James C. Cobb - Böcker

From the seventeenth century Cavaliers and Uncle Tom's Cabin to Civil Rights museums and today's conflicts over the Confederate flag, here is a brilliant portrait of southern identity, served in an engaging blend of history, literature, and popular culture. In this insightful book, written with dry wit and sharp insight, James C. Cobb explains how the South first came to be seen--and then came to see itself--as a region apart from the rest of America.As Cobb demonstrates, the legend of the aristocratic Cavalier origins of southern planter society was nurtured by both northern and southern writers, only to be challenged by abolitionist critics, black and white. After the Civil War, defeated and embittered southern whites incorporated the Cavalier myth into the cult of the "Lost Cause," which supplied the emotional energy for their determined crusade to rejoin the Union on their own terms. After World War I, white writers like Ellen Glasgow, William Faulkner and other key figures of "Southern Renaissance" as well as their African American counterparts in the "Harlem Renaissance"--Cobb is the first to show the strong links between the two movements--challenged the New South creed by asking how the grandiose vision of the South's past could be reconciled with the dismal reality of its present. The Southern self-image underwent another sea change in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, when the end of white supremacy shook the old definition of the "Southern way of life"--but at the same time, African Americans began to examine their southern roots more openly and embrace their regional, as well as racial, identity. As the millennium turned, the South confronted a new identity crisis brought on by global homogenization: if Southern culture is everywhere, has the New South become the No South?Here then is a major work by one of America's finest Southern historians, a magisterial synthesis that combines rich scholarship with provocative new insights into what the South means to southerners and to America as well.

In this superb volume, James C. Cobb provides the first truly comprehensive history of the South since World War II, brilliantly capturing an era of dramatic change, both in the South and in its relationship with the rest of the nation. Here is a panoramic narrative that flows seamlessly from the Dixiecrats to the "southern strategy," to the South's domination of today's GOP, and from the national ascendance of southern culture and music, to a globalized Dixie's allure for foreign factories and a flood of immigrants, to the roles of women and an increasingly visible gay population in contemporary southern life. The heart of the book illuminates the struggle for Civil Rights. Jim Crow still towered over the South in 1945, but Cobb shows that Pearl Harbor unloosed forces that would bring its ultimate demise. Growing black political clout outside the South and the contradiction of fighting racist totalitarianism abroad while tolerating it at home set the stage for returning black veterans to spearhead the NAACP's postwar assault on the South's racial system. This assault sparked not only vocal white resistance but mounting violence that culminated in the murder of young Emmett Till in 1955. Energized rather than intimidated, however, blacks in Montgomery staged the famous bus boycott, bringing the Rev. Martin Luther King to the fore and paving the way for the dramatic protests and confrontations that finally brought profound racial changes as well as two-party politics to the South. As he did in the prize-winning The Most Southern Place on Earth and Away Down South, Cobb writes with wit and grace, showing a thorough grasp of his native region. Exhaustively researched and brimming with original insights, The South and America Since World War II is indeed the definitive history of the postwar South and its changing role in national life.

In this superb volume, James C. Cobb provides the first truly comprehensive history of the South since World War II, brilliantly capturing an era of dramatic change, both in the South and in its relationship with the rest of the nation. Here is a panoramic narrative that flows seamlessly from the Dixiecrats to the "southern strategy," to the South's domination of today's GOP, and from the national ascendance of southern culture and music, to a globalized Dixie's allure for foreign factories and a flood of immigrants, to the roles of women and an increasingly visible gay population in contemporary southern life. The heart of the book illuminates the struggle for Civil Rights. Jim Crow still towered over the South in 1945, but Cobb shows that Pearl Harbor unloosed forces that would bring its ultimate demise. Growing black political clout outside the South and the contradiction of fighting racist totalitarianism abroad while tolerating it at home set the stage for returning black veterans to spearhead the NAACP's postwar assault on the South's racial system.This assault sparked not only vocal white resistance but mounting violence that culminated in the murder of young Emmett Till in 1955. Energized rather than intimidated, however, blacks in Montgomery staged the famous bus boycott, bringing the Rev. Martin Luther King to the fore and paving the way for the dramatic protests and confrontations that finally brought profound racial changes as well as two-party politics to the South. As he did in the prize-winning The Most Southern Place on Earth and Away Down South, Cobb writes with wit and grace, showing a thorough grasp of his native region. Exhaustively researched and brimming with original insights, The South and America Since World War II is indeed the definitive history of the postwar South and its changing role in national life.

