Should you notice a disconnect between the southerners that you meet and the American South that you hear about, your personal impressions are probably more accurate than the analysis you may get from media and academic types. “The PC police tell southerners that they have no right to honor their history,” Clint Johnson, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the South (and why it will rise again) says. “Our ancestors were racist, and if we honor them, we are racist too.”
He was a featured speaker at Eagle Forum’s Collegiate conference on June 22.
Johnson recalled a New England radio interview in which the talk show host asked, “Why are southerners so uneducated?” Tongue planted firmly in cheek, the author said, “Well, us southerners, you already know, are a bunch of gun-toting, redneck, beer-guzzling, barefoot clansmen who marry their first cousins.”
There may some things you may not know about the South, Johnson points out:
• Famed abolitionist John Brown of Brown University, and a Rhode Island House Representative, was a legendary mogul in the slave trade, and lamented the abolition in print.
• The University of Alabama’s library was burned to the ground by Union soldiers not during, but at the end of the Civil War.
• Southerners comprised a large percentage of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and were a driving force in the creation of the Bill of Rights.
• Patrick Henry, a Virginian, was one of the first to recognize the injustice of taxation without representation. His activism spurred national change.
• Activists in Charlotte, N.C. wrote the Mecklenberg Declaration of Independence on May 20, 1775, which was the first record of a collective desire for American independence.
For Vanderbilt University, the United Daughters of the Confederacy funded the building of the “Vanderbilt Confederate Memorial Hall.” The administration wanted to sandblast the word “Confederate” off of the front of the building, but the $1-million-dollar lawsuit afforded a different outcome. On the Vanderbilt campus map, however, the building is simply referred to as “Memorial Hall.”
Johnson went on to celebrate a characteristically southern culture as portrayed in literature and fine arts, comparably lacking in other regions of America: “There is no New England novel or Midwest musical genre,” said the author.
Virtually every form of distinctive American music originated in the south, said Johnson. Rock and roll, jazz, the blues, and, naturally, country music, all have their foundations from New Orleans to Nashville to southern Florida.
Distinctive literature includes works from William Faulkner, Mark Twain, and Margaret Mitchell.
The primal idea of the strong woman can be seen in the wives of farmers who effectively ran the family plantations. Sally Tompkins started a hospital during the Civil War with the lowest death rates of any American hospital. When Congress observed this, and passed a law that mandated that only army officers can run hospitals, Jefferson Davis made her a captain.
When asked for thoughts on the conclusion of the Civil War, Johnson remarked, “Lincoln’s death was the worst thing for the South. Had he lived, it would have been the best thing.” Johnson went on to describe the effects of integration and the economy in either situation.
When asked to give parting advice to young southern conservatives, Johnson told listeners to “defend your right to learn about and celebrate your history!”
Mary Kapp is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a program run jointly by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
