Transcripts For CSPAN3 Author 20240705

After the session. You may purchase copies of their books from the exhibit and a portion of the proceeds go to benefit the festival directly. Just a bit of an introduction for each of our authors and then a little explanation as to what were doing. Charles reagan wilsons the southern way of life, meaning and culture and civilization in the American South is a substantial volume that traces the south from the colonial period to the start of the 21st century. Certainly in the making for decades. Wilsons book examines the regional consciousness of the south through three concepts, southern civilization, the southern way of life and Southern Living. Each category is thoroughly historic size in its cultural moment. Southern civilization runs from the colonial period to world war one. The southern way of life runs from the 1920s to the 1960s and Southern Living runs from the 1970s to the 21st century. A unifying theme through his book is the study of race and religion. And their continuing and changing role in the various imaginary and constructed images of the southern way of life. His work as a professor of history and southern studies at the university of mississippi on the encyclopedia of southern culture is well known. And his current book well received by the Scholarly Community will benefit a variety of readers those interested in the nashville area in particular will find his comments on the agrarians at vanderbilt insightful. And i wanted to read just two sentences that sort of talk about this phrase, a southern way. The concept of a southern way clothed in political and religious rhetoric and the passion of ethnicity came to have a life of its own. In the 19th and 20th century south, it was far more than an idea. It came to be virtually synonymous with the civil religion that tied the regions Cultural Values to intense evangelical religious faith and produced a structure of institutions, rituals, myths, beliefs, ideologies, and identities, which encouraged white southerners to invest enormous meaning in the southern identity. End quote. Doctor brundage is the william umstead, distinguished professor of history at the university of North Carolina at chapel hill. Hes the author of several books as well as the editor of a new history of the American South. Both books by the university of North Carolina press, a book with an introduction and 15 chapters written by diverse scholars both inside and outside the south. It provides a historical sweep that examines the experiences of all people in the south. Most intriguing to this reader was a chapter that begins with southern history before 1600 that draws on various historical and anthropological models. Brundage writes, quote our folks on this volume. Our focus on this volume in other words, is not on identifying a litany of characteristics that can be assigned to the south, but rather on exploring the clustered interactions between people and institutions that gave historical salience to the concept of the south. These interactions took place within local communities between neighboring and more distinct communities and across country, state and national boundaries, excuse me, county state and national boundaries. Further, brundage notes that the interaction, interactive behavior considers, quote, the pursuit of power in all its manifestations over family land, civic affairs, thought, collective memory, end quote. The book covers the period before the American Revolution, the long 19th century and the 20th century. In our session, each author will speak about his book for roughly 15 minutes with the last 15 for questions and answers for me and the audience. And when you have questions, if you will go to the microphone, so you can be recorded and be heard for the cspan audience. Thank you. We should have a towing cost, a coin toss rather, since this is the south, who would like to go first to you, go first. Ok. Right. Well, im very pleased to be here and um nashville is my hometown. So its good to be returning. I should also mention that being in nashville, the term southern way of life was first used extensively um by 12 writers at vanderbilt university. All the vanderbilt agrarians. They wrote a book in 1930 called, ill take my stand in which they argued that the southern way of life was um was about agrarianism. That was the souths tradition and they felt besieged because they felt the south was changing with coming of industrialization and commercialism and what they call the american way of law. So 90 years or so later, i write my book about the history of that term and concept of the southern way of life. Now, as you heard, uh i argue that the, that the Southern Regional consciousness, the southern identity and not on not only what southerners thought about the south, but about what non southerners thought about the south. That all of that went through three periods uh over centuries, beginning with the colonial period, up to the 21st century when the people who came, the first concept was southern civilization. When people came at that point in the colonial period, from western europe and western africa, they came, the europeans came with ideas of civilization, european civilization coming out of the enlightenment at that moment. And so they tried to adapt those ideas of civilization to a slave society. They had become an agrarian indeed. An Agrarian Society with slavery as a key component. So they tried to mill civilization with slavery with the slave society. So that effort put them in conflict with the north. And they defined themselves in terms of the southern identity in the antebellum period, partly