Indicted South - (New Directions in Southern Studies) by Angie Maxwell (Paperback)

About the Book

Indicted South: Public Criticism, Southern Inferiority, and the Politics of Whiteness

Book Synopsis

By the 1920s, the sectional reconciliation that had seemed achievable after Reconstruction was foundering, and the South was increasingly perceived and portrayed as impoverished, uneducated, and backward. In this interdisciplinary study, Angie Maxwell examines and connects three key twentieth-century moments in which the South was exposed to intense public criticism, identifying in white southerners' responses a pattern of defensiveness that shaped the region's political and cultural conservatism.

Maxwell exposes the way the perception of regional inferiority confronted all types of southerners, focusing on the 1925 Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee, and the birth of the anti-evolution movement; the publication of I'll Take My Stand and the turn to New Criticism by the Southern Agrarians; and Virginia's campaign of Massive Resistance and Interposition in response to the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Tracing the effects of media scrutiny and the ridicule that characterized national discourse in each of these cases, Maxwell reveals the reactionary responses that linked modern southern whiteness with anti-elitism, states' rights, fundamentalism, and majoritarianism.

Review Quotes

"An ambitious, carefully researched, and well-written study that helps academics and general readers better understand the history of the mid-twentieth-century South and the roots of contemporary conservatism." -- Journal of American History

"A well-researched and often stylishly written study of the intellectual history of the twentieth-century South." -- Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

"Expands the canon on whiteness generally and brings new depth to research on southern whiteness" -- American Studies

"Highly recommended." -- CHOICE

"Maxwell's insightful reading of previous studies covering her three fulcrums of southern history and deft parsing of motives and ideas demonstrate the usefulness of her approach." -- Arkansas Historical Quarterly

"Well written...Provides a fine model for studies of other regions, will serve as a point of comparison, and will be read with interest by a variety of scholars." -- Middle West Review