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Meeting the Moment for Democracy Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Errin Haines
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Meeting the Moment for Democracy Errin Haines (bio) three days after i turned eighteen, my mom, who was born in Jim Crow Florida, took me to register to vote at the same precinct where I grew up watching her vote. The experience taught me at an early age that voting was my birthright, something adults—and Black women in particular—did
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The Voting Rights Act beyond the Headlines Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Emilye Crosby, Judy Richardson
Abstract: This article introduces readers to the ongoing African American struggle for full voting rights from Reconstruction to the present. It explains some of the significant ways white supremacists (mis)used the legal and political system, along with violence and economic terrorism, to suppress the Black vote. The essay gives particular attention to the collective work of African Americans to secure
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"Blocks for Freedom": Sewing for Voting in Post-Jim Crow Mississippi Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-03-13 William Sturkey
Abstract: This article examines a voting rights campaign known as "Blocks for Freedom" that was launched in 1966 to help a group of rural African American women in Clay County, Mississippi, protect their right to vote. These Black women faced significant obstacles to vote even after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Local white vigilantes and county administrators used violence and the threat
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A Real Evidence of Community: Poll Worker Portraits in the North Carolina Piedmont Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Kate Medley
Abstract: Georgia poll workers came under fire for alleged election fraud in the 2020 presidential election, but the accusations stood in stark contrast to the author's own experiences as a poll worker in North Carolina during the same election. The author, a photographer, visited a few precincts in central North Carolina to ask volunteers why they became poll workers and to discuss their duty to ensure
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"White supremacy in North Carolina rests in woman's hands": Dr. Delia Dixon-Carroll and the Power of White Women Voters Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Angela Page Robbins
Abstract: Following ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, Dr. Delia Dixon-Carroll (1872–1934) delivered dozens of speeches across North Carolina ahead of the general election in fall 1920, appealing to white women to register and vote for Democratic candidates. A suffragist, clubwoman, and Raleigh's first woman physician, she embodied the new woman of the early twentieth century while also extolling
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Voting Rights in Georgia: A Short History Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Orville Vernon Burton, Peter Eisenstadt
Abstract: This article is a brief history of the struggle for Black voting rights and against determined opposition in Georgia since the end of the Civil War. After a brief period during Reconstruction when there was significant Black voting and Black representation in the Georgia legislature, Black people were systematically denied both voting rights and representation in the state of Georgia. After
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The Rhetoric and the Reality of the New Southern Strategy: Courtland Cox, Nsé Ufot, and Charles V. Taylor Jr. in Conversation Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Emilye Crosby
Abstract: This article is an edited intergenerational conversation among Courtland Cox, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s; Nsé Ufot, former executive director of the New Georgia Project; and Charles V. Taylor Jr., executive director of the Mississippi State NAACP, on April 7, 2023. This discussion explores key issues in today's national politics, especially
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The South's Democracy Struggle Reaches New Urgency Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Benjamin Barber
Abstract: This article examines the history and impact of the Voting Rights Act 1965 and the South's current political landscape more than a decade after the devastating 2013 Shelby v. Holder Supreme Court decision, which eviscerated the landmark civil rights legislation. The VRA has been under constant attack in recent years, with efforts to reduce its effectiveness. These attempts have led to the
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These Are Revolutionary Times Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Marcie Cohen Ferris
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: These Are Revolutionary Times Marcie Cohen Ferris Click for larger view View full resolution "We who believe in freedom cannot rest (Ella Baker)," by Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. Letterpress, Kennedy Prints! 2012. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. [End Page 128] as we move through these fraught days in America, watching with horror the incomprehensible
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Sea Turtle Sonnet Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Zeina Hashem Beck
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Sea Turtle Sonnet Zeina Hashem Beck (bio) After Cairokee Our parents stayed during the civil war.Don't say we escaped, just that we too failed.We left Beirut on the verge of collapse& revolution. That clearing of hope,where would we be without it? Ask Ziad,who put the city on a stage & laughedat its slow ways of killing us with pillsor