in terms of differences from the north. But they also defined their southern identity internally because they compared themselves and dominated native americans. The indigenous people, white southerners became southerners, partly by excluding the native americans. And they also became white southerners by their dominance of African Americans under the institution of slavery. Now that southern civilization came in conflict conflict with civilization that the American Civilization that dates to the American Revolution of ideals of freedom and independence, the declaration of independence, all of this. So that culminated in the civil war, which was a loss for southern civilization. But the southerners, white southerners reimagined that civilization in the late 19th century around their belief that racial dominance was the essence of the southern way of the southern civilization. And so they enacted that into, into, into segregation laws, creating a kind of apartheid like society, political disfranchisement, violence. All of that became the essence of this southern civilization, but with other aspects as, as well, you know, the southern civilization in the early 20th century, uh included things like religion as well. Evangelical protestantism. Well, that idea of a southern civilization, the first concept that helped to birth. The idea of a distinctive southern identity that went into decline after world war, i, the idea of civilization in general went into decline. The concept after world war. I, because of the horrors of world war, could europeans really be so civilized given what happened in world war. I . So you have a decline in the use of that term in the south. What took its place was the second concept, the southern way of life. Now, as i said, the vanderbilt agrarians were the first ones to use that term in an extensive way and they defined it as agrarianism. But other people defined the southern way of life as a, as a Hospitable Society as a leisurely society. When business grew, businessmen started talking about were the basis of the southern way of life. Well, if you study the writings of the speeches, the rhetoric of labor union organizers, they want to relate their activities to the south as well. Theyre good southerners, theyre good southerners. But that idea, the vanderbilt agrarians introduced the idea of the southern way of life, made it embedded it in the intellectual discussion of the south that continued really until the 1950s. If you had to pick a date when this conceptual change happened, it was brown versus board of education. The case that the Supreme Court declared schools should be desegregated, that touched off a furious response among white southerners of massive massive resistance, the White Citizens Council that was birthed in indianola, mississippi and the delta, it began producing right after the brown decision, a huge amount of material talking about the precious southern way of life, the sacred southern way of life. You have to defend this to the death. So that really upped the ante in the discussion of this term southern way of life. So when i grew up in the, you know, fifties and sixties, thats what it meant to me southern way of life, if i thought about it, which of course, i wasnt thinking about it at that point. But if i had it would have meant the segregated society. So, the Civil Rights Movement represented africanamericans critique of that. And the book deals with African American critiques of all of these versions of the southern way of life. I deal with major intellectuals like wb du bois, with liberty, washington, with richard wright, with zora neal hurston, some of my favorite characters in southern history and southern literature and the critique that they made of this whole southern way of life, racialized version. So the Civil Rights Movement uh is a very important chapter where it, it really brings this to a head and leads to the end of the segregation laws and, and and Voting Rights coming. So the use of the term southern way of life drastically declines after that after the mid sixties. So at one point when i was working on this book over endless years. I thought, well, maybe thats the end of the story. But then i got poking around how can Something Like that just spanish. And so what i, what i discovered this is going to the library and just looking at the shelves of magazines and books. So i came across Southern Living magazine, the bound copies and you know where it dates from 1966 1st issue, the year after the Voting Rights act, you can see the gears shifting in the south if they actually work that way. But so suddenly the magazine represents the third concept, third concept about the south. And that is Southern Living. So my argument is that this belief in the southern identity, Southern Regional consciousness by the 1960s, it was beginning to move to the suburbs and it was becoming middle class and it was becoming more prosperous no longer did you have in the popular literature about the south . So much about people and, and overalls and with mules, you find people like in Southern Living magazine who are sitting around their patios, you know, cooking hamburgers and in some ways becoming very much more americanized. But its still Southern Living magazine is not american living, its Southern Living and so embedded in that in Southern Living magazine. Its, the magazine is constantly telling you how you are a southerner southerners have always liked to eat pimento cheese. Heres how southerners make biscuits. So its, its reinforcing that idea that there is a southern identity now, theyre backing away from race. Race is no longer a part of this. In