Volume 13, Number 4 · September 11, 1969
Southern Exposure
By Eugene D. Genovese
The South and the Sectional Conflict
by David Potter
Louisiana State, 321 pp., $7.50
The Burden of Southern History
Second Edition by C. Vann Woodward
Louisiana State, 250 pp., $1.95 (paper)
One sometimes wonders what Americans would have done had the South not existed: what regional mysteries would there have been? Until the blacks themselves demonstrated that racism has been a national, not merely a sectional, disease and that Northern liberalism had little left to offer their liberation movement, the South served splendidly as the American scapegoat. The black revolt has shattered the hypocrisy and undermined the smugness; we may now expect a serious reappraisal of Southern history and culture in the years ahead. In this, as in so many other ways, black militancy, in both its directly political and its intellectual manifestations, has already contributed substantially to the positive reorientation of American life.
Review, 4795 words
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