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Contributors Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-03-13
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Contributors benjamin barber is a writer and advocate who is heavily interested in voting rights, democracy, and southern history. He currently serves as the Democracy Program Coordinator at the Institute for Southern Studies and as a contributing writer for Facing South. zeina hashem beck is a Lebanese poet. Her third poetry collection
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Haints, Hollers, and Hoodoo Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-01-20 Kinitra D. Brooks
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Haints, Hollers, and Hoodoo Kinitra D. Brooks (bio) "A dark spirit lives on your porch," the medium told me. Excuse me? Prickles of dread and fear blossomed in my chest. What the hell am I supposed to do about that? I was only beginning my journey in ancestor veneration—working through my fears of the dead in general and dark spirits in
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Something Beautiful out of the Darkness Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-01-20 Jesmyn Ward, Regina N. Bradley
Abstract: Originally from the Gulf Coast community of DeLisle, Mississippi, Jesmyn Ward is unapologetically steeped in a southern Black literary tradition that amplifies the complicated realities of being Black in the South. Ward is a MacArthur Fellow and two-time National Book Award winner for her novels Salvage the Bones (2011) and Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017). She writes across a variety of genres
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Specters of the Mythic South: How Plantation Fiction Fixed Ghost Stories to Black Americans Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-01-20 Alena Pirok
Abstract: The author challenges the notion of southern ghost stories as inherently subversive. Beginning with the stories in late nineteenth-century plantation fiction, this essay explores how wealthy white southerners used the genre to redeem and remake the region's past and present. White authors' claims of fraternity with largely nameless and faceless Black contacts are central to the story and
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What Has Been Will Be Again Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-01-20 Jared Ragland, Catherine Wilkins
Abstract: Photographer Jared Ragland uses a Southern Gothic sensibility to visually contend with Alabama's centuries-long past, its present-day issues, and the perpetuated use of segregation and sequestration in service of the white supremacist myths of American exceptionalism. While the black-and-white photographs demonstrate similarities in style and content to the works of journalistic, literary
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Fear of a Black (Southern) Planet: Kara Walker's Night Conjure Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-01-20 Kameelah L. Martin
Abstract: Black folk have a dubious relationship with landscapes of the American South, where the living dead—Indigenous, enslaved, Confederate, and everyone in between—saturate the natural world with unresolved trauma. Kara Walker has long explored the complexity of race relations during the rise and fall of the plantation economy, and in Night Conjure (2001), she inverts the iconography of Black
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Mama Possum Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-01-20 John Jennings
Abstract: Recalling a traumatic memory was John Jennings's first foray into what he would later call the ethnogothic. Jennings uses making practices and art to create dark spaces that offer not fear or dread but sanctuary until viewers can truly deal with the monsters that attack their psyches. The monster is a portent of danger, a warning that one has transgressed, and an urging to atone for sins
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Night Walker Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-01-20 Kimberly Anderson
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Night Walker Kimberly Anderson (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Night Service Mirage, by Kimberly Anderson, 2022. Mixed media collage on corrugated cardboard with family photos, archival photography, and gold leaf, 12 x 12 in. [End Page 57] "Hey, sorry i can't take you further down the road, man, you sure you gon' be alright
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A Girl, a Man, a Storm, a City Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-01-20 K. Ibura
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: A Girl, a Man, a Storm, a City K. Ibura (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Galactic, K. Ibura, © 2022. Paper Collage. [End Page 60] The trees stood silent, lining the street in stately rows. Survival was in their lineage. When the whipping winds, surging foodwaters, and battering rain had come, they had tightened their roots
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Blood Harmony Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-01-20 Rebecca Bengal, Kristine Potter
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Blood Harmony Rebecca Bengal (bio) and Kristine Potter (bio) When charlie sings, her sister Audra's voice follows, the voice of a grown woman inside a little-girl body, high and lonesome and worried at first, till it wraps itself around hers to become pure and whole, and then forks off on its own. They were raised first on shape notes
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Dark Corners: The Appalachian Murder Ballad Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-01-20 Julyan Davis
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Dark CornersThe Appalachian Murder Ballad Julyan Davis (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Cold Fall the Drops of Rain, by Julyan Davis, 2016. Oil on canvas, 46 x 38 in. [End Page 76] I grew up listening to the folk songs of my ancestors along the Scottish Borders. When I left London for America, I discovered the songs again