fact, early on there, there is, its, its kind of a whites only magazine, but by the 21st century its, its, its changed and its become very much a biracial multis society, a magazine. So thats, thats my argument and im running out of time. So let me just say one more thing. And that is about the uh multicultural south. Thats the, the 21st century south. And that was new to the project. It was originally, i was not going to have that chapter, but as i got to thinking about it and reading more about the, the, the popular literature and other things that come out of the south. Now i realized that this is a new stage and i called it the multicultural south. And what it reflects, this is the diversity of the south. The south has always had diversity if you look at it, i mean, theres this, this belief that used to be that the, the south, the concept of the south was a timeless, unchanging kind of monolithic thing. Well, in fact, it was never that it was never that there was always contestation and conflict and change and, but now its even more so in the 21st century, i asked my friend, the distinct sociologist John Shelton Reid about 10 years ago. What he thought was to talk about the future of the south. And he said style yall. And theres this blending of cultures i think. And uh one of my favorite books to talk about this is sandra gutierrezs cookbook, the southern latino table. And she, she talks about, she grew up in she was born in North Carolina uh to parents americ uh american and guatemalan parents. She lived in guatemala as a child, but back in North Carolina, um and she talks about, you know, this blending of food ways and that she discovered the Southern Belle in her soul as a latina. So shes a Southern Belle latina. So thats the new, the new hybrid south i think, which is where were headed now. You know, theres a lot of pushback from that politically. We know the age we live in is a very frazzled, fragmented political stage. And a lot of that is push, push back from this recognition of diversity. But i think this is, this is the reality of Southern Society. Politics is lagging behind Southern Society has changed, you know, and so to me, thats one of the most energizing chapters to, to think about whats happening in the 21st century and that long history going back to the colonial period. Thank you. Well, first, id like to thank you all for being here on a truly gorgeous afternoon and its a testament to something. Certainly your love of books that youre here are not out there, but i appreciate it. I, i would like to think that the volume that i added and contributed to compliments what charles has done in his magnificent book. Its a different book and not only in the fact, it has multiple authors, but its, it has different ambitions if you will. And i, i thought id take a little bit of time here to explain the ambitions. And then the perspective if you will, the ambition of the book was to try to synthesize in as cohesive a narrative as possible. As much of what, what we the creators of the volume think are the most interesting insights weve learned about the south over the la southern history over the last say 3040 years. And to give you a flavor of just i can speak to this in very personal terms when i went away to graduate school. And its, its not that long ago, but on the other hand, it is long ago, but in any case, when i went away to graduate school, the number of books on my socalled comprehensive list that dealt with southern women was extremely thin. There were really a handful of books published in the 19 seventies that were classic works that you read. Since then. You, you could do and you could do an entire comprehensive exam on the history of southern women, the history of native american women, the history of black women, the history of various categories, groups of women across time. So theres been an explosion of scholarship on women and gender in the south. Some of it, the very finest work thats been published in the last 3040 years. The scholarship on African Americans in the south has likewise exploded and one of the most lively areas of study in American History and not just southern history is the study of the long civil rights struggle, the long struggle for racial equality in the 20th century across the 20th century and it extends back even further, of course, um weve had an explosion of scholarship on native americans in the American South. Again. When i was in graduate school, i actually went to graduate school to do colonial history. Almost all of the colonial history i read was related to new england. Although when i was in graduate school, there was the expansion of scholarship on the chesapeake region. That was the hot, new stuff. In the last 25 years, id say much of the hottest new scholarship on, on the colonial era is on the deep, what we would call the deep south now and on areas of the south that were barely penetrated by quote unquote european civilization until the late 18th, maybe even the early 19th century. And so i could go on and on about the areas in which theres just been an explosion of scholarship. And so our goal, our hope was to try to pull that together and write a narrative as seamless a narrative as possible with 15 authors and to try to identify some overarching, organizing themes in the history of the region. And some of those themes overlapped with, with threads that charles has identified. But in other ways, its a different work because our goal is to write a history of the region as opposed to the history of the identity of the people who live in the region per se. And one of the challenges, of course, we faced and we were talking