From the seventeenth century Cavaliers and Uncle Tom's Cabin to Civil Rights museums and today's conflicts over the Confederate flag, here is a brilliant portrait of southern identity, served in an engaging blend of history, literature, and popular culture. In this insightful book, written with dry wit and sharp insight, James C. Cobb explains how the South first came to be seen--and then came to see itself--as a region apart from the rest of America.As Cobb demonstrates, the legend of the aristocratic Cavalier origins of southern planter society was nurtured by both northern and southern writers, only to be challenged by abolitionist critics, black and white. After the Civil War, defeated and embittered southern whites incorporated the Cavalier myth into the cult of the "Lost Cause," which supplied the emotional energy for their determined crusade to rejoin the Union on their own terms. After World War I, white writers like Ellen Glasgow, William Faulkner and other key figures of "Southern Renaissance" as well as their African American counterparts in the "Harlem Renaissance"--Cobb is the first to show the strong links between the two movements--challenged the New South creed by asking how the grandiose vision of the South's past could be reconciled with the dismal reality of its present. The Southern self-image underwent another sea change in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, when the end of white supremacy shook the old definition of the "Southern way of life"--but at the same time, African Americans began to examine their southern roots more openly and embrace their regional, as well as racial, identity. As the millennium turned, the South confronted a new identity crisis brought on by global homogenization: if Southern culture is everywhere, has the New South become the No South?Here then is a major work by one of America's finest Southern historians, a magisterial synthesis that combines rich scholarship with provocative new insights into what the South means to southerners and to America as well.

From the Great Depression to the Sunbelt Era the South has pursued industrial development as the remedy for its economic ills. The mixed results of  this ongoing crusade are chronicled in this path-breaking study, updated to 1990, in which James Cobb examines the expectations, achievements, and side effects of the dive for southern industrialization.

This title shows making a living in the South. Volume II of ""The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture"" examines the economic culture of the South by pairing two categories that account for the ways many southerners have made their living. In the antebellum period, the wealth of southern whites came largely from agriculture that relied on the forced labor of enslaved blacks. After Reconstruction, the South became attractive to new industries lured by the region's ongoing commitment to low-wage labor and management-friendly economic policies. Throughout the volume, articles reflect the breadth and variety of southern life, paying particular attention to the region's profound economic transformation in recent decades.The agricultural section consists of 25 thematic entries that explore issues such as Native American agricultural practices, plantations, and sustainable agriculture. Thirty-eight shorter pieces cover key crops of the region - from tobacco to Christmas trees - as well as issues of both historic and emerging interest - from insects and insecticides to migrant labor. The section on industry and commerce contains 13 thematic entries in which contributors address topics such as the economic impact of military bases, resistance to industrialization, and black business. Thirty-six topical entries explore particular industries, such as textiles, timber, automobiles, and banking, as well as individuals - including Henry W. Grady and Sam M. Walton - whose ideas and enterprises have helped shape the modern South.

In the 1880s, Southern boosters saw the growth of industry as the only means of escaping the poverty that engulfed the postbellum South. In the long run, however, as James C. Cobb demonstrates in this illuminating book, industrial development left much of the South's poverty unrelieved and often reinforced rather than undermined its conservative social and political philosophy. The exploitation of the South's resources, largely by interests from outside the region, was not only perpetuated but in many ways strengthened as industrialization proceeded. The 20th Century brought increasing competition for industry that favored management over labor and exploitation over protection of the environment. Even as the South blossomed into the "Sunbelt" in the late twentieth century, it is clear, Cobb argues, that the region had been unable to follow the path of development taken by the northern industrialized states, and that even an industrialized South has yet the escape the shadow of its deprived past.

From the creation of the first “New South” in the wake of Appomattox to the current struggles over the Confederate flag, Redefining Southern Culture surveys the remarkable story of southern identity and its persistence in the face of sweeping changes in the South’s economy, society, and political structure. Rejecting the conventional continuity-versus-change framework, James C. Cobb instead illustrates how the evolution of southern culture synthesized these two forces in recent years. Throughout this lively and engaging volume, Cobb examines southern identity in its constantly changing forms, from history and literature to blues and country music to popular and consumer cultures. Cobb also presents the first detailed account of the efforts of African Americans in the South to reclaim their identity as southerners and to construct their own symbolic and substantive representations of what that identity means.The essays in Redefining Southern Culture reflect James C. Cobb’s career-long interest in exploring southern cultural identity and the interaction of this identity with the economic, social, and political forces that have transformed the region. Written in a refreshingly straightforward and engaging style, this book promises thoughtful reading for anyone interested in the modern South and will be a valuable resource for courses in southern history and culture.

