Black, White, and Southern: Race Relations and Southern Culture, 1940 to the Present

by David Goldfield

Overview

In "Black, White, and Southern," David R. Goldfield shows how the struggles of black southerners to lift the barriers that had historically separated them from their white counterparts not only brought about the demise of white supremacy but did so without destroying the South's unique culture. Indeed, it is Goldfield's contention that the civil rights crusade has strengthened the South's cultural heritage, making it possible for black southeners to embrace their region unfettered by fear and frustration and for whites to leave behind decades of guilt and condemnation.
In support of his analysis Goldfield presents a sweeping examination of the evolution of southern race relations over the past fifty years. He provides moving accounts of the major moments of the civil rights era, and he looks at more recent efforts by blacks to achieve economic and class parity.
This history of the crusade for black equality is in the end they story of the South itself and of the powerful forces of redemption that Goldfield attests are still working to shape the future of the region.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807154069
Publisher:	Louisiana State University Press
Publication date:	01/01/1991
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	364
Sales rank:	722,032
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

David R. Goldfield is Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the author of Cotton Fields and Skyscrapers: Southern City and Region, 1607--1980, and other books.

Editorial Reviews

In this often moving study, Goldfield deftly analyzes the elaborate etiquette that formerly governed race relations in the South and kept whites and blacks virtual strangers. He is less compelling in arguing that one great legacy of the civil rights movement was its restorative impact on Southern culture, though he effectively demonstrates how the long-held myth of white supremacy poisoned the region. Familiar signposts in blacks' struggle for equality--the Montgomery bus boycott, Little Rock, Selma, the Freedom Rides, sit-ins, etc.--are seen here as elements in a moral drama of sin and redemption. Professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Goldfield ponders the return of a partially segregated public school system in the South and the persistence of black poverty. Photos. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Using exposition more than argument, historian Goldfield surveys the transformation of the South from a world of white supremacy to a place where he thinks class may be more important than race. His focus falls on what was on southerners' minds and in their hearts since the 1930s; and to reveal their feeling and thinking, he scans fiction, popular commentary, and political rhetoric as he probes the defeat of segregation. His provocative view of a South regenerated from within is a companion for Herbert Shapiro's White Violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery (LJ 2/1/88) and Neil R. McMillen's Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (LJ 2/1/89). A splendid bibliographical essay provides direction to sources, but scholars will wish for notes to the many, often poignant quotations. For informed laypersons as well as specialists.-- Thomas J. Davis, Univ. at Buffalo, N.Y.

Library Journal