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Mystery of the Talking Skull: Family Secrets in Southern Appalachia Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-01-20 Stephen Simmons
Abstract: When an out-of-town merchandiser goes missing in 1930s rural Southern Appalachia, whiskey and foul play are suspected. The small town of Woodbury, Tennessee, soon forgets and moves on, until the man's skeletal remains are uncovered three years later by two boys digging for mayapple root. Two men are immediately charged with the murder, though only one would be convicted. The trial would attract
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The Uncanny Keep On Talkin' Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-01-20 Regina N. Bradley
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: The Uncanny Keep On Talkin' Regina N. Bradley When i was a kid, Wednesday nights were reserved for Unsolved Mysteries. A man's disembodied voice warned viewers that we were about to watch something that "was not a news broadcast," followed by a crescendo of synthesizers and Robert Stack's gravelly voice and direct stare into the camera
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& When They Come For Me (Reprise) Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-01-20 Golden
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: & When They Come For Me (Reprise) Golden (bio) Magnolia mothers, owl eyed girls,fellow forget-me-nots, let's gather our God-gowns down the golden gallows. We made it to the foreverfantasy where I can't remember what war we were weaponing to win: For some secretary sex? Some back-handedbrother? Some sons & uncles & Grandfatherswho forget
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Contributors Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2024-01-20
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Contributors kimberly anderson is a lens-based visual artist, employing photography, collage, and mixed media as a framework for her explorations of the nuances of memory. She encourages viewers to engage with the multifaceted tapestry of Blackness and the balance between the value and fragility ingrained in these narratives. Anderson
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Making the Invisible Visible: For a Climate Future Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-08-24 Angel Hsu
Abstract: Climate change is rapidly transforming our world in ways both visible and invisible. Greenhouse gases—invisible to the human eye—cause climate change, with widespread impacts to which we now bear witness. Devastating floods and record-breaking heat waves are some more visible effects. There are others that remain mostly unseen. Making the invisible visible is at the core of this issue of
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Snapshot Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-08-24 Natalie Chanin, Robert Rausch, Marquetta Dickens, Turcois Vazquez, Justin Cook, Bryan Thomas, Megan May, Jenny Adler, Jerry Dickson Greer, Rory Doyle, Jocelyn Painter, Beth Roach, Ryan Emanuel, Virginie Kippelen, Anna Gage Norton, Chuck Hemard, Benjamin Dimmitt, Cameron Davidson, Vanessa Charlot, Jerod Foster, Virginia Hanusik, Jordan Vonderhaar, Jeremy M. Lange, Gordon Campbell, Derek Slagle, Jared
Abstract: The Snapshot: Climate issue of Southern Cultures includes photography and reflections on climate impacts across the southern states by Jenny Adler, Austin Anthony, Kate Auger, Arden Barnes, Monica Patrice Barra, Robin Boggs, Jared Bramblett, Lily Brooks, Hannah Brown, Becca Burton, Matthew Busch, Gordon Campbell, Natalie Chanin, Vanessa Charlot, Walter Coker, Justin Cook, Cameron Davidson
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"Climate Change Is an Everything Issue" Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-08-24 Katharine Hayhoe, Bryan Giemza, Emma C. Schmidt
Abstract: In this interview, Katharine Hayhoe discusses the regional dimensions and impacts of climate change on the American South. Topics discussed include Texas and the energy sector, the pandemic, climate dismissives, solution aversion, political polarization, Christian identity and climate change, solutions to the climate crisis, definitions of environmentalism, and conducting productive climate
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Before the Streetlights Come On: Black America's Urgent Call for Climate Solutions (An Excerpt) Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-08-24 Heather McTeer Toney, Marcus Dawson
Abstract: This excerpt is the chapter titled "The Cultural Appropriation of Collard Greens: Food Insecurity and the ClimateCrisis" from Before The Streetlights Come On: Black America's Call for Climate Solutions (BroadLeaf Publishing, 2023). The chapterlinks together climate crisis, policy, and food deserts. Produce inflation—like the absurd pricing of three collard green stalks in a health foods store
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Confessions of a Climate Scientist Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-08-24 James W. C. White, Becca Stadtlander
Abstract: Human beings live on a planet with mostly water at the surface, and that water takes decades to warm up or cool off. That means what one generation does to change climate—such as add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere—the next generation must live with. The impacts of climate change are substantial and growing. Natural scientists need to pay attention to the social sciences and the humanities
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The Inner Banks: A Drive Home Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-08-24 Megan Mayhew Bergman
