New Deal / New South: An Anthony J. Badger Reader

by Anthony J. Badger, James C. Cobb

Overview

The twelve essays in this book, several published here for the first time, represent some of Tony Badger’s best work in his ongoing examination of how white liberal southern politicians who came to prominence in the New Deal and World War II handled the race issue when it became central to politics in the 1950s and 1960s. Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s thought a new generation of southerners would wrestle Congress back from the conservatives. The Supreme Court thought that responsible southern leaders would lead their communities to general school desegregation after the Brown decision. John F. Kennedy believed that moderate southern leaders would, with government support, facilitate peaceful racial change. Badger’s writings demonstrate how all of these hopes were misplaced. Badger shows time and time again that moderates did not control southern politics. Southern liberal politicians for the most part were paralyzed by their fear that ordinary southerners were all-too-aroused by the threat of integration and were reluctant to offer a coherent alternative to the conservative strategy of resistance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781557288448
Publisher:	University of Arkansas Press
Publication date:	06/01/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Anthony J. Badger is Paul Mellon Professor of American History at Cambridge University and Master of Clare College. He is the author of a number of books, including North Carolina and the New Deal; The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933–1940; The Making of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement (with Brian Ward); and Contesting Democracy (with Byron Shafer).

What People are Saying About This

James Patterson

"This admirable volume, containing not only Tony Badger's many deeply researched articles and talks about Southern political history but also a fascinating and lively autobiographical essay, is a wonderful and welcome publication."--(James Patterson, author of Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945)

William E. Leuchtenburg

"No commentator on twentieth century America, especially the American South, writes more perceptively, or more engagingly, than Tony Badger. Viewing the United States from a British perspective, he matches an extraordinary command of sources and a vivid style to a transatlantic angle of vision."--(William E. Leuchtenburg, author of The White House Looks South)

Steven Lawson

"This is a very important subject, especially as scholars try to compose a multiple and comprehensive account of the civil rights movement and how it affected both blacks and whites.... This is a valuable collection by a distinguished scholar."--(Steven Lawson, author of To Secure These Rights: President Harry S. Truman's Committee on Civil Rights)

Jack Kirby

"A hearty feast. . . . There is coherent shape here reflecting Badger's own persistence in the reexamination of the twentieth-century American South -- politics and policy, questions of color, rights, and identity, and matters rural and agricultural."--(Jack Kirby, author of Rural Worlds Lost: The American South: 1920)

Jane Daily

"Tony Badger is the leading political historian of the South between 1930 and 1970. Tony is a master essayist, capable of grand synthesis while at the same time proving that political history requires precision craftsmanship."--(Jane Daily, author of The Politics of Race in Post-Emancipation Virginia)

Editorial Reviews

”This book promises to inform and enlighten in a multitude of ways, not the least of them being the insights it offers into the progression of an exceptionally talented historian’s interests and awareness as Tony shares his professional and personal odyssey from New Deal historian to southern historian.” —from the foreword by James C. Cobb

From the Publisher