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling was a watershed event in the fight against racial segregation in the United States. The recent fiftieth anniversary of Brown prompted a surge of tributes: books, television and radio specials, conferences, and speeches. At the same time, says James C. Cobb, it revealed a growing trend of dismissiveness and negativity toward Brown and other accomplishments of the civil rights movement. Writing as both a lauded historian and a white southerner from the last generation to grow up under southern apartheid, Cobb responds to what he sees as distortions of Brown’s legacy and their implied disservice to those whom it inspired and empowered.Cobb begins by looking at how our historical understanding of segregation has evolved since the Brown decision. In particular, he targets the tenacious misconception that racial discrimination was at odds with economic modernization—and so would have faded out, on its own, under market pressures. He then looks at the argument that Brown energized white resistance more than it fomented civil rights progress. This position overstates the pace and extent of racial change in the South prior to Brown, Cobb says, while it understates Brown’s role in catalyzing and legitimizing subsequent black protest.Finally, Cobb suggests that the Brown decree and the civil rights movement accomplished not only more than certain critics have acknowledged but also more than the hard statistics of black progress can reveal. The destruction of Jim Crow, with its “denial of belonging,” allowed African Americans to embrace their identity as southerners in ways that freed them to explore links between their southernness and their blackness. This is an important and timely reminder of “what the Brown court and the activists who took the spirit of its ruling into the streets were up against, both historically and contemporaneously.”

In 1955 the Fortune magazine list of America's largest corporations included just 18 with headquarters in the Southeast. By 2002 the number had grown to 123. In fact, the South attracted over half of the foreign businesses drawn to the United States in the 1990s. The eight original essays collected here consider this stunning dynamism in ways that help us see anew the region's place in that ever-accelerating, transnational flow of people, capital, and technology known collectively as "globalization."Moving between local and global perspectives, the essays discuss how once faraway places like Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Indian Subcontinent are now having an impact on the South. One essay, for example, looks at a range of issues behind the explosive growth of North Carolina's Latino population, which grew by almost 400 percent during the 1990s-miles ahead of the national growth percentage of 61. In another essay we learn why BMW workers in Germany, frustrated with the migration of jobs to South Carolina, refer to the American South as "our Mexico." Showing that global forces are often on both sides of the matchup—reshaping the South but also adapting to and exploiting its peculiarities—many of the essays make the point that, although the new ethnic food section at the local Winn-Dixie is one manifestation of globalization, so is the wide-ranging export of such originally southern phenomena as NASCAR and Kentucky Fried Chicken.If a single message emerges from the book, it is this: Beware of tidy accounts of worldwide integration. On one hand, globalization can play to southern shortcomings (think of the region's repute as a source of cheap labor); on the other, the influx of new peoples, customs, and ideas is poised to alter forever the South's historic black-white racial divide.

Georgia Odyssey is a lively survey of the state’s history, from its beginnings as a European colony to its current standing as an international business mecca, from the self-imposed isolation of its Jim Crow era to its role as host of the centennial Olympic Games and beyond, from its long reign as the linchpin state of the Democratic Solid South to its current dominance by the Republican Party. This new edition incorporates current trends that have placed Georgia among the country’s most dynamic and attractive states, fueled the growth of its Hispanic and Asian American populations, and otherwise dramatically altered its demographic, economic, social, and cultural appearance and persona.“The constantly shifting cultural landscape of contemporary Georgia,” writes James C. Cobb, “presents a jumbled panorama of anachronism, contradiction, contrast, and peculiarity.” A Georgia native, Cobb delights in debunking familiar myths about his state as he brings its past to life and makes it relevant to today. Not all of that past is pleasant to recall, Cobb notes. Moreover, not all of today’s Georgians are as unequivocal as the tobacco farmer who informed a visiting journalist in 1938 that “we Georgians are Georgian as hell.” That said, a great many Georgians, both natives and new arrivals, care deeply about the state’s identity and consider it integral to their own. Georgia Odyssey is the ideal introduction to our past and a unique and often provocative look at the interaction of that past with our present and future.

