The Rosenwald schools, scores of which still stand, exemplified the ideal educational environment - designed for efficiency, making full use of natural light to protect children's eyesight, and providing sufficient space for learning. Ironically, these schools, which represented the social centers of their African American communities, also helped to set standards for white schools.

This revealing interpretation of the black experience in the South emphasizes the evolution of slavery over time and the emergence of a rich, hybrid African American culture. From the incisive discussion on the origins of slavery in the Chesapeake colonie

The contemporary American South is a region of economic expansion, political sophistication, and, particularly, cultural ferment. Its literature is well-known and celebrated. But what of the popular cultural forms of expression that have done so much to reflect the curious tensions between the traditional South—white-dominated, rural, religous—and contemporary multicultural forms and discourses? This collection offers a wealth of exciting new perspectives on cultural studies in general and of the particular forms of popular Southern culture—from rock and roll to Cajun music to the impact on the South of tourism and the questions of genre and race in contemporary film-making.

Traces the economic, political, and ideological factors which influenced the South's decision to secede.

Authors discussed include: Wendell Berry, Erskine Caldwell, Truman Capote, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, Shelby Foote, Zora Neal Hurston, Bobbie Ann Mason, Cormac McCarthy, Flannery O'Connor, William Styron, Anne Tyler, Alice Walker, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Thomas Wolfe, Richard Wright, and many more. By World War II, the Southern Renaissance had established itself as one of the most significant literary events of the century, and today much of the best American fiction is southern fiction. Though the flowering of realistic and local-color writing during the first two decades of the century was a sign of things to come, the period between the two world wars was the crucial one for the South's literary development: a literary revival in Richmond came to fruition; at Vanderbilt University a group of young men produced The Fugitive, a remarkable, controversial magazine that published some of the century's best verse in its brief run; and the publication and widespread recognition of Faulkner (among others) inaugurated the great flood of southern writing that was to follow in novels, short stories, poetry, and plays. With more than forty years of experience writing and reading about the subject, and friendships with many of the figures discussed, J. A. Bryant is uniquely qualified to provide the first comprehensive account of southern American literature since 1900. Bryant pays attention to both the cultural and the historical context of the works and authors discussed, and presents the information in an enjoyable, accessible style. No lover of great American literature can afford to be without this book.