A great book and a good friend

I just found out that my friend Susan Youngblood Ashmore at Oxford College of Emory Univeristy won the Southern Historical Association's Francis B. Simkins Award - recognizing the best first book by an author in the field of southern history over a two-year period - and the Southern Association of Women Historians' Willie Lee Rose Prize. Not a bad take for one conference. Her book is Carry It On:
The War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, 1964–1972 (University of Georgia Press, 2008). It's worth your time.

Another book...

Why is it that all my friends seem to be cranking out the books, while I sit here watching Auburn trying to ascend to mediocrity? This time it's brother Brooks Blevins with his latest, Arkansas/Arkansaw How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and Good Ol’ Boys Defined a State. It's the study of the image of a state as perceived by its people and outsiders, and if it runs true to the ole Blevins form, it will be a great book and a fun read. His article on selling fireworks in the South, which ran in Southern Cultures a few years back, is one of my favorite essays about the modern South...and a real knee-slapper, something we academics rarely pull off. Now off to write something myself. I've been suitably shamed.

Best Southern Nonfiction...

I have an affection for rankings and polls. Maybe it's my love of college football, although Auburn's recent drop from the polls might change my feelings. There's just something about a list of "bests," be they restaurants, pick-up trucks, football teams, all-time NFL strong safeties, or whatever that I find fascinating and down-right fun. The beauty of these kinds of lists is you don't have to agree. In fact, it's better if you don't. A list that clearly got it wrong gives you ample reason to turn to the person next to you in the dentist's waiting room and exclaim, "Can you believe they picked that?!" The Oxford American, a magazine I've always enjoyed despite its frequent financial travails, offered this list of the best in southern non-fiction in their August issue and I just noticed it. The top four are top-notch: James Agee, Richard Wright, W.J. Cash, and Eudora Welty. I would have placed Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl a bit higher on the list, and my affection for Willie Morris would lead me to do the same with North Toward Home. If nothing else, this list -- including those receiving just a few votes -- provides a heck of a reading list for anyone interested in the South and its people.

Charles Reagan Wilson and the Legacy of Space

Check out this essay by Charles Reagan Wilson on the legacy of space. It at Southern Spaces, an interesting e-journal brought to you by the good folks at Emory University. It examines spatial separation and its meaning in South Africa, Northern Ireland, and the South. It's worth a read.

Get 'em Wayne!

Professor Wayne Flynt, my old advisor, the dean of Alabama historians, and long a voice of reform in his state and region, is leading an effort to overturn the Alabama Constitution. Ratified by a tainted constitutional convention in 1901, this constitution not only disfranchised African American men, but also placed city and county governments at the mercy of the state legislature. Alabama's is the nation's longest state constitution --longer, Wayne says, than Moby Dick and The Bible -- and has over 800 amendments. This is because any time a county needs to pass a law of local interest -- almost as minor as naming a street -- they often must propose a constitutional amendment which voters across the state must ratify. It also enshrines a tax system that places the public burden on the poor and propertyless.

You can read the lawsuit, Wayne's statement, and hear an NPR interview with him here.

I have known about his efforts for years, but read about these recent developments today on the Cliopatria blog of the History News Network, a great resource.

Get'em Wayne!

Appalachian Sludge

Last month at a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) power plant near Kingston, Tennessee, a coal ash holding pond ruptured, sending a cascade of very nasty stuff into the valley below. The coal ash, which contains arsenic, various heavy metals, and other contaminates, has destroyed homes and contaminated water supplies. Long term effects remain unknown. Residents are fearful about more than losing their homes in these bad economic times. They fear for their health and the health of their children. Check out Duke's Institute for Southern Studies, which has provided some of the best coverage I have read concerning this incident and the social, political, and economic issues it raises. Also check out coverage by United Mountain Defense.

The South's environment, especially in the southern mountains, is threatened by overdevelopment, extractive industries, air pollution, overstressed aquifers, hazardous waste, and countless other environmental time bombs. This issue should have a prominent place on the political agenda of leaders at the local, state, and national level. But despite hang-wringing when something like this happens, there is little real effort to address what is happening on the southern landscape. Henry Grady has many twenty-first century kindred spirits who see economic development at all costs to be the region's driving force. What are those costs? The people in Roane County, TN know them all too well.

Obama's Southern Strategy?

Today we learn that President-elect Barack Obama will appoint Virginia Governor Tom Kaine to head the Democratic National Committee. You may remember that last fall some floated Kaine's name as a potential Vice-Presidential nominee. Kaine has good relations with Republicans in Virginia and is seen as a rising southern star in Democratic circles. Is this the beginning of a southern strategy by the new President? That remains to be seen, but the case of North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida indicate that some states in the South are legitimately in play for the first time since Jimmy Carter. Is Kaine's nomination a sign that Democratics are going to make a real effort to gain a stronger foothold in the South? Professor Jim Cobb, a noted southern historian, has offered some interesting analysis about what happened to the Republicans when they "gave their hearts to Dixie." Will two-party politics return to the South? We'll wait and see.