|
AUGUST 31, 2002 A new South, a new ReconstructionJ. Earle Bowden
Out of the racial upheaval, or Second Reconstruction, of turbulent post-World War II America came what some called the Americanization of Dixie, an amalgamation melting the great diversity of the nation into a homogenized puree, with human equality its loftiest ideal.
The South, they said, with its Confederate symbols and sentiments, quaint down-home traditions, lyrical language, literature and pea-patch philosophy, had rejoined the Union. The old legacies, historians surmised, would be drowned in tides of political correctness.
Whoa! Don't go away! Don't change too much. Don't vanish completely. Although a tad long a-comin', the South, yes, the South, has caused a new national revolution. The region is now the national icon, spreading pop culture and influencing sports, entertainment, religion and American's conservative political movement north and west.
In the mid-20th century the arrival of Southern rural traditions in urban marketplaces created a new breed of southland culture exploding onto the national scene. Transformation began when 11 million Southerners pulled up stakes and settled in industrial Northeast, Midwest and Western boom states like California and Washington between 1910 and 1970. In just two decades between 1940 and 1960, roughly nine million Southerners left farms and small towns for cities like Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and Richmond.
And with them went their unique Southern culture, including love of competitive sports, jazz, gospel, old Scots-Irish musical laments and motorcar racing. Their Pentecostal and fundamentalist religion heavily influenced the conservative political movement.
Cultural observers beyond the Mason-Dixon divide now talk openly about the Southernization, or Dixiefication, of America. Old agrarianism was supplanted with high-tech workplaces and population shifts humming to the beat of Cajun music, the Dixie Chicks, Billy Graham and newer generations of Elvis, B.B. King, Patsy Cline and Satchmo Armstrong, along with new prosecrafters inheriting the passions of Shelby Foote, Eudora Welty, Andrew Lytle and Willie Morris.
The old Confederacy got only as far north as Pennsylvania, but its great-grandchildren, white and black, have captured America's culture, says Joshua Zeitz in "Dixie's Victory," published in American Heritage magazine. Southern culture today enjoys far more national influence than it had at any time since Virginian George Washington was given command of the Continental Army. I've always contended that if we Southerners could go forward beyond the old racial separation, our rich traditions could prevail beyond the stereotypes and defeatist attitudes too long crippling us.
NASCAR, the outgrowth of the Southern tradition of professional "trippers" using souped-up cars to outrun revenue officers, now ranks as one of the most popular and lucrative spectator sports nationwide, claiming 40 million fans, staging races from Chicago to Phoenix. And it all sprang from William Getty France luring the drivers to his Daytona Beach Speedway in the 1940s.
Once ridiculed as "hillbilly," country music now rivals or outstrips all other genres, including pop, rap, hip hop, R&B and jazz. Southern music has become American music, a revolution tracing its birthright to the Grand Ole Opry, the most admired radio show in America in 1940.
At the same time, mainline Christian churches in every region find themselves outstripped by their fundamentalist and charismatic competitors bearing a distinctly Southern profile. The rise of evangelical Christianity in the North and West has reinvigorated politics, sparking conservative positions on social issues far more than mainline Protestants, Catholics and Jews.
Jazz and blues are no longer "race music," but nationally and internationally popular, the stuff of PBS documentaries and scholarly studies; and Manhattanites and Westerners feast on "soul food" and Southern barbeque. Southern folk music has become classic "American roots" music. Then there's Arkansas-based Wal-Mart, symbolizing American consumer culture, even overseas.
No question, Americans had discovered the real South and the best of its old traditions as a mark of Dixie's triumph and its metamorphosis.
J. Earle Bowden is editor emeritus of the News Journal. |