Invisible Southerners

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Invisible Southerners

Author : Anne J. Bailey
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820327573
Total Pages : 119 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (23 download)

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Book Synopsis Invisible Southerners by : Anne J. Bailey

Download or read book Invisible Southerners written by Anne J. Bailey and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most Southerners who fought in the Civil War were native born, white, and Confederate. However, thousands with other ethnic backgrounds also took a stand--and not always for the South. Invisible Southerners recounts the wartime experiences of the region's German Americans, Native Americans, and African Americans. As Anne J. Bailey looks at how such outsiders responded to demands on their loyalties, she recaptures the atmosphere of suspicion and prosecession, proslavery sentiment in which they strove to understand, and be understood by, their neighbors. Divisions within groups complicated circumstances even after members had cast their lot with the Union or Confederacy. Europe's slavery-free legacy swayed many German Americans against the South. Even so, one pro-Union German soldier could still look askance at another, because he was perhaps from a different province in the Old Country or of a different religious sect. Creeks and Cherokees faced wartime questions made thornier by tribal rifts based on wealth, racial mixture, and bitter memories of their forced transport to the Indian Territory decades earlier. The decision was easiest for former slaves, says Bailey, but the consequences more dire. They joined the Union Army in search of freedom and a new life--often to be persecuted by Yankee soldiers and, if captured, punished severely by Rebels.

The Invisible Empire

Author : Albion Winegar Tourgee
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807114629
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (146 download)

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Book Synopsis The Invisible Empire by : Albion Winegar Tourgee

Download or read book The Invisible Empire written by Albion Winegar Tourgee and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1989-04-01 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The North Carolina carpetbagger Albion Winegar Tourgée came to the South in 1865 after serving as a Union volunteer during the Civil War. His struggles in the cause of civil rights led him to take part in the political reorganization of the region. However, in 1879, Tourgée despaired of his efforts in the South and returned to the North. There he published A Fool’s Errand, a largely autobiographical novel that depicted a southern society dominated by the Ku Klux Klan and riddled with racism, ignorance, and corrupt policies. Within a year of the release of A Fool’s Errand, Tourgée published The Invisible Empire, a nonfiction account of his years in the South intended to buttress the portrait of Reconstruction southern society he had depicted in his novel. The Invisible Empire investigates white supremacy as it emerged from the milieu of slavery, war, politics, and Reconstruction. Tourgée argues that organizations such as the Klan appealed to the mass of white southerners as a means of ameliorating their defeat and ensuring a measure of political control. He describes that Klan as the produce of southern hostility toward “any and all things” associated with the uplifting of the black population. Tourgée’s efforts in his books and in his life, were aimed at undermining racism and promoting egalitarian and democratic ideals. This reprint of The Invisible Empire brings to light a book that will interest scholars and general readers alike. It is a striking, contemporary look into the mind of the carpetbagger and the genesis of both the Ku Klux Klan and the political structure of the postwar South. Otto H. Olsen’s introduction and notes place the work in its proper historical and literary context. His analysis of the documentary evidence supplied by various reliable sources gives Tourgée’s narrative a more solid historical basis than it has heretofore had.

The Civil War and the West

Author : Carol L. Higham
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0313393591
Total Pages : 166 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (133 download)

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Book Synopsis The Civil War and the West by : Carol L. Higham

Download or read book The Civil War and the West written by Carol L. Higham and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1800 and the Civil War, the American West evolved from a region to territories to states. This book depicts the development of the antebellum West from the perspective of a resident of the Western frontier. What happened in the West in the lead-up to and during the American Civil War? The Civil War and the West: The Frontier Transformed provides a clear and complete answer to this question. The work succinctly overviews the West during the antebellum period from 1800 to 1862, supplying thematic chapters that explain how key elements and characteristics of the West created conflict and division that differed from those in the East during the Civil War. It looks at how these issues influenced the military, settlement, and internal territorial conflicts about statehood in each region, and treats the Cherokee and other Indian nations as important actors in the development of a national narrative.

Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America

Author : Jordan J. Dominy
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496826426
Total Pages : 166 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America by : Jordan J. Dominy

Download or read book Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America written by Jordan J. Dominy and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2020-01-27 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Cold War, national discourse strove for unity through patriotism and political moderation to face a common enemy. Some authors and intellectuals supported that narrative by casting America’s complicated history with race and poverty as moral rather than merely political problems. Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America examines southern literature and the culture within the United States from the period just before the Cold War through the civil rights movement to show how this literature won a significant place in Cold War culture and shaped the nation through the time of Hillbilly Elegy. Tackling cultural issues in the country through subtext and metaphor, the works of authors like William Faulkner, Lillian Smith, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, and Walker Percy redefined “South” as much more than a geographical identity within an empire. The “South” has become a racially coded sociopolitical and cultural identity associated with white populist conservatism that breaks geographical boundaries and, as it has in the past, continues to have a disproportionate influence on the nation’s future and values.

The Germans of Charleston, Richmond and New Orleans during the Civil War Period, 1850-1870

Author : Andrea Mehrländer
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
ISBN 13 : 3110236893
Total Pages : 457 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (12 download)

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Book Synopsis The Germans of Charleston, Richmond and New Orleans during the Civil War Period, 1850-1870 by : Andrea Mehrländer

Download or read book The Germans of Charleston, Richmond and New Orleans during the Civil War Period, 1850-1870 written by Andrea Mehrländer and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-05-26 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work is the first monograph which closely examines the role of the German minority in the American South during the Civil War. In a comparative analysis of German civic leaders, businessmen, militia officers and blockade runners in Charleston, New Orleans and Richmond, it reveals a German immigrant population which not only largely supported slavery, but was also heavily involved in fighting the war. A detailed appendix includes an extensive survey of primary and secondary sources, including tables listing the members of the all-German units in Virginia, South Carolina and Louisiana, with names, place of origin, rank, occupation, income, and number of slaves owned. This book is a highly useful reference work for historians, military scholars and genealogists conducting research on Germans in the American Civil War and the American South.

Invisible No More

Author : Andrea J. Ritchie
Publisher : Beacon Press
ISBN 13 : 0807088986
Total Pages : 362 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis Invisible No More by : Andrea J. Ritchie

Download or read book Invisible No More written by Andrea J. Ritchie and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A passionate, incisive critique of the many ways in which women and girls of color are systematically erased or marginalized in discussions of police violence.” —Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow Invisible No More is a timely examination of how Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color experience racial profiling, police brutality, and immigration enforcement. By placing the individual stories of Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, Dajerria Becton, Monica Jones, and Mya Hall in the broader context of the twin epidemics of police violence and mass incarceration, Andrea Ritchie documents the evolution of movements centered around women’s experiences of policing. Featuring a powerful forward by activist Angela Davis, Invisible No More is an essential exposé on police violence against WOC that demands a radical rethinking of our visions of safety—and the means we devote to achieving it.

The Real South

Author : Scott Romine
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807148067
Total Pages : 453 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis The Real South by : Scott Romine

