--- title: Why TIME Created a Special Issue on the American South description: TIME devoted two prior special issues to it, one in 1964, with the Civil Rights Act; another in 1976, for Jimmy Carter. canonical: https://time.com/5349501/american-south-issue/ author: Edward Felsenthal article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-07-26T09:03:43.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T20:57:42.917Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Why TIME Created a Special Issue on the American South og:description: The South is a place of more diversity and forward motion than many assume og:url: https://time.com/5349501/american-south-issue/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt093da80d7a322c4d/6989364e22fb8552d4e2643e/toc-illo-08-06-2018.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2405 og:image:height: 1353 og:image:alt: TOC-illo-08-06-2018 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why TIME Created a Special Issue on the American South twitter:description: The South is a place of more diversity and forward motion than many assume twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt093da80d7a322c4d/6989364e22fb8552d4e2643e/toc-illo-08-06-2018.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why TIME Created a Special Issue on the American South > Sponsored content. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement.  by [Edward Felsenthal](https://time.com/author/edward-felsenthal/)  ## Edward Felsenthal Felsenthal is the Executive Chairman and former Editor in Chief of TIME. Jul 26, 2018 9:03 AM UTC  Natalie Nelson for TIME  by [Edward Felsenthal](https://time.com/author/edward-felsenthal/)  ## