Books in the Politics and Culture in the Twentieth-Century South Ser. series

Uses imaginings of the South to illuminate the recent American past. Zachary Lechner bridges the fields of southern studies, southern history, and post- World War II American cultural and popular culture history in an effort to discern how conceptions of a tradition-bound, "timeless" South shaped Americans' views of themselves and their society.

These private writings by a prominent white southern lawyer offer insight into his state's embrace of massive white resistance following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling. They offer an insider's view of Virginia's shift toward extremism in defiance of school desegregation.

Recounts the history of school desegregation litigation in Alabama. Joseph Bagley argues that the litigious battles of 1954-1973 taught Alabama's segregationists how to fashion a more subtle defense of white privilege, placing them in the vanguard of a new conservatism oriented toward the Sunbelt, not the South.

Tullos explores the recent history of one of the nation's most conservative states to reveal its political imaginary-the public shape of power, popular imagery, and individual opportunity-and asks if the coming years will see a transformation of the "Heart of Dixie."