Download or read book The Real South written by Scott Romine and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2008-06-01 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this stimulating study, Scott Romine explores the impact of globalization on contemporary southern culture and the South's persistence in an age of media and what he terms "cultural reproduction." Rather than being compromised, Romine asserts, southern cultures are both complicated and reconfigured as they increasingly detach from tradition in its conventional sense. In considering Souths that might appear fake -- the Souths of the theme restaurant, commercial television, and popular regional magazines, for example -- Romine contends that authenticity and reality emerge as central concepts that allow groups and individuals to imagine and navigate social worlds. Romine addresses a major critical problem -- "authenticity" -- in a fundamentally new manner. Less concerned with what actually constitutes an "authentic" or "real" South than in how these concepts are used today, The Real South explores a wide range of southern narratives that describe and travel through virtual, simulated, and commodified Souths. Where earlier critics have tended to assume a real or authentic South, Romine questions such assumptions and whether the "authentic South" ever truly existed. From Gone with the Wind, Civil War reenactments, and a tennis community outside Atlanta called Tara, to the work of Josephine Humphreys, the travel narrative of V. S. Naipaul, and the historical fiction of Lewis Nordan, Romine examines how narratives (and spaces) are used to fashion social solidarity and cultural continuity in a time of fragmentation and change. Far from deteriorating or disappearing in a global economy, Romine shows, the South continues to be reproduced and used by diverse groups engaged in diverse cultural projects.

Inventing Southern Literature

Author : Michael Kreyling
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 9781604737769
Total Pages : 219 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (377 download)

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Book Synopsis Inventing Southern Literature by : Michael Kreyling

Download or read book Inventing Southern Literature written by Michael Kreyling and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2012 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I take...an outward route, arguing that the Agrarian project was and must be seen as a willed campaign on the part of one elite to establish and control 'the South' in a period of intense cultural maneuvering. The principal organizers of I'll Take My Stand knew full well there were other 'Souths' than the one they touted; they deliberately presented a fabricated South as the one and only real thing. In Inventing Southern Literature Michael Kreyling casts a penetrating ray upon the traditional canon of southern literature and questions the modes by which it was created. He finds that it was, indeed, an invention rather than a creation. In the 1930s the foundations were laid by the Fugitive-Agrarian group, a band of poet-critics that wished not only to design but also to control the southern cultural entity in a conservative political context. From their heyday to the present, Kreyling investigates the historical conditions under which literary and cultural critics have invented the South and how they have chosen its representations. Through his study of these choices, Kreyling argues that interested groups have shaped meanings that preserve a South as the South. As the Fugitive-Agrarians molded the region according to their definition in I'll Take My Stand, they professed to have developed a critical method that disavowed any cultural or political intent or content, a claim that Kreyling disproves. He shows that their torch was taken by Richard Weaver on the Right and Louis D. Rubin, Jr., on the Center-Left and that both critics tried to preserve the Fugitive-Agrarian credo despite the severe stresses imposed during the era of desegregation. As the southern literary paradigm has been attacked and defended, certain issues have remained in the forefront. Kreyling takes on three: reconciling the imperatives of race with the traditional definitions of the South; testing the ways white women writers of the South have negotiated space within or outside the paradigm; and analyzing the critics' use and abuse of William Faulkner (the major figure of southern literature) as they have relied on his achievement to anchor the total project called Southern Literature. Michael Kreyling, a professor of English at Vanderbilt University, is the author of several books, including "Eudora Welty's Achievement of Order" and "Author and Agent: Eudora Welty and Diarmuid Russell."

A Sphinx on the American Land

Author : Peter Kolchin
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807168181
Total Pages : 137 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis A Sphinx on the American Land by : Peter Kolchin

Download or read book A Sphinx on the American Land written by Peter Kolchin and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2003-04 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One reason that the South attracts so much interest is that its history inevitably involves big questions—continuity versus change, slavery and freedom, the meaning of “race,” the formation of national identity, the struggle between local and centralized authority. Because these issues are central to human experience, southern history properly conceived is of more than regional interest. In A Sphinx on the American Land, Peter Kolchin explores three comparative frameworks for the study of the nineteenth-century South in an effort to nudge the subject away from provincialism and toward the kind of global concerns that are already transforming it into one of the most innovative fields of historical research. The volume opens with a comparison between the South and the North, or what Kolchin terms the “un-South.” This basic context, he explains, provides an essential backdrop for understanding the South; how one conceptualizes “southernness” has meaning only in terms of what it is not. Turning to the cohesion and variations among what he calls the “many Souths,” Kolchin reminds us that there has never been one South or archetypal southerner. Internal distinctions—whether geographic, class, religious, or racial—ultimately raise the question of whether one can properly speak of “the” South at all. Finally, Kolchin explores parallels between the South and regions outside the United States—or “other Souths.” He considers a number of ways in which the South can be studied in a broad international setting, paying particular attention to the similarities and differences between the emancipation of southern slaves and Russian serfs. In an eloquent afterword, he ponders the nature and importance of comparative history. Kolchin examines how scholars have approached each of his comparative frameworks and how they might do so in the future, making A Sphinx on the American Land at once a work of history and of historiography. Illustrating the ways in which southern history is also American history and world history, this elegant, profound volume proves Kolchin to be one of the stellar southern historians of his generation.

