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bestof A few years ago Georgia journalist, Chuck Reece, started an online magazine called The Bitter Southerner. He looked around and realized that man of today's Southerners did not like the stereotypes that were being perpetrated about the South -- hoop skirt wearing belles, Confederate flag flying racists, and the like. There were thinking people in the South who were working HARD to try and change things for the better.
Reece wrote this in his history of The Bitter Southerner: "You see, the South is a curiosity to people who aren’t from here. Always has been. Open up your copy of Faulkner’s 1936 masterpiece, “Absalom, Absalom!” Find the spot where Quentin Compson’s puzzled Canadian roommate at Harvard says to him, “Tell about the South. What it’s like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all.”
Since 2014, BS, as we like to call it, has been collecting essays about The New South, the Modern South. I think that those of you who teach history, literature, music, or art will enjoy linking the essays with great primary source materials from The Library and elsewhere.
Here are a few top-notch essays to get you started.
The Sum of Life -- Zora Neale Hurston
The Vanishing Stories of the Bullard Brothers
10 Train Songs that Tell the Story of the South
Teachers Building a Revolution in Southern Social Justice
Happy Reading!
6 - 8 9 - 12 13+ English/Language Arts Art/Music Social Studies/History American South bestof
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Thank you so much for sharing this! As someone who delivers PD now and again the article Teachers Building a Revolution in Southern Social Justice really gives me a lot to think about and remember about what is really most helpful for teachers.
Raul -- you are most welcome. The All Y'all Social Justice Collective is doing some interesting things. I am writing a high school Southern Studies curriculum and they are helpful in seeing ways to tell the full story of the South and its incredibly diverse population.
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