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10 books match the query 'Dixie'

cover of A Century of Jewish Life In Dixie: The Birmingham Experience

A Century of Jewish Life In Dixie

The Birmingham Experience

Mark H. Elovitz

University of Alabama Press, 2003

Exploring the resilience, identity, and contributions of Southern Jews in the heart of Alabama.

This is the first substantial history of the Jews in any inland town or city of the industrial South. A Century of Jewish Life in Dixie offers a vivid and deeply researched portrait of Birmingham, Alabama’s Jewish community. Mark H. Elovitz traces the community’s evolution from its immigrant roots in the late 19th century through its growth into a vibrant and influential part of Southern society. Drawing on archival records, oral histories, and cultural analysis, Elovitz explores how Southern Jews balanced tradition and assimilation, navigated racial and religious tensions, and contributed to civic and economic life in a region undergoing dramatic transformation. This book provides a rare and nuanced look at Jewish identity in the American South, making it an essential resource for scholars of Jewish studies, Southern history, and American cultural life.

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cover of A Wisconsin Boy in Dixie: Civil War Letters of James K. Newton

A Wisconsin Boy in Dixie

Civil War Letters of James K. Newton

Selected and Edited by Stephen E. Ambrose

University of Wisconsin Press, 1995

“Unlike many of his fellows, [James Newton] was knowledgeable, intuitive, and literate; like many of his fellows he was cast into the role of soldier at only eighteen years of age. He was polished enough to write drumhead and firelight letters of fine literary style. It did not take long for this farm boy turned private to discover the grand design of the conflict in which he was engaged, something which many of the officers leading the armies never did discover.”—Victor Hicken, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society
    “When I wrote to you last I was at Madison with no prospect of leaving very soon, but I got away sooner than I expected to.” So wrote James Newton upon leaving Camp Randall for Vicksburg in 1863 with the Fourteenth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry. Newton, who had been a rural schoolteacher before he joined the Union army in 1861, wrote to his parents of his experiences at Shiloh, Corinth, Vicksburg, on the Red River, in Missouri, at Nashville, at Mobile, and as a prisoner of war. His letters, selected and edited by noted historian Stephen E. Ambrose, reveal Newton as a young man who matured in the war, rising in rank from private to lieutenant.
                A Wisconsin Boy in Dixie reveals Newton as a young man who grew to maturity through his Civil War experience, rising in rank from private to lieutenant. Writing soberly about the less attractive aspects of army life, Newton's comments on fraternizing with the Rebs, on officers, and on discipline are touched with a sense of humor—"a soldier's best friend," he claimed. He also became sensitive to the importance of political choices. After giving Lincoln the first vote he had ever cast, Newton wrote: "In doing so I felt that I was doing my country as much service as I have ever done on the field of battle."
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cover of Asian Americans in Dixie: Race and Migration in the South

Asian Americans in Dixie

Race and Migration in the South

Edited by Jigna Desai and Khyati Y. Joshi

University of Illinois Press, 2013

Extending the understanding of race and ethnicity in the South beyond the prism of black-white relations, this interdisciplinary collection explores the growth, impact, and significance of rapidly growing Asian American populations in the American South. Avoiding the usual focus on the East and West Coasts, several essays attend to the nuanced ways in which Asian Americans negotiate the dominant black and white racial binary, while others provoke readers to reconsider the supposed cultural isolation of the region, reintroducing the South within a historical web of global networks across the Caribbean, Pacific, and Atlantic.
 
Contributors are Vivek Bald, Leslie Bow, Amy Brandzel, Daniel Bronstein, Jigna Desai, Jennifer Ho, Khyati Y. Joshi, ChangHwan Kim, Marguerite Nguyen, Purvi Shah, Arthur Sakamoto, Jasmine Tang, Isao Takei, and Roy Vu.