Claiming the Union

Author : Susanna Michele Lee
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107015324
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis Claiming the Union by : Susanna Michele Lee

Download or read book Claiming the Union written by Susanna Michele Lee and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-14 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines Southerners' claims to loyal citizenship in the reunited nation after the American Civil War. Southerners - male and female; elite and non-elite; white, black, and American Indian - disagreed with the federal government over the obligations citizens owed to their nation and the obligations the nation owed to its citizens. Susanna Michele Lee explores these clashes through the operations of the Southern Claims Commission, a federal body that rewarded compensation for wartime losses to Southerners who proved that they had been loyal citizens of the Union. Lee argues that Southerners forced the federal government to consider how white men who had not been soldiers and voters, and women and racial minorities who had not been allowed to serve in those capacities, could also qualify as loyal citizens. Postwar considerations of the former Confederacy potentially demanded a reconceptualization of citizenship that replaced exclusions by race and gender with inclusions according to loyalty.

The Long Southern Strategy

Author : Angie Maxwell
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190265981
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (92 download)

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Book Synopsis The Long Southern Strategy by : Angie Maxwell

Download or read book The Long Southern Strategy written by Angie Maxwell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Southern Strategy was but one in a series of decisions the GOP made not just on race, but on feminism and religion as well, in what Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields call the "Long Southern Strategy." The Southern Strategy is traditionally understood as a Goldwater and Nixon-era effort by the Republican Party to win over disaffected white voters in the Democratic stronghold of the American South. To realign these voters with the GOP, the party abandoned its past support for civil rights and used racially coded language to capitalize on southern white racial angst. However, that decision was but one in a series of decisions the GOP made not just on race, but on feminism and religion as well, in what Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields call the "Long Southern Strategy." In the wake of Second-Wave Feminism, the GOP dropped the Equal Rights Amendment from its platform and promoted traditional gender roles in an effort to appeal to anti-feminist white southerners, particularly women. And when the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention became increasingly fundamentalist and politically active, the GOP tied its fate to the Christian Right. With original, extensive data on national and regional opinions and voting behavior, Maxwell and Shields show why all three of those decisions were necessary for the South to turn from blue to red. To make inroads in the South, however, GOP politicians not only had to take these positions, but they also had to sell them with a southern "accent." Republicans embodied southern white culture by emphasizing an "us vs. them" outlook, preaching absolutes, accusing the media of bias, prioritizing identity over the economy, encouraging defensiveness, and championing a politics of retribution. In doing so, the GOP nationalized southern white identity, rebranded itself to the country at large, and fundamentally altered the vision and tone of American politics.

The Civil War in Georgia

Author : John C. Inscoe
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820341827
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (23 download)

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Book Synopsis The Civil War in Georgia by : John C. Inscoe

Download or read book The Civil War in Georgia written by John C. Inscoe and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Georgians, like all Americans, experienced the Civil War in a variety of ways. Through selected articles drawn from the New Georgia Encyclopedia (www.georgiaencyclopedia.org), this collection chronicles the diversity of Georgia's Civil War experience and reflects the most current scholarship in terms of how the Civil War has come to be studied, documented, and analyzed. The Atlanta campaign and Sherman's March to the Sea changed the course of the war in 1864, in terms both of the upheaval and destruction inflicted on the state and the life span of the Confederacy. While the dramatic events of 1864 are fully documented, this companion gives equal coverage to the many other aspects of the war--naval encounters and guerrilla warfare, prisons and hospitals, factories and plantations, politics and policies-- all of which provided critical support to the Confederacy's war effort. The book also explores home-front conditions in depth, with an emphasis on emancipation, dissent, Unionism, and the experience and activity of African Americans and women. Historians today are far more conscious of how memory--as public commemoration, individual reminiscence, historic preservation, and literary and cinematic depictions--has shaped the war's multiple meanings. Nowhere is this legacy more varied or more pronounced than in Georgia, and a substantial part of this companion explores the many ways in which Georgians have interpreted the war experience for themselves and others over the past 150 years. At the outset of the sesquicentennial these new historical perspectives allow us to appreciate the Civil War as a complex and multifaceted experience for Georgians and for all southerners. A Project of the New Georgia Encyclopedia; Published in Association with the Georgia Humanities Council and the University System of Georgia/GALILEO.

Race and Repast

Author : Urszula Niewiadomska-Flis
Publisher : University of Arkansas Press
ISBN 13 : 1610757866
Total Pages : 211 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Race and Repast by : Urszula Niewiadomska-Flis

Download or read book Race and Repast written by Urszula Niewiadomska-Flis and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 2022-12-15 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Race and Repast: Foodscapes in Twentieth-Century Southern Literature examines the literary foodscapes of the American South—from Jim Crow–era kitchens where White and Black Southerners reacted against racial mores, to the public dining spaces where Southerners probed the limits of racial identity, to the lunch counters that became touchstones of the Black Freedom movement. Mining literary texts by iconic authors like Ernest Gaines and Walker Percy to demonstrate that “food reflects and refracts power,” Urszula Niewiadomska-Flis wields food studies as a revelatory lens through which to view a radically segregated society that was often on the cusp of violence. Niewiadomska-Flis also provides a rich and succinct introduction to scholarship in Southern studies and food studies, making Race and Repast a compelling read that offers countless insights to experts as well as readers exploring these areas of research for the first time.

Southern Black Women in the Modern Civil Rights Movement

Author : Bruce A. Glasrud
Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
ISBN 13 : 1603449469
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (34 download)

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Book Synopsis Southern Black Women in the Modern Civil Rights Movement by : Bruce A. Glasrud

Download or read book Southern Black Women in the Modern Civil Rights Movement written by Bruce A. Glasrud and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the South, black women were crucial to the Civil Rights Movement, serving as grassroots and organizational leaders. They protested, participated, sat in, mobilized, created, energized, led particular efforts, and served as bridge builders to the rest of the community. Ignored at the time by white politicians and the media alike, with few exceptions they worked behind the scenes to effect the changes all in the movement sought. Until relatively recently, historians, too, have largely ignored their efforts. Although African American women mobili.

The Civil War Guerrilla

Author : Joseph M. BeileinJr.
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
ISBN 13 : 0813165342
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (131 download)

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Book Synopsis The Civil War Guerrilla by : Joseph M. BeileinJr.

