Mississippi as Metaphor
State, Region, and Nation in Historical Imagination
State, Region, and Nation in Historical Imagination
Joseph Crespino, Emory University
Overview:
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Mississippi emerged as an iconic space for the
struggle over the meaning of democracy and equality in the South
and in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. Examining three
metaphors widely used in those years, Professor Joseph Crespino
argues that, as “the South on steroids,” Mississippi
became as much a contentious, imagined space as a real location
for addressing national problems of white racism. The Mississippi
of metaphor continues to affect, and to limit, how the South and
the nation pursue social reform and equality. |
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Presentation Sections:
Video:
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Part 1 (3:57 min.)
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Introducing the metaphors: “Mississippi as closed society,”
“Mississippi as America writ large,” and “Mississippi
as scapegoat.”
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Part 2 (4:52 min.)
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Introduced in 1964, James Silver's image of
Mississippi as "the closed society" framed the state’s
crisis of white racism in terms of a "reign of intimidation"
allowing an engrossed American public to draw parallels with another
closed society, the Soviet Union. Crespino notes the reactions of
folk revivalist Phil Ochs and novelist Walker Percy, and suggests
the limits of the closed society metaphor.
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Part 3 (6:47 min.)
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Many civil rights activists felt that America
was Mississippi writ large. Crespino follows the idea of Mississippi
as synecdoche into the 1964 Democratic National Convention and the
Berkeley Free Speech Movement, while considering the political analyses
of John Egerton, Merle Black, C. Vann Woodward, Bruce Schulman,
and Barbara Fields. Did the “Mississippi Plan,” re-packaged
as Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” become the American
way?
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Part 4 (5:26 min.)
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The scapegoat metaphor of Mississippi as “innocent
victim,” raised by segregationists, complicated the national
race debate and remains influential in North-South, urban-suburban
controversies over desegregation policies and practices.
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Part 5 (2:20 min.)
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Metaphors become instruments for social and
political reform. The idea of southern exceptionalism, however,
while valuable in facilitating civil rights achievements in the
1960s, is a limiting conception for political strategies and moral
critiques that seek to achieve a more substantive and meaningful
equality today.
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About Joseph Crespino:
Professor
Crespino received his Ph.D. in American History from Stanford University
in 2002. His research interests focus on the political culture of twentieth-century
America, in particular, the U.S. South. Crespino's first book, In
Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution
(Princeton University Press, 2007), examines segregationist politics in
the state generally considered to be the most recalcitrant. He proposes
that white Mississippians were key actors in a broad, popular reaction
against modern liberalism that reshaped American politics in the closing
decades of the twentieth century.
Video of Professor Crespino was taken at "The End of Southern Exceptionalism" conference held at Emory University in March 2006, an event organized by Prof. Crespino of the Emory University History Department and Professor Matt Lassiter of the Department of History at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
Video of Professor Crespino was taken at "The End of Southern Exceptionalism" conference held at Emory University in March 2006, an event organized by Prof. Crespino of the Emory University History Department and Professor Matt Lassiter of the Department of History at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
Presentation Sections:
