By the late twentieth century, fast food restaurants became a common feature of American life. Although this innovation, which brought food production into the factory age, was not a product of the South, many of its key attributes complemented the … Read more

The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration, Resettlement, and Identity – Pleasants Family Room, Wilson Library, UNC The Cherokee are one of the largest Native American tribes in the United States, with more than three hundred thousand people across … Read more

“I Got What I Got The Hard Way”: Memphis, Muscle Shoals, and the Racial Politics of Southern Music The music of the South has long been a central metaphor for the region’s tumultuous racial history. Genres like country and soul … Read more

“The promise and failure,” “the rise and retreat,” the “failed social experiment”—these are terms used by scholars and pundits to characterize the lost battle for school desegregation in the South and across the nation.  But, drawing on nearly 100 oral … Read more

Dr. Sam W. Haynes presented a lecture on “Unbecoming Southern: The Roots of Texas Exceptionalism.” Many Texas historians have argued that the bitter experience of the Civil War prompted white Texans in later years to downplay their southern roots. In … Read more