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling was a watershed event in the fight against racial segregation in the United States. The recent fiftieth anniversary of Brown prompted a surge of tributes: books, television and radio specials, conferences, and speeches. At the same time, says James C. Cobb, it revealed a growing trend of dismissiveness and negativity toward Brown and other accomplishments of the civil rights movement. Writing as both a lauded historian and a white southerner from the last generation to grow up under southern apartheid, Cobb responds to what he sees as distortions of Brown’s legacy and their implied disservice to those whom it inspired and empowered.Cobb begins by looking at how our historical understanding of segregation has evolved since the Brown decision. In particular, he targets the tenacious misconception that racial discrimination was at odds with economic modernization—and so would have faded out, on its own, under market pressures. He then looks at the argument that Brown energized white resistance more than it fomented civil rights progress. This position overstates the pace and extent of racial change in the South prior to Brown, Cobb says, while it understates Brown’s role in catalyzing and legitimizing subsequent black protest.Finally, Cobb suggests that the Brown decree and the civil rights movement accomplished not only more than certain critics have acknowledged but also more than the hard statistics of black progress can reveal. The destruction of Jim Crow, with its “denial of belonging,” allowed African Americans to embrace their identity as southerners in ways that freed them to explore links between their southernness and their blackness. This is an important and timely reminder of “what the Brown court and the activists who took the spirit of its ruling into the streets were up against, both historically and contemporaneously.”

With an epic career that spanned two-thirds of the twentieth century, C. Vann Woodward (1908–1999) was a historian of singular importance. A brilliant writer, his work captivated both academic and public audiences. He also figured prominently in the major intellectual conflicts between left and right during the last half of the twentieth century, although his unwavering commitment to free speech and racial integration that affirmed his liberalism in the 1950s struck some as emblematic of his growing conservatism by the 1990s. Woodward's vision still permeates our understandings of the American South and of the history of race relations in the United States. Indeed, as this fresh and revealing biography shows, he displayed a rare genius and enthusiasm for crafting lessons from the past that seemed directly applicable to the concerns of the present—a practice that more than once cast doubt on his scholarship.James C. Cobb offers many original insights into Woodward's early years and private life, his long career, and his almost mythic public persona. In a time where the study and substance of American history are profoundly contested, Woodward's career is replete with lessons in how myths about the past, some created by historians themselves, come to be enshrined as historical truth.

With an epic career that spanned two-thirds of the twentieth century, C. Vann Woodward (1908–1999) was a historian of singular importance. A brilliant writer, his work captivated both academic and public audiences. He also figured prominently in the major intellectual conflicts between left and right during the last half of the twentieth century, although his unwavering commitment to free speech and racial integration that affirmed his liberalism in the 1950s struck some as emblematic of his growing conservatism by the 1990s. Woodward’s vision still permeates our understandings of the American South and of the history of race relations in the United States. Indeed, as this fresh and revealing biography shows, he displayed a rare genius and enthusiasm for crafting lessons from the past that seemed directly applicable to the concerns of the present—a practice that more than once cast doubt on his scholarship. James C. Cobb offers many original insights into Woodward’s early years and private life, his long career, and his almost mythic public persona. In a time where the study and substance of American history are profoundly contested, Woodward’s career is replete with lessons in how myths about the past, some created by historians themselves, come to be enshrined as historical truth.

With essays by Alan Brinkley, Harvard Sitkoff, Frank Freidel, Pete Daniel, J. Wayne Flynt, and Numan V. BartleyThe New Deal and the South represents the first comprehensive treatment of the impact of the Roosevelt recovery program on the South. In essays dealing with the New Deal's overall effect on the South, its influence on southern agriculture, labor, blacks, and politics, and its significance as a turning point in the region's history, the contributors provide readers with an opportunity to develop a more complete understanding of an era which a number of historians now mark as the period in which the New South actually began to become new.Each of the essays in this collection was presented at the Ninth Annual Chancellor's Symposium on Southern History, held in October 1983, at the University of Mississippi. In the introductory essay, Frank Freidel identifies the New Deal period as one of the most important phases in the modernization of the South, one which linked the wishful thinking of the New South era to the much-publicized contemporary Sunbelt South. Pete Daniel describes the New Deal's role in the mechanization, consolidation, and corporatization of southern agriculture, a phenomenon that swept thousands of southerners from the land and paved the way for an all-out crusade to industrialize the region. In his analysis of the New Deal's impact on southern labor, Wayne Flynt assesses what the New Deal did and did not mean for southern industrial workers. Alan Brinkley stresses the tensions induced in southern politics during the New Deal era, particularly those caused by the Democratic Party's increased responsiveness to blacks and organized labor. Harvard Sitkoff, in surveying the New Deal's impact on black southerners, cites the limited nature of that impact but points to the seeds of future progress sown by the Roosevelt Administration and its policies. In the concluding essay Numan V. Bartley emphasizes the collapse of a paternalistic labor system and the shift of power from small town to urban elites and suggests that the years 1935–1945 may soon be seen as the ""crucial decade"" in southern history.The New Deal and the South provides both the serious student and the general reader with an up-to-date assessment of one of the most critical transitional periods in southern history.