about this a little beforehand is lets run into the challenge of what is the south . Where are the boundaries of the south . I just have to tell you about a recent conversation. Um im trying to remember actually where this was. In any case, i was at a, some sort of a public event and there was a lady in the audience who asked me about, you know, with North Carolina in the south. And that was a new one for me. I had never been asked whether North Carolina was part of the south before. But then i realized she was a northerner who was most familiar with charlotte and the Research Triangle in North Carolina. And if thats what you know, of North Carolina. You could very easily think that you were in the middle atlantic or anywhere else. But i tried to tell her, you know, if you go to greenville, North Carolina or fayetteville, North Carolina, where you go most anywhere west of asheville, youll be in a place that you might recognize as what you, you, your preconceptions of the south may be met. But that got, it gets me to, to the point about uh we were talking about was delaware part of the south. And one of the larger challenges but also organizing concepts of our book is that the south always stands in relation to somewhere else. Its, its not as though there is because there is no obvious geographical boundary to the north of the south or at the west of the south. Itd be one thing if somehow in the american imagination, the south stopped at the Mississippi River that would be very convenient. But it doesnt. There are plenty of people who argue that oklahoma really deserves beginning to discussion of the south and maybe missouri. And what do you do with West Virginia, West Virginia was part of virginia. It seceded from virginia. So theyre the ones who successfully carried out secession. Um they should arguably be part of the south, but thats where the way we solve this ultimately was decided, were going to write a book about the south that we commonly think of as the south, more or less the states that joined the confederacy or else sent a lot of people to fight on behalf of the confedeyet recognizing we were doing that because thats how we think of the south. And its useful for us to understand this region that we think of the south. But recognizing that we were going to write a history of the region that doesnt start with jamestown and doesnt trace people migrating westward from jamestown. Thats not the story we tell. Were interested in this geographical space that in the present day, we think of the south and to the extent that we can in a book of this length, with these authors talk about everybody who lived in that region, not because they all think of themselves as southerners, but because they all live in this region that we conventionally think of as a south. And the consequence of that is that at different moments in time, the people who live in the region, we call the south, so ill call them the southerners for convenience sake, the people who are southerners, even if they wouldnt have called themselves, that were often comparing themselves to different places than we might assume. So in the colonial era, particularly along the atlantic seaboard, the euro americans who are settling and moving westward. Their frame of reference was the Atlantic World and the caribbean. And they didnt necessarily, they, they didnt see themselves as necessarily southerners because some of them worked in the north of jamaica and barbados, which would have been their frames of reference or they would have been north of haiti if they were, had migrated into louisiana or wherever the, whatever the case may be. And in the 19th century, there are southerners, white southerners who see themselves as being part of a conservative european civilization. And they would have seen their analogs being some of the conservatives who are fighting against modernizing cultures in western europe at the same time that they were fighting to defend the southern way of life. And in the 20th century there, we get a more complicated picture because the various parts of the south are moving in different, what we call the south are moving in Different Directions and towards different ends. And so when you arrive at the 21st century south, if youre someone like me who grew up in Northern Virginia, i always thought of myself as a virginian, not a southerner. That just, that didnt make sense to me because of the orientation. But the county that i live in is unrecognizable to me. Now, i grew up in Loudoun County and Loudoun County bears very little resemblance to what it did in my childhood just 40 years ago. And i think most in most demographic markers, you wouldnt see it as necessarily part of the south, but it had a Confederate Monument in front of the courthouse. Until this past decade. On the other hand, im in the Research Triangle now and i can go weeks without hearing a North Carolina accent. But, all i have to do is go to the North Carolina fair, as i will do tomorrow taking my daughter, and i will hear lots of North Carolina accents that otherwise, as i say, i could go weeks without hearing. So the south of North Carolina or the North Carolina of the south is 20 miles away from me within that Research Triangle bubble. And so there was that divergence between the, ive heard somebody describe it as we were, were there together where somebody described it as the slow growth, south and the fast growth south. Those divergence are, are creating cultural experiences, living experiences are radically different. So weve tried to come up with a way of thinking about the south that would make it so that you could read about the south without having