Abstract: The author describes a journey to her home state of North Carolina from Vermont to find a more profound connection from which to draw for her environmental and fictional writing. Thinking of a place that she can call home, she drives through the state, specifically the Inner Banks region, while considering her personal experiences with the area and intimate understanding of its idiosyncrasies
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Back Porch Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-08-24 Marcie Cohen Ferris
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Back Porch Marcie Cohen Ferris, editor This extraordinary Snapshot: Climate issue marks the beginning of a year and more of contemplation—and celebration—of the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of Southern Cultures and the Center for the Study of the American South in 1993. The issue's focus on the climate crisis and how southern
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Letters to a Black Boy Buried in Texas Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-08-24 Faylita Hicks
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Letters to a Black Boy Buried in Texas Faylita Hicks (bio) Dear Remnant of my Amen, All of these hours are swinging open,doors you will never walk through. Dear Progeny of my Exhale, So be this exile from the State; return againon virtue of your breath if it be at all an option, if not— Dear Son of Suns, Excavated moans nestle themselvesin
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Contributors Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-08-24
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Contributors jenny adler, PhD, is an underwater photojournalist based in California. Her work is informed by her scientific background, and she uses her imagery to communicate science and conservation. She specializes in underwater photography and is a trained freediver and cave diver with extensive experience working in extreme and remote
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Getting Free, Spatially Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-06-09 Danielle Purifoy
Abstract: In this introduction to the special issue of Southern Cultures on Black Geographies, Danielle Purifoy reflects on her family’s spatial trajectory from the Great Migration of the mid-twentieth century to her own upbringing in Durham, North Carolina, to demonstrate the spatial liberation strategies of Afro-diasporic peoples that flow through, away, and toward the global South. Black geographies
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Gloria Naylor: Literary Geographer of the Black South Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-06-09 Sasha Ann Panaram
Abstract: This essay considers the archival research that Gloria Naylor conducted for her third novel, Mama Day (1988). Drawing on interviews that Naylor conducted and various maps she consulted, Sasha Ann Panaram argues that we can treat Naylor as a literary geographer of the Black South. Part meditation on Naylor’s anti-imperialistic cartographic practices in Mama Day and part meditation on what
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"Kick, Push": Skating for Space and Joy Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-06-09 Suzanne Nimoh
Abstract: The field of Black Geographies invites scholars to upend dominant cartographies in favor of bringing Black placemaking to the forefront of our work. Following this call, this essay explores Black play through roller skating and positions Black street skaters as creative geographers, transforming quotidian urban environments into arenas of public adventure. Using their personal experiences
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Lost in Translation: Reverted Black Panamanian Sporting Networks Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-06-09 Javier L. Wallace
Abstract: In this essay, primarily tracing the memory of the author’s father, the author connects the ways Black Panamanians of West Indian ancestry used their athletic talents within a de jure racially segregated US Panama Canal Zone to forge opportunities with HBCU athletic programs in the US South. Black physical educators and coaches forged these connections to assist Black Panamanian youth in
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We Are Virginians Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-06-09 Barbara Phillips
Abstract: This essay shares the story of an African American family shaped for generations by a family farm on Peak’s Knob in the Appalachia of Virginia and the meaning of the culture nurtured there by Thomas Russell, born enslaved in 1834, and his descendants. Illustrating the relevance today of Anne Strand’s observation in Sacred Altars: An Artful Journey to Enchantment, “The land is not a space
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Let's Build Our Own House: Political Art and the Making of Black and Muslim Worlds Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-06-09 Darien Alexander Williams
Abstract: This essay discusses the Nation of Islam’s use of the press as an instrument to develop critiques of Black life in the United States and present viable alternatives. Political artists in the Nation of Islam, having shared the same Great Migration life paths as their leader Elijah Muhammad, were key in the organization’s reach, supporting the Nation of Islam in building a national network
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Be Ye Transformed: The King James Bible as Black Placemaking in the Rural South Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-06-09 Priscilla McCutcheon, LaToya Eaves
Abstract: Religion and the use of the King James Version of the Bible has been central to Black geographic practices in the rural South. In this essay, we argue that while the KJV has been used to justify domination and colonization of land and people, it has an enduring presence in the rural Black South. We argue that, in complicated ways, Black Southerners have used the KJV as a tool of liberation