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cover of From Dixie to Rocky Top: Music and Meaning in Southeastern Conference Football

From Dixie to Rocky Top

Music and Meaning in Southeastern Conference Football

Carrie Tipton

Vanderbilt University Press, 2023

Listen as you read! From Dixie to Rocky Top: Book Playlist, now on Spotify.

The first book to explore the history of college fight songs as a culturally important phenomenon, From Dixie to Rocky Top zeroes in on the US South, where college football has forged a powerful, quasi-religious sense of meaning and identity throughout the region.

Tracing the story of Southeastern Conference (SEC) fight songs from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century, author Carrie Tipton places this popular repertory within the broader commercial music industry and uses fight songs to explore themes of authorship and copyright; the commodification of school spirit; and the construction of race, gender, and regional identity in Southern football culture.

This book unearths the history embedded in SEC football’s music traditions, drawing from the archives of the seventeen universities currently or formerly in the conference. Alongside rich primary sources, Tipton incorporates approaches and literature from sports history, Southern and American history, Southern and American studies, and musicology.

Chronicling iconic Southern fight songs’ origins, dissemination, meanings, and cultural reception over a turbulent century, From Dixie to Rocky Top weaves a compelling narrative around a virtually unstudied body of popular music.
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cover of History and Hope in the Heart of Dixie: Scholarship, Activism, and Wayne Flynt in the Modern South

History and Hope in the Heart of Dixie

Scholarship, Activism, and Wayne Flynt in the Modern South

Edited by Gordon E. Harvey, Richard D. Starnes and Glenn Feldman

University of Alabama Press, 2006

Exploring the history, challenges, and promise of a changing South through the legacy of Wayne Flynt.

This collection of essays on the social and political history of the modern South consider the region’s poor, racial mores and race relations, economic opportunity, Protestant activism, political coalitions and interest groups, social justice, and progressive reform. History and Hope in the Heart of Dixie illuminates the dual role of historian and public advocate in modern America. In a time when the nation’s eyes have been focused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita onto the vulnerability and dire condition of poor people in the South, the applicability of research, teaching, and activism for this voiceless element seems all the more relevant.

Responding to the example of Wayne Flynt, whose fierce devotion to his state of Alabama and its region has not blinded his recognition of the inequities and despair that define southern life for so many, the scholars assembled in this work present contributions to the themes Flynt so passionately explored in his own work.Two seasoned observers of southern history and culture—John Shelton Reed and Dan T. Carter—offer assessments of Flynt’s influence on the history profession as a whole and on the region of the South in particular.

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cover of Motorcycling Alabama: 50 Ride Loops through the Heart of Dixie

Motorcycling Alabama

50 Ride Loops through the Heart of Dixie

David Haynes

University of Alabama Press, 2011

A much-needed guidebook for one of the most beautiful states to explore on two wheels. 

David Haynes offers fifty ride loops of between 75 and 150 miles in length throughout every region of the state. The start and stop points for each ride are identical and easy to locate. This handy guide, which is designed to fit in a tank bag, features both streetbike and dual-sport rides. Also included are detailed, color-coded maps of the routes and turn-by-turn directions. Stunning full-color photographs accompany each ride description, highlighting scenes and points of interest along the way. There are introductory chapters on motorcycle safety, gear, and the use of global positioning devices, as well as pointers on motorcycle camping. 

Motorcycle touring is one of the fastest-growing outdoor recreational pursuits in the country. For both the in-state and out-of-state motorcycle enthusiast, Motorcycling Alabama is a valuable and complete guide to a state rich in diverse types of scenery and with many unsung treasures yet to be discovered. 

Published in cooperation with the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, Birmingham.

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cover of Riveting and Rationing in Dixie: Alabama Women and the Second World War

Riveting and Rationing in Dixie

Alabama Women and the Second World War

Mary Martha Thomas

University of Alabama Press, 1987

The first book to examine the impact of World War II on the roles of women in an individual state
 
Covers the experience of both black and white Alabama women as defense workers, volunteers, and homemakers. The most important change for women during the war years was their employment in jobs normally held by men, which posed an implicit challenge to traditional notions about femininity and female limitations.
 