to go through all this academic throat clearing all the time. Now, what is the south . How do we define it . So, whether or not weve been successful or not . Its another question but it, it does finally get back to a point that i think charles has raised and that is that the south one final point id make about our interpretation is the south to me is fascinating and this book really drove this home to me in my eyes, the south is fascinating because its the most dynamic region in the united states. Its the region that has gone through more traumatic, profound epic historical transformation than any other region. And so, as somebody whos fascinated by historical change and how people deal with very challenging circumstances, nobody, i defy you to find people in america who have dealt with more changes than southerners have. And thats whether theyre southerners defined as native American Southerners, whether they be the lumby indians of North Carolina, whether they be black southerners, whove gone through enslavement, the moment of quasi potential equality during reconstruction era, the jim crow era, the struggle for racial equality in the south, the possibilities of the 19 1970s and 1980s, the resegregation of many public spaces, the quasi resegregation of, of public spaces. This these are the upheaval is just extraordinary. And then thinking more recently as charles mentioned of the new migrants to the region, many of them have undergone just extraordinary upheavals as well. I think for example of guatemalans who went through one of the most brutal civil wars of the second half of the 20th century and then migrated to places like siler city, North Carolina to work in chicken factories. Forward you. Thank you. Forward you. Ill ask the first question to get the questions rolling and then if youll go to the microphone, well, get some questions. What do you see as a unique challenge to writing the question to get questions rolling, then we will reflect and answer questions point what do you see as a unique challenge to writing about the south . Well, i think there are two. One is where is the south and who are southerners . He was talking about this well, but i think when i started working on this, it came out of my work on the encyclopedia of southern culture, and when i was working on that, i did a column for the atlantic constitution called the many souths, and that was the thing that i started learning when i worked on the encyclopedia because i was exposed to so many interdisciplinary writers and perspectives, very much like what fitz talks about in graduate school, we had the same textbooks and history books about the south that had certain time periods, not much on the indians, the urbans, probably two or three chapters h on the civil war, you know . And really a story of the white south, more than anything. So, i think, you know, wrestling with where the south is and the borders is something i didnt do a lot of in this book, i have written about it in other places, but you know, the borderlands and places out of the south, you know, like little dixie is out in utah and southern california. On bakers milk a very southern kind of culture. But and focusing on these concepts gave me a way to talk about the south the way people in the past have talked about it. And not just southerners incidentally, but non southerners can there is much attention to that. One of my favorite stories about that is northerners have had either a positive, manic view of the south or negative view of the south or negative them, Chuck Thompson spoke about the south point hes a northern journalist. Utterly condemns the story of the child and he talks about the poor public education, Poor Public Health i was on a program with him in atlanta and he went through this and the atlanta audience was polite and said, public education, public health, they didnt say anything, and he said s. E. C. Football was really not that good. [ laughter ] there was an explosion, you have gone too far. So, i could talk about what other people had thought the south was, you know, and then in terms of southerners, a great Conference Review send to my book as well, the recognition of diversity, not just now, but in the south and in the past. And so, bringing into focus how all these different southerners had different identities in some ways, but still were addressing them to the southern context and Southern Historical experiences. I think charles has spoken with typical eloquence there. Yet finding a way to capture the diversity of the south is such a challenge, and you could do a kind of statistically by pointing out that tremendous variety of peoples, religions, Life Experiences of people who live in the south at any given moment in time. But that is of course a dry as dust way of approaching it. Y so, trying to figure out how to capture that even if you cant capture it in all of its variety to acknowledge it, and you know, i cant say that we have done that in this book, because we had the challenges of weaving together 15 authors as leads in a certain direction. But i would like to just try to point out to my students, i get them talking about italian food waste, and it is always fun to get them going about italian me food ways, and they tend to think of italian food waves of new jersey and new york. I always point out, new orleans is a lot better for italian food ways, and arguably, the most important Italian American food company, progreso, comes out of new orleans. So, there are all those little ways in which you can surprise people or you can tell people how it is that czechoslovakian, polish, and german music gets fused with northern