Southern Cultures

Watson, Harry

2019 Southern Cultures

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Crespino, Joseph

2019 Southern Cultures

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<p>Abstract:</p><p>This article introduces a special 25th anniversary politics-themed issue of <i>Southern Cultures</i>. The author characterizes the unique contribution that the journal makes to the field of southern studies by referencing his own experience having published in the journal nearly twenty years earlier. The article goes on to reflect more broadly on the interdisciplinary nature of the journal’s scholarship and its contributions and connections with political and cultural analysis in the present day.</p>

Barber, William J., -- II, --; Tyson, Timothy B.

2019 Southern Cultures

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<p>Abstract:</p><p>Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is a pastor and activist, and founder of the influential Moral Mondays movement for civil rights in Raleigh, North Carolina. Tim Tyson is a historian at Duke University and an activist involved in the Moral Mondays movement. His most recent book is titled <i>The Blood of Emmett Till</i> (2017). This interview has been edited and condensed for publication.</p>

Abrams, Stacey; Boyd, Valerie

2019 Southern Cultures

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<p>Abstract:</p><p>Stacey Abrams served as minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017. She was the Democratic Party’s nominee in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, making her the first black woman nominee for a major party, and she founded Fair Fight Action, a nonprofit that supports voting rights. Valerie Boyd is author of the critically acclaimed biography <i>Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston</i>. Formerly arts editor at the <i>Atlanta Journal-Constitution</i>, she is the Charlayne Hunter-Gault professor of journalism at the University of Georgia, where she founded and directs the low-residency MFA Program in Narrative Nonfiction. Boyd is currently curating and editing a collection of Alice Walker’s personal journals, <i>Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker</i>, to be published by Simon &amp; Schuster/37 Ink in 2020. This conversation has been edited and condensed for publication.</p>

Hudson, Angela Pulley

2019 Southern Cultures

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<p>Abstract:</p><p>This essay argues for re-envisioning southern history with indigenous experiences at its center. It draws on multi-disciplinary sources, including historiography, literary criticism, anthropological studies, and archival materials to show that southern history is far more complex and contradictory than much scholarship has acknowledged and that focusing on the Native South helps lay bare those complexities. Going beyond a call to simply add more Indians to studies of the region, the essay urges a reconceptualization of time, place, and power, such as expanding the temporal frame and grappling with tensions between and among American Indians, African Americans, and others in the South. Despite tremendous advances in the field with respect to analyses of race and gender, a significant blind spot remains with regard to Native American history and the stakes of ignoring it include extending the project of settler colonialism.</p>

Greene, Alison Collis

2019 Southern Cultures

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<p>Abstract:</p><p>This essay blends historical analysis and autobiographical reflection to reckon with Southern Baptist histories of white supremacy from the 1845 founding of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) to the present. Despite recent moves to acknowledge the SBC’s origins as a denomination of enslavers, current denominational positions reflect a long and ongoing white supremacist framework. The 2018 Report on Slavery and Racism in the History of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary provides an occasion to examine the legacy of the SBC and its flagship seminary. The report confronts the denomination and seminary’s roots in proslavery theologies, but it neither addresses the experience of black southerners nor acknowledges an ongoing legacy of racism among Southern Baptists and their institutions. While historical self-assessments at their best invite action to address institutional white supremacy, Southern Seminary’s assessment declares the problem solved and forecloses opportunities for further action.</p>

Ray, Janisse, --; Wright, Amy, --

2019 Southern Cultures

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<p>Abstract:</p><p>Janisse Ray is an American writer whose subject is often nature. She is the author of five books of literary nonfiction and a collection of eco-poetry. Ray lives on an organic farm near the confluence of the Altamaha and Ohoopee rivers in southern Georgia. Amy Wright is the author of two poetry books, one collaboration, and six chapbooks. Her essays and interviews appear in <i>Brevity</i>, <i>Fourth Genre</i>, <i>Georgia Review</i>, <i>Guernica</i>, <i>Kenyon Review</i>, and online at awrightawright.com. This interview has been edited and condensed for publication.</p>

Kelly, Sonny

2019 Southern Cultures

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<p>Abstract:</p><p>In this piece, author Sonny Kelly introduces excerpts from a dialogic performance piece. Kelly developed this performance as a means of intellectually, artistically, and spiritually digesting the fear and angst that overwhelmed him as a parent of a black boy living in the wake of multiple reports of black boys and young black men being killed by civic authorities across the United States. This one-person performance was designed to incite critical conversations around race and equity in the American South and America at large. In <i>The Talk</i>, Kelly embodies twenty characters as he ushers audiences into a space to have the difficult, but crucial, critical conversations necessary to pursue equity and inclusion for black youth in the U.S. This theatrical experience weaves together auto-ethnography, oral history, interactive theater, prose, poetry, and a multimedia production to voice one father’s anguished attempt at explaining a racialized America to a seven-year-old child.</p>

Ortez-Cruz, Rosa.; Khamala, Lori Fernald.; Ramírez, María.

2019 Southern Cultures

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<p>Abstract:</p><p>Rosa del Carmen Ortez-Cruz fled Honduras in 2002, following a brutal stabbing attack by her former partner that left her hospitalized for over a month. She has lived in the U.S. undocumented since then, but she cannot return to Honduras because her abuser has threatened her life. The Church of Reconciliation and Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, offered Rosa sanctuary, because places of worship are considered safe havens for immigrants. She entered sanctuary in April 2018. Nearly a year-and-a-half later, her attorney continues to fight her case in court. To learn more about sanctuary or about Rosa, visit www.sanctuaryNC.org. A lifelong resident of North Carolina, Lori Fernald Khamala served as the director of the American Friends Service Committee’s NC Immigrant Rights Program for more than ten years. This interview has been translated, edited, and condensed for publication.</p>

Rader, Jan.; Sheldon, Elaine McMillion.

2019 Southern Cultures

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<p>Abstract:</p><p>Jan Rader joined the Huntington Fire Department in 1994, and is the first female fire chief in the State of West Virginia. Rader serves as a member of the Mayor’s Office of Drug Control Policy, and is devoted to serving on the frontlines to help fellow citizens who suffer from substance use disorder. In 2018, after gaining national attention for her appearance in the Netflix Original Documentary <i>Heroin(e)</i>, Rader was chosen as one of TIME’s “100 Most Influential People in the World.” Rader sat down with Elaine McMillion Sheldon, an Academy Award–nominated, and Emmy and Peabody Award–winning documentary filmmaker based in Charleston, West Virginia. She is the director of two Netflix Original Documentaries, <i>Heroin(e)</i> and <i>Recovery Boys</i>, that explore America’s opioid crisis. This interview has been edited and condensed for publication.</p>