codes” in the

1860s to prevent African-Americans from

owning land, and thus, profiting from farming

and agriculture.

Farming & Agriculture Public Accommodations DemocracyHousing

Jim Crow laws prevented access to the

housing market, limitations on

rent/ownership, and challenges to accessing

financing.

‘Separate but equal’ began with a rail car and

would fall under the pressure of lunch

counters, rail cars, and motels.

Municipalities and states tried to make

workarounds to voting equality, through poll

taxes and tests.

Squaring the South with the NationHow can we speak of the approaches through which legal change and equality was realized? What do the

geographic differences between these approaches tell us about the South, the US, and federalism in the

Civil Rights era?

Fights for equality, access, mobility, and legal

personhood were being lodged emergently—sit-ins,

bus boycotts, and marches. Activists were fighting a

complex assemblage of laws cropping up throughout

the region, most very targeted and local.

Regional Discourses Post-JFK National Discourse

If the regional approaches were pragmatic and ad-hoc,

the national conversation was deeply spiritual and

philosophical. Legal conversations here surround

watershed Supreme Court cases (Brown v. Board of

Ed.) and pushing for big platform, omnibus legislation

as the Civil Rights Act would come to be.

Vectors of the Movement

Rather than speak of a wholesale change at the federal level (as is sometimes common in hindsight and

history texts), we can see the evolution toward equality through three scales of governance.

FEDERALThe emerging jurisprudence around

‘interstate commerce’ would allow the

federal government to enter

conversations previously reserved for

the States.

REGIONALApproaches such as the

“Southern Manifesto” and “Black

Codes” attempted to build a

regional coalition around

exclusion.

MUNICIPALTiny laws at the most local of scales were

some of the most pernicious—from vagrancy

laws, access to education, and home

ownership.

DiscussionWhy does the ad-hoc legal geography of exclusion matter in the way we think about the South? How does

this history give way to the South’s present? What can we take from the Civil Rights Era as instructive

toward defining Southern culture and values?