well, in the texasmexico borderlands, so you can make these little how what i say, offer these nuggets to capture that diversity, but it has always been a challenge for me to find a crisp, cogent way to remind people of a region where there empanadas in texas and mississippi and again, in new orleans and the whole range of diverse ways, food waves and cultural ways in the region. Im getting hungry. Questions . I can repeat for you. Yes, i am wondering if either of you have any thoughts on how we have had this massive wave of immigration really since around 1979, the vietnamese crisis and so forth. And people coming then to the south, which they never did in a wave of migration before, and i am wondering if you have any thoughts on how they are affecting or have affected or ig will affect the politics of the south. I know virginia is very different than it once was, and florida. And maybe georgia. In part due to emigration from elsewhere. I am wondering what thoughts you have about that. Well, first i am going to address one how what i put this . This is not so much politics, but it sort of speaks to cultural politics. I have now been at the university of North Carolina for two decades. And in the two decades i have been there, the student body attending the university of North Carolina has changed radically. I mean, its remarkable. It was an overwhelmingly by law, it is 82 north carolinian by law. And so, it was an overwhelmingly white north carolinian campus 20 years ago. There is now a very insubstantial south asian undergraduate population, reflecting the growth of the south Asian Community in the Research Triangle and in charlotte. And there is now a very large hispanic undergraduate population, reflecting of course an Enormous Growth in the state. So, i mentioned that because many of those students are firstgeneration u. S. College students, and if they are like most unc undergraduates, a large percentage of them will stay in the state, and that is just a remarkable transformation in the social politics of the state. But getting back to your Pacific Point about electoral politics, i think it is going to be at least a decade in for example, North Carolina, and i think many other states, because i dont know if you have seen this, but and what, the legislature is gerrymandering the state in a manner i am aware. Er exactly, so there will be three less democrats in the next congress from the state, so while in North Carolina may elect democratic governors and democratic attorney generals, its going to be republican representatives in congress for the foreseeable future. Which in other words, that doesnt mean that for example the new hispanic voters, the new south asian voters are necessarily going to be democrats, but this gets back ly to the point that i think charles was making, the Political Institutions are lagging behind the demographic changes or are being carefully or their machinations are ensuring that the politics allowed behind the transformation, the demography of the state point. Yeah, i agree. I think that, you know, how the politics works over the long term, i dont know, i used to think latinos would become democrats, you know . But in south florida, the cubans thereju tended to vote more republican. Over several generations, some of the latinos become deeply embedded in the fabric of america and southern life and become Small Business people like low taxes and no regulation, and they vote republican. So, i think i like the idea of the social fabric. One thing that has occurred to me, you know, you look at the last cause, the memory of the confederacy that was embodied in the south in so many ways, the confederate flag, the singing of dixie, the monuments, well, what does all this mean to a latino from guatemala . It doesnt mean anything. That is really going to shape up, i think, the mental workings of the south, you know, when people will start voting or going to meetings to talk about all this, there are going to be new perspectives. That is, to me, one of the exciting things, just new perspectives that will blend with the old and change i agree, the south has gone through these traumatic periods of change before, and this want will be as bad as so much of what we have gone through. Hi, would you be willing to share some strategies you used to succeed at publishing your book while balancing your university duties . [ laughter ] i am not teaching anymore. And so, fitz probably needs to do this. But i started the book when i was teaching. But it is a challenge for all of us who research, i think. But you know, it worked to my advantage sometimes, i had a teaching assistant often help with Research Point and teaching graduate students especially, they are so curious and they bring so many questions and issues, i felt like i had benefited so much in conceptualizing the book and thinking about the book, and working off of them in classes, introducing ideas and all of this. But it is a challenge to find time to do research. Is this a challenge you personally are confronting . I am a research assistant, too, and a professor. Well, i can speak directly to this, because right now, i am i have a threeyearold daughter at home. And through covid, my wife and i did all the child care, 24 7. She never had childcare until just six weeks ago. And of course, i am peachy at doing all the other things. I have lots to say about this, and you all wouldnt be av interested in it, but time management and learning how to write in the time that you have available. So, learning how to write when you have 45 minutes available and learning how to write when you have three hours available. Those require different