Thomas describes the women employed in the defense industries—how they were recruited and trained, where they worked and under what conditions, and what changes employers made in the workplace to accommodate women, She also discusses the experience of the women who served as volunteers in the Ground Observer Corps, the Citizens’ Service Corps, the Red Cross, and other volunteer agencies. In addition, the author considers how homemakers coped during a time of rationing, housing shortages, lack of schools, and inadequate medical facilities.
 
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cover of The Great War in the Heart of Dixie: Alabama During World War I

The Great War in the Heart of Dixie

Alabama During World War I

Martin T. Olliff

University of Alabama Press, 2008

There has been much scholarship on how the U.S. as a nation reacted to World War I, but few have explored how Alabama responded. Did the state follow the federal government’s lead in organizing its resources or did Alabamians devise their own solutions to unique problems they faced? How did the state’s cultural institutions and government react? What changes occurred in its economy and way of life? What, if any, were the long-term consequences in Alabama? The contributors to this volume address these questions and establish a base for further investigation of the state during this era. 

Contributors:
David Alsobrook, Wilson Fallin Jr., Robert J. Jakeman, Dowe Littleton, Martin T. Olliff, Victoria E. Ott, Wesley P. Newton, Michael V. R. Thomason, Ruth Smith Truss, and Robert Saunders Jr.
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cover of Tried Men and True, or Union Life in Dixie

Tried Men and True, or Union Life in Dixie

Thomas J. Cypert, edited and with an introduction by Margaret M. Storey

University of Alabama Press, 2011

A gripping firsthand account of loyalty, resistance, and survival in Confederate Tennessee, this memoir reveals the untold story of Unionist courage behind enemy lines.

Tried Men and True, or Union Life in Dixie is the memoir of a Union supporter in south-central Tennessee. In it, he chronicles in vivid and emotional detail the local tensions between Unionists and Confederates during the Civil War South and offers a rare first-person account of the guerrilla war that devastated Western Tennessee.

Thomas Jefferson Cypert (1827-1918) was a staunch Union man of Wayne County, Tennessee. In 1863, he helped organize the Second Tennessee Mounted Infantry, a regiment of loyalist Southerners enlisted to combat Confederate cavalry in West Tennessee and Northern Alabama. Tried Men and True is Cypert’s memoir of his time as Captain of Company A, including his capture by Confederate cavalry and subsequent daring escape, in which he was aided by local Union sympathizers and slaves.

After the Civil War, Cypert served two terms in the Tennessee State Senate, one of them during the heated first years of Reconstruction, when Tennessee disenfranchised former rebels and attempted to establish Unionist Republican rule in the state. Cypert clearly wrote his memoir to defend Unionism, condemn secession and rebellion, and support loyalists’ claims for post-war power through an account of their wartime sacrifices. Never before published, the manuscript has been preserved in nearly perfect condition by Cypert’s descendants over the generations. This book is a remarkable and engagingly written account of resistance to the Confederacy by a group of southwestern Tennessee loyalists.

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cover of Way Up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate Anthem

Way Up North in Dixie

A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate Anthem

Howard L. Sacks and Judith Rose Sacks

University of Illinois Press, 2003

This book traces the lives of the Snowdens, an African American family of musicians and farmers living in rural Knox County, Ohio. Howard L. Sacks and Judith Rose Sacks examine the Snowdens' musical and social exchanges with rural whites from the 1850s through the early 1920s and provide a detailed exploration of the claim that the Snowden family taught the song "Dixie" to Dan Emmett-–the white musician and blackface minstrel credited with writing the song. This edition features a new introduction in which the authors discuss the public response to this controversial claim, and present new information on the Snowdens' musical and social experiences.
 
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