As we move into this last section of class, we will be using the Wallace video, lecture podcasts, and Cobb's Away Down South to help us analyze contemporary popular culture about the South. To wit, you will write an essay examining some aspect of James Lee Burke's Jolie Blon's Bounce and the movie Sling Blade. Both engage many of the themes found in southern history and explore dimensions of southern identity.
Use this post for your discussion questions for the Cobb chapter that we will discuss on Thursday.
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“To a nation fighting for totalitarianism abroad, Jim Crow became an embarrassment” pg 186 Thinking on this statement, how did the nation’s involvements help to shine the light on the South’s actions?
ReplyDeleteLillian Smith used Cash’s death as evidence of the seriousness of exposing or writing about the South and Chapter 7 states the exposure of the South’s opposition reaffirmed Cash’s “savage ideal”. With that being said, why did most Southerners ignore publications about the South or ignore the race issue in general? What did this prove?
Exposing the obvious contradiction between fighting against fascism and simultaneously harboring a totalitarian state, World War II played an integral role in achieving an increased awareness of the South's "race problem." Prior to this increased federal involvment, however, southern intellecuals like William Faulkner (p. 188) and Hodding Carter (p. 190) argued that racial progress was being made and that outside efforts would only undermine recent "progressive adjustments." If the South's racial problems had not been brought to light and federal intervention not prescribed, would such drastic changes have occured in the 1950s and 1960s? Faulkner's character Gavin Stevens suggests that a repeat of the "first" Reconstruction could not be successful and would only serve to agitate southerners. Would a lack of federal involvment have allowed for a less controversial Civil Rights period?
ReplyDeleteIn Cobb's chapter 7, he states that: According to Richard King, Woodward "wanted to show that neither segregation nor disfranchisement was historically inevitable or part of a firmly established Southern tradition..." If that is the case, why did segregation continue for as long as it did? Southerners were all about tradition and afraid of change, with that said do you believe segregation was a tradition that Southerners participated in because change wasn't option?
ReplyDeleteCobb's title for Chapter 7, "The South of Guilt and Shame," refers to the negative connotations associated with the South during the Jim Crow era. Among these was the advocacy of advancing individual rights while maintaining a rigid system of segregation. How did southern writers and intellectuals, such as Hodding Carter and Lillian Smith, expose this hypocrisy? Moreover, what parallels can be drawn between their feelings of injustice and the views of previously studied figures, such as Robert F. Williams and William Alexander Percy?
ReplyDeleteDiscuss the change many prominent southerns underwent from simply "a tacit acceptance to public criticism of segregation."
ReplyDeleteIn Chapter 7 Cobb quotes Clement Eaton of the University of Kentucky as saying "It should be a high honor for us to lead public opinion rather than tamely to follow it." What part did historians like C. Vann Woodward play in the dissolution of southern mythology and why was it so important?
ReplyDeleteWillie Morris states, "Why was it, in such moments just before I leave the South, did I always feel some easing of a great burden?" Do you think that by leaving the South, people actually escaped the problems of the South?
ReplyDeleteI know the mental health of the south has been discussed during previous classes but Stetson Kennedy answering the question of “is the south insane?” with a “categorical yes” in the preface of Southern Exposure brings us back to the topic. Do you think the modern South still faces the problems of being “race and religion obsessed” and in some way is still struggling with its own mental health?
ReplyDeleteOn page 189 Cobb uses a quote from Malcolm Cowley describing Faulkner, saying "The tragedy of intelligent southerners like Faulkner is that their two fundamental beliefs, in human equality and in southern independence, are now in violent conflict". Are the two mutually exclusive or are they, as Faulkner would like to believe, two ideas that can live and grow harmoniously in the new south?
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