skill sets in a way. And something i have just learned over time as to how to be able to do both. When i was a grad student, when i didnt have a day that was ee free to write, i cant write today if i dont have eight hours, whats the point . Yeah, that doesnt work anymore. Thank you. Sure. Yeah, i am from the north and i have only lived in tennessee for a year and a half now, and one of the tenants that were talking about with the southern way of life was a a distrust of corporatization and industrialization. I am wondering if you have any insight as to what is going on in tennessee right now, especially west tennessee with the battery plant displacing predominately black farmers, sp any insight about that . As ive been something that is a tenant now . There is a love of jobs coming from the north, i am from michigan and the big three loves leaving michigan and coming to the south. Can you speak on that . Great question and an important question about what has happened in the south since they wrote that book in 1930. Because the conservative ideology has totally switched, and that now, industrialization is there southern way of life. It is all about the free market. They had many shortcomings, including the whites only division of the south and their demeaning of blacks to terrible record, but they articulated the idea that there was some value in community and family and values ideas that affect my generation of liberal students in the 60s, not a conservative version, but a liberal sort of version where ou you have roots, you appreciate these qualities. But nthe conservatives now have gone totally over and it is not any more about how Healthy Society is, i think, it is about how much money can we make . That is all it is about. So, it is a dramatic change from conservatism in the south. That old conservative tradition is not even talked about anymore. T i think what you are askin that also points to the slow growth, fast growth south that i was talking about. I just recently was in alabama, i went to auburn, alabama, and t drove past the new kia plant there. Well, i dont know how new it is, but i havent driven past it on 85, i dont know the last time i went through there. And that is a humongous plant. And i was just thinking, so, we have mercedes, bmw, ford, honda , run through the list, virtually as you say, it is eventually detroit will be somewhere in the south, sort of scattered over the south. And i am just struck by how you can drive on 85 essentially from charlotte to that kia plant and youre driving through a kind of industrial it is the post rust belt Industrial America there, and it is chemical plants in south carolina, automobile plants, you name it, anyway yeah, that landscape is really extraordinary to see, and yet 50 miles in the hinterland, away from that 85 stretch, you can see the slow growth south. Kind of building off his question, how do you see if you have any insight how the new deal impacted the culture in the south, because it sort of felt like for a long time that the south was kind of insulated, in some little bubble of developing while the rest of the nation develops the northeast, the west into this kind of industrial transit system, and then when the new deal comes, it is now for the first time ever, the federal government investing huge amounts of money into defense spending, into oil production, manufacturing, and kind of getting mass labor now, people who were previously probably farmworkers are now industrial workers, so how did the new deal kind of change the souths relationship with the united states, with the federal government, culturally and overall . I will say two things pretty quickly and turn it over to charles. One is there is a wonderful, really brilliantof, economic historian named david wright, who makes, to me, a very compelling argument that the new deal helps to break down a kind of southern labor market. And as a result of the new deal, the south became both not only was the south, so to speak, invaded by industrial Northern Industrial and military industrial jobs and factories, but simultaneously, southern workers began to be incorporated into the Larger National labor market. And the wage differential between the south and the rest of the country started to shrink. And that is generally a very good thing. Another point that just comes out in the one essay in the volume i edited, peter, a wonderful economic historian, considers the 20th century economic history of the south and one of the last essays in the book. And one of his points is not that the history of the south predetermined the trajectory of the south in the 20th century and into the 21st century, but it did narrow the possibilities. And as a consequence of the long history leading up to the 20th century, the south does have serious infrastructure issues and the south has serious social capital issues. And that means that even while the south could be, so to speak, broadening the nation, it was still going to end up being a place where things are assembled, ioa place where thin are moved about, where relatively primitive things are produced. Ph with the exception of automobiles, apparently, and some military industrial stuff, but it doesnt have the kind of sophisticated Economic Opportunity is that we think of around i 28, i mean, 128 around boston or the silicon valley, or for that matter, Northern Virginia now. It being 50 minutes after the hour, please respond with a applause for our authors. [ applause ] well, if i cout a little bit about you, dr. Jayt wellons holds the cal turner, chair of pediatric neurosurgery and chief of the division of pediatric neurosurgery, vanderbilt u