Tonight, instead of the usual intellectual history post I’d like to offer up two links for people to check out that relate to Southern intellectual history in some way. Peter Kuryla’s piece from yesterday is also a must-read in this regard. I hope you enjoy them—and please check out another wonderful week of USIH posts as well!
TIME Magazine and the South—Time magazine has released a new issue about the South. In the introduction, Time mentions their previous issues about a changing south, in 1964 and 1976. In many ways, this latest issue is part of a long tradition of national magazines talking about a changing New South. In an age of more magazines about the left and radicalism, it’s important to note magazines such as Scalawag are trying to change the narrative about what it means to be a Southern.
“I Saw Emmett Till at the Grocery Store”—yesterday would have been the 77th birthday of Emmett Till, whose death in 1955 galvanized many African Americans to get involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Eve Ewing’s poem, “I Saw Emmett Till at the Grocery Store,” illustrates the tragedy of wanton murder in American history—what was potentially lost when he, and by extension so many other African Americans, were murdered due to white supremacy in American society. In addition, we should think about how poetry today—both from Eve Ewing’s work, and the writing of Claudia Rankine—addresses the current Black Lives Matter moment.
In both pieces, we see the complexity of life in the American South front and center in modern political and social discourse. The nation continues to struggle with what the South means to America (and what America means to the South), and books such as The Burning House attempt to tackle this long and complicated history. As my review in The Nation states, we will continue to wrestle with what the South means for decades to come.
0