The "Distinctive" South : forty-year quest for a regional mystique (1928-1968)

This thesis purports to delineate certain factors in the Southern experience which have tended to render this region of the United States "distinctive"—resulting in a mystique which this writer, among many others, proposes is an actuality. The theories of the more eminent Southern historians have been investigated and an attempt has been made to present their findings as to what specifically constitutes Southern distinctiveness. Some chapters will focus on certain theories, rather than upon individual historians. The contributions of belles-lettrists, major journalists, and certain other intellectuals are also utilized because of the major role they have played in analyzing their region. The overall effort has been, first, to winnow the enormous amount of available material, then to synthesize it—and finally to arrive at a meaningful conclusion as to the ingredients of a Southern mystique and the possibility of a valuable distinctiveness that the South possesses. Major factors involved in this distinctiveness appeared to be the presence of the Negro-as-former-slave and the white man's determination to keep him in a subordinate position . . . the Southerner's distinctive psychology of polarities that involves, among other things, a pronounced religiosity combined with a taste for violence ... a magnificent and distinctive literature . . . and a tragic, still-relevant history—a combination of factors which, it is hoped, may well bring the South to a position of leadership in this nation in the difficult area of race relations