There is no denying that race is a critical issue in understanding the South. However, this concluding volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture challenges previous understandings, revealing the region's rich, ever-expanding diversity and providing new explorations of race relations. In 36 thematic and 29 topical essays, contributors examine such subjects as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Japanese American incarceration in the South, relations between African Americans and Native Americans, Chinese men adopting Mexican identities, Latino religious practices, and Vietnamese life in the region. Together the essays paint a nuanced portrait of how concepts of race in the South have influenced its history, art, politics, and culture beyond the familiar binary of black and white.
Thomas C. Holt is James Westfall Thompson Distinguished Service Professor of American and African American History at the University of Chicago and author of Children of Fire: A History of African Americans.Laurie B. Green is associate professor of history, women's and gender studies, and African American studies at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle.
