Books in the Making the Modern South series

Offers a cultural history of blues musicians in the segregation era, explaining how by both accommodating and resisting Jim Crow life, blues musicians created a counterculture to incubate and nurture ideas of black individuality and citizenship.

Established in 1964, the federal Legal Services Program (later, Corporation) served a vast group of Americans desperately in need of legal counsel: the poor. In Rationing Justice, Kris Shepard looks at this pioneering program's effect on the Deep South.

Tells the story of the Big Easy in the twentieth century. In this urban biography, J. Mark Souther explores the Crescent City's architecture, music, food and alcohol, folklore and spiritualism, Mardi Gras festivities, and illicit sex commerce in revealing how New Orleans became a city that parades itself to visitors and residents alike.

In 1957, Congress voted to set up the Civil War Centennial Commission. A federally funded agency, the commission's charge was to oversee preparations to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the central event in the Republic's history. Robert Cook recounts the planning, organisation, and ultimate failure of this controversial event.

reveals previously unrecognized efforts by African Americans to use, manage, and exploit policing. In the process, Brandon Jett exposes a complex relationship, suggesting that while violence or the threat of violence shaped police and minority relations, it did not define all interactions.