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What Remains? Ethnographic Archives and Speculative Black Geographies Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-06-09 Ashanté M. Reese
Abstract: What changes if our ethnographic research practices are reconceptualized as archival practices that can be used toward the purpose of building more equitable, sustainable futures? This essay explores this question to (re)think how we document and preserve disappearing Black geographies in our research and activism. Guided by Octavia Butler’s science fiction as a model, the essay uses speculative
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Reimagining Riddick Town: Healing, Restoration, and Honor Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-06-09 Quay Weston, "Aunt Lydia" Whitley
Abstract: This interview essay highlights the experience of a Black/African American family currently navigating heirs’ property challenges in Pantego, North Carolina. This intergenerational conversation between the Riddick family historian, Lydia Whitley, and family archivist, Quay Weston, details the past, present, and future of roughly forty acres of farmland that local residents call Riddick Town
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Back Porch Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-06-09 Regina N. Bradley
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Back Porch Regina N. Bradley RAPPER PASTOR TROY gave me my first for-real lesson in southern Black geography back in 1999. I’d been living in Albany, Georgia, for about a year when Troy forcefully and confidently declared “ain’t no mo play in G-A” against a background of lower-pitched piano notes and rounds of gunfire and sonic booms.
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Natal Mythos (Atlanta 1993) Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-06-09 Ra Malika Imhotep
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Natal Mythos (Atlanta 1993) Ra Malika Imhotep (bio) I Grandma Sarah holds mein a reservoir of unshed tears.bring her lipsto my foreheadsuck something out.set meflowing,gasping. II Mildred Thompson heckles my father,he finds his seat, and I leapfrom his skull, full-lotus, sucklingHigh John de conqueror root,a butterfly dancingup my spine
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Contributors Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-06-09
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Contributors LATOYA EAVES was born and raised in North Carolina’s foothills. Her research centers Black geographies and southern Black feminism. She is the Menakka and Essel Bailey ’66 Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Wesleyan University College of the Environment and faculty in geography and sustainability at the University of Tennessee
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To Build for the Future Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-03-29 Charles L. Hughes
Abstract: This article offers a brief introduction to the Disability issue of Southern Cultures. It briefly recounts the contexts for disabled politics and scholarship, and then spotlights the issue's contents within those contexts. Each article in the issue is briefly discussed. Framed around the multiple methods of self-definition and community-building in which disabled people have historically
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Intimacies of Sound and Skin at Carville Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-03-29 Adria L. Imada
Abstract: At the national leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana, diverse groups of people diagnosed with leprosy or Hansen's disease (HD) forged an unexpected disability culture of music, touch, and recreation. In the 1970s, HD patients from the small Kalaupapa, Molokai, settlement in Hawai'i arrived at the vast Carville facility seeking advanced medical treatment. They interacted with other people medically
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"Up on Cripple Creek": Limb Loss, Difference, and Disability Spectacle in Southern Roots Music Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-03-29 Simon Buck
Abstract: This essay explores the experiences and representations of several southern roots musicians with limb loss or limb differences. Through an examination of the lives of the one-armed Carolinian banjoist and busker "Uncle" Frank Rayborn in the 1950s and 1960s, amputee Confederate veterans who performed at early-twentieth century fiddlers' contests, the one-armed "barn dance" radio musician Emory
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"You Know Who I Am? I'm Mr. John Paul's Boy" Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-03-29 Keri Watson
Abstract: Inspired by the work of Saidiya Hartman, Stephen Best, and others who ask us to account for the absences in the archive, this essay looks to Eudora Welty's photograph, "A village pet, Mr. John Paul's Boy/Rodney, ca. 1940," for clues to animate his life and the lives of others with intellectual disabilities who lived in Mississippi during the Great Depression. It argues that Welty employed
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Drawing All Over Again: Remembering Patrick Dean Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-03-29 Robert Newsome
Abstract: When artist Patrick Dean died in May of 2021, he left behind sketchbooks, paintings, loose pieces of paper, cardboard, newsprint, a couple of sculptures, and several other things he'd drawn or painted on. After being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Dean said that he would draw as long as he was able, and he continued to experiment with different methods. With the help of his
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"The blues look like me" Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-03-29 Leroy F. Moore, Charles L. Hughes Jr.