Download or read book The Civil War Guerrilla written by Joseph M. BeileinJr. and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2015-04-03 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most Americans are familiar with major Civil War battles such as Manassas (Bull Run), Shiloh, and Gettysburg, which have been extensively analyzed by generations of historians. However, not all of the war's engagements were fought in a conventional manner by regular forces. Often referred to as "the wars within the war," guerrilla combat touched states from Virginia to New Mexico. Guerrillas fought for the Union, the Confederacy, their ethnic groups, their tribes, and their families. They were deadly forces that plundered, tortured, and terrorized those in their path, and their impact is not yet fully understood. In this richly diverse volume, Joseph M. Beilein Jr. and Matthew C. Hulbert assemble a team of both rising and eminent scholars to examine guerrilla warfare in the South during the Civil War. Together, they discuss irregular combat as practiced by various communities in multiple contexts, including how it was used by Native Americans, the factors that motivated raiders in the border states, and the women who participated as messengers, informants, collaborators, and combatants. They also explore how the Civil War guerrilla has been mythologized in history, literature, and folklore. The Civil War Guerrilla sheds new light on the ways in which thousands of men, women, and children experienced and remembered the Civil War as a conflict of irregular wills and tactics. Through thorough research and analysis, this timely book provides readers with a comprehensive examination of the guerrilla soldier and his role in the deadliest war in U.S. history.

The Invisible Line

Author : Daniel J. Sharfstein
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101475803
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis The Invisible Line by : Daniel J. Sharfstein

Download or read book The Invisible Line written by Daniel J. Sharfstein and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-02-17 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Invisible Line" shines light on one of the most important, but too often hidden, aspects of American history and culture. Sharfstein's narrative of three families negotiating America's punishing racial terrain is a must read for all who are interested in the construction of race in the United States." --Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello In America, race is a riddle. The stories we tell about our past have calcified into the fiction that we are neatly divided into black or white. It is only with the widespread availability of DNA testing and the boom in genealogical research that the frequency with which individuals and entire families crossed the color line has become clear. In this sweeping history, Daniel J. Sharfstein unravels the stories of three families who represent the complexity of race in America and force us to rethink our basic assumptions about who we are. The Gibsons were wealthy landowners in the South Carolina backcountry who became white in the 1760s, ascending to the heights of the Southern elite and ultimately to the U.S. Senate. The Spencers were hardscrabble farmers in the hills of Eastern Kentucky, joining an isolated Appalachian community in the 1840s and for the better part of a century hovering on the line between white and black. The Walls were fixtures of the rising black middle class in post-Civil War Washington, D.C., only to give up everything they had fought for to become white at the dawn of the twentieth century. Together, their interwoven and intersecting stories uncover a forgotten America in which the rules of race were something to be believed but not necessarily obeyed. Defining their identities first as people of color and later as whites, these families provide a lens for understanding how people thought about and experienced race and how these ideas and experiences evolved-how the very meaning of black and white changed-over time. Cutting through centuries of myth, amnesia, and poisonous racial politics, The Invisible Line will change the way we talk about race, racism, and civil rights.

The Limits of Loyalty

Author : Jarret Ruminski
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496813995
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis The Limits of Loyalty by : Jarret Ruminski

Download or read book The Limits of Loyalty written by Jarret Ruminski and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2017-09-15 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jarret Ruminski examines ordinary lives in Confederate-controlled Mississippi to show how military occupation and the ravages of war tested the meaning of loyalty during America's greatest rift. The extent of southern loyalty to the Confederate States of America has remained a subject of historical contention that has resulted in two conflicting conclusions: one, southern patriotism was either strong enough to carry the Confederacy to the brink of victory, or two, it was so weak that the Confederacy was doomed to crumble from internal discord. Mississippi, the home state of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, should have been a hotbed of Confederate patriotism. The reality was much more complicated. Ruminski breaks the weak/strong loyalty impasse by looking at how people from different backgrounds--women and men, white and black, enslaved and free, rich and poor--negotiated the shifting contours of loyalty in a state where Union occupation turned everyday activities into potential tests of patriotism. While the Confederate government demanded total national loyalty from its citizenry, this study focuses on wartime activities such as swearing the Union oath, illegally trading with the Union army, and deserting from the Confederate army to show how Mississippians acted on multiple loyalties to self, family, and nation. Ruminski also probes the relationship between race and loyalty to indicate how an internal war between slaves and slaveholders defined Mississippi's social development well into the twentieth century.