The Problem South

by Ring, Natalie J.

• ISBN13: 9780820342603
• ISBN10: 0820342602
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-04-01
• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr

Summary

For most historians, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the hostilities of the Civil War and the dashed hopes of Reconstruction give way to the nationalizing forces of cultural reunion, a process that is said to have downplayed sectional grievances and celebrated racial and industrial harmony. In truth, says Natalie J. Ring, this buoyant mythology competed with an equally powerful and far-reaching set of representations of the backward Problem South-one that shaped and reflected attempts by northern philanthropists, southern liberals, and federal experts to rehabilitate and reform the country's benighted region. Ring rewrites the history of sectional reconciliation and demonstrates how this group used the persuasive language of social science and regionalism to reconcile the paradox of poverty and progress by suggesting that the region was moving through an evolutionary period of "readjustment" toward a more perfect state of civilization. In addition, The Problem Southcontends that the transformation of the region into a mission field and laboratory for social change took place in a transnational moment of reform. Ambitious efforts to improve the economic welfare of the southern farmer, eradicate such diseases as malaria and hookworm, educate the southern populace, "uplift" poor whites, and solve the brewing "race problem" mirrored the colonial problems vexing the architects of empire around the globe. It was no coincidence, Ring argues, that the states' efforts to solve the "southern problem" and reformers' increasing reliance on social scientific methodology occurred during the height of U.S. imperial expansion.

Author Biography

Natalie J. Ring is an assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is coeditor, with Stephanie Cole, of The Folly of Jim Crow: Rethinking the Segregated South.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction. Regional, National, and Global Designs	p. 1
The "Southern Problem" and Readjustment	p. 18
The Menace of the Diseased South	p. 58
The White Plague of Cotton	p. 95
The Poor White Problem as the "New Race Question"	p. 135
The "Race Problem" and the Fiction of the Color Line	p. 175
Epilogue. The Enduring Paradox of the South	p. 216
Notes	p. 221
Bibliography	p. 269
Index	p. 303
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.