Abstract: Leroy F. Moore Jr. has had a wide-ranging and influential career at the intersection of disability arts, advocacy, and activism. With Keith Jones, he cofounded the Krip-Hop Nation, a worldwide collective of artists and activists working to amplify the work of disabled creators. A crucial voice in expanding the presence of disability within the culture, Krip-Hop Nation is deeply informed by
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Curiously Cured by Sterilization: Charles Carrington and the Sterilization of African American Men in Virginia, 1902–1910 Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-03-29 Shelby Pumphrey
Abstract: This article examines the roles race, gender, and disability played in the medical sterilization of African American men in Virginia during the opening decade of the twentieth century. Using the experimental work of Dr. Charles Carrington as a window into the negative eugenics movement, it describes how state actors worked to create a barrier between Blackness and white society. Highlighting
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Wade Taylor: A Family Haunting Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-03-29 R. Larkin Taylor-Parker
Abstract: This article explores neurodiversity, eugenics, and Appalachian identity in the early twentieth-century American South through the lens of the author's family history. It discusses the loss of a relative to long-term institutionalization. The article proposes that the central premise of the ideology and pseudoscience of eugenics—that deviance, disability, and most social ills are hereditary—posed
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Back Porch Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-03-29 Marcie Cohen Ferris
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Back Porch Marcie Cohen Ferris "I am perfectly able to care for myself," my ninety-seven-year-old mother, Huddy, says to me with a deep sigh. I hear the frustration and anger in her voice. This daily encounter occurs when I cross her threshold of intervention, having suggested a nice walk one too many times, or reminded her to eat or drink
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What We Be Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-03-29 Camisha L. Jones
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: What We Be Camisha L. Jones (bio) An Ekphrastic poem after Beyoncé's Lemonade We the exhaleOur confidence We the pot of greensOur hands We the floorWe every grief We the waitOur mouths We the magnolia tree the submergea ripe orange the salt porkclean the grit the sinkfed to us the waitfill with leftovers its sweet the silencea vitamin
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Contributors Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-03-29
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Contributors simon buck, phd, is a writer, historian, and musician. His first monograph, on old age and music in the US South, is under contract with the University of Illinois Press. He is employed at the University of Edinburgh (UK) on research projects concerning the intersection of British slavery, healthcare, and university education
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And the Devil Take the Hindmost Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-01-28 Bethany Moreton, Pamela Voekel
Abstract: Analyzed as implicit assertions about moral values, the 2022 revelations of systemic disinvestment in Jackson’s public water system and the state’s theft of federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families both represent the larger violence of systematic resource extraction and wealth hoarding that generalizes to the nation the political economy of the plantation. Under the allegedly scientific
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Lights Out Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-01-28 Alex Beasley
Abstract: This essay frames the author’s experience of Winter Storm Uri in Texas in 2021 as a moment that rehearses future climate events. The essay argues that the event illuminates the ways in which narratives about scarcity and sacrifice obscure the causes and the stakes of climate change’s present and future dislocations. The author suggests that the short-term calculations and thin margins incentivized
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Why Is Wealth White? Southern Cultures Pub Date : 2023-01-28 Julia Ott
Abstract: Racial wealth inequality is no accident of history. Rather, it is the intended result of the southern Democrats in Congress who controlled federal tax policy throughout most of the twentieth century. Beginning in the 1930s, champions of white supremacy, such as Senator Pat Harrison (D-MI), Senator Walter George (D-GA), and Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. (D-VA), turned to an ostensibly race-neutral