New South Creed, The: A Study in Southern Mythmaking

First published in 1970, The New South Creed has lost none of its usefulness to anyone examining the dream of a "New South"-prosperous, powerful, racially harmonious-that developed in the three decades after the Civil War, and the transformation of that dream into widely accepted myths, shielding and perpetuating a conservative, racist society. Many young moderates of the period created a philosophy designed to enrich the region-attempting to both restore the power and prestige and to lay the race question to rest. In spite of these men and their efforts, their dream of a New South joined the Antebellum illusion as a genuine social myth, with a controlling power over the way in which their followers, in both North and South, perceived reality.