By Cynthia Tucker and Frye Gaillard, Photo: Spencer Grant/Getty Images, The Guardian, March 11, 2022
In 1974, the great southern journalist John Egerton wrote a prescient book entitled The Americanization of Dixie: The Southernization of America.
In a series of connected but self-containedessays, he made the point that something fundamental was changing – both in his native south, and in the country as a whole. But even Egerton seemed not to be sure exactly how things would unfold.
He was, as those of us who knew him could attest, one of the great and gentle souls of his time, a man deeply committed to racial justice who wanted badly to believe that it would be a good thing if this troubled place in which he lived – this part of America that had once fought a war for the right to own slaves – could emerge from the strife of the civil rights years somehow chastened and wiser for the journey; if it could narrow its distance from the rest of the country and perhaps even lead it toward better days.
Comments (0)