The New South

Bonnie Greer explores her own troubled relationship with the American South and sees some disturbing historical parallels with current political tensions.

‘The South’ or ‘Deep South’ is that region of the US that contains the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia. Sometimes the term includes Texas, Maryland, Delaware, and Washington DC, depending on your point of view. And maybe your allegiance, too.

 I’m talking ultimately about various relationships to the Civil War.

For instance, was that war a grievous example of the most extreme federal overreach, a violation of a people who just wanted to live their lives as they saw fit? The late writer Shelby Foote, the star of that epic Ken Burns PBS television series on the Civil War first broadcast in the 1990s, gives this impression. His commentary, point of view, makes parts of the series a kind of ‘Lost Cause’ pilgrimage.

Then there is the other side, the side of those of us who had literally been property. Disposal.