South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

North Carolina stands at a crossroads. Though the state witnessed an influx of transplants in recent decades, making it part of the so-called “new South,” the hoped-for changes did not always materialize. Instead, the new arrivals often simply became part of the state’s existing apparatus.

As in Virginia, right-wing, evangelical Christianity and white supremacy play major roles in the state’s history and its current social and political climates. Though sex scandals plague evangelical churches and communities, including “preachers’ revelations of queerness, adultery, and breaching of various religious rules […]” (121), these groups simultaneously attack LGBTQ people and other marginalized populations.

The race riots that happened in Wilmington in 1898 exemplify a pattern that occurred across the South in which white Southerners attacked and destroyed Black communities and institutions and symbols of Black prosperity:

These communities were efforts of Black Americans to become incorporated into American politics and commerce as well as independent. They embraced the social and moral norms proclaimed by the nation. They were destroyed by the habits of White supremacy (125).

The white rioters never faced consequences because “White grievance” acted as “de facto law” (125). Moreover, white North Carolinians implemented desegregation in Wilmington in a way that deliberately harmed their Black neighbors. First, the city refused integration, and then it closed “the cherished Black Williston Industrial High School […]” (126). The Black teachers and staff lost their jobs, and the students separated and went to white schools. Tensions flared, and in 1971 the Wilmington 10—civil rights leader Ben Chavis, eight Black high schoolers, and a white ally—were arrested on the accusation of having firebombed a white grocery store. A sham trial ensued, with the accused facing prison sentences, an event that exemplifies the “advanced mass incarceration” (126) that was anticipated.

Perry offers two examples related to Duke University to demonstrate the continuation of racism in North Carolina: her own experience visiting Duke University as a prospective graduate student in the 1990s and the infamous Duke lacrosse team case of 2006. At Duke, Perry felt like “an outsider to the intellectual space of the department, despite being inside my region of origin” (128). The students’ preppy affluence reminded her of the tobacco-plantation elite who once dominated the state. Though Black laborers and a Black architect designed and constructed the university, it was not a welcoming place for Perry. About a decade later, in 2006, the Duke University men’s lacrosse team faced accusations of rape from a Black exotic dancer named Crystal Gail Mangum. The prosecution’s case against the students “began to fall apart,” and the players were exonerated. However, Pretty notes that “much was left untouched” (129) regarding the role of deeply entrenched racism in the players’ interactions with Mangum and the repeated abuse she suffered throughout her life. For example, the players requested white dancers for their party, and one player used a racist slur to describe the disdain they felt when Black women showed up. Perry notes, “That loud diminishment of Black women as compared to White, even in exploitation, reaches far back into American history” (129). Moreover, though Mangum was criticized for flaws in her memory and for providing “conflicting accounts,” her response was also a typical traumatic response, consistent with her history of being sexually assaulted multiple times.

The toppling of the Confederate statue known as “Silent Sam” at the University of North Carolina in 2018 and the university’s deference to the Sons of Confederate Veterans in the form of a $2.5 million trust for the preservation of the statue also counters the narrative of North Carolina as a more progressive “new South” state. Perry notes, “Refuge for White supremacists seems to always be available” (135). Conversely, the Wilmington 10 were not pardoned until 2012.

Four years later, by the 2016 elections, “political scientists were saying that North Carolina was not a functionally democratic state” (130). The Republican party controlled the state government and restricted social services and pro-environment policies, in addition to attracting national attention through the “bathroom bill,” which required people to use the public restroom of the gender they were assigned at birth. The religious right continued practices similar to those in Virginia, “targeting extremely vulnerable populations, exploiting widespread and unfounded fear and hatred. Many leaders proclaimed that they followed Christian religion in this effort” (131). Returning to the metaphor she used in Chapter 2, Perry points out that despite this organized opposition, “the God of slaves” (136) persisted; a Democratic governor was elected in 2016. The “God of masters” (136), however, was unwilling to relent, and the outgoing Republicans limited the governor’s power prior to the transition.

Perry presents readers with the popular image of Atlanta and compares it to reality. Atlanta is a city that “runs on commercial prosperity” (142). It is the current epicenter of Black music and the Black queer community, and it is a land of newly built mansions. The city is “a spectacle of American consumption and ambition” (142). It is a hub for Delta Airlines, and both Coca-Cola and CNN are based in Atlanta, for instance.

Today’s Atlanta is known as the center of Southern hip-hop, which has ties to the “genealogy” of Black American music. The Queens-born rapper, Prodigy, for example, is a descendant of William Jefferson White, Morehouse College’s founder. Atlanta is “a city in which hip hop and highbrow are both rooted in and routed through Black life” (147).

HBCUs also have a prominence in the city, and Atlanta University was the first of its kind in the South. Spelman and Morehouse Colleges are also based in Atlanta. These institutions produce prominent Black leaders while also serving as “sites of growing pains of Black America, places where sexuality, gender, and class are played out in challenging interactions between students and faculty, and between the university and the city” (147).

Though Atlanta’s commercial and cultural richness can be seductive, seeming to promise wealth and prosperity, many of the city’s Black residents—who make up most of its population—remain poor. Whiteness dominates, a legacy of the plantation South and the result of Atlanta’s corporatization. Though Atlanta is one of the South’s major cities, for example, it does not have an efficient system of mass transportation. Instead, “what it does have is a lot of really nice shit. And listen, dirt roads will not let you forget to appreciate that” (151). There is much more to Atlanta than its prosperous façade. For Perry, the city’s contradictory nature makes it “obvious that being American is being a trickster” (152).