Modern South, piece by piece

I write a lot about the modernization of the South (which is, in itself, such a subjective turn of phrase).

But I never thought much about how it plays out, how we're all living, breathing manifestations of it.  I told my students the other day that Reconstruction was and is America's unfinished revolution, and that in the South particularly it's the travesty of our collective generations that racial equality is a work still in progress.  They heartily agreed.  We did a day on the cultural history of central Appalachia.  I asked them to deconstruct where the "hillbilly" stereotype comes from, and what's wrong with it.  They came into class armed with Cormac McCarthy references and tales of their grandparents' rural lives.

I thought a summer course at the University of Georgia would deliver me twenty fresh-faced suburban Atlantans, full of their parents' politics and hesitant to find emotion in history.  I was so wrong.

A more modern South has brought me a more modern (and by that term here, I mean complex, and compelling) group of students.  They are from all over.  They range in age from 19 to...well, one of my students tells me she is a grandmother, but I won't speculate on her age except to say that she seems as youthful in demeanor as any of us in there.  They've opened my eyes to the patchwork of people in my midst, and suddenly Athens is renewed.

My faith in perspective, in people's ability to understand the past and how it shapes their present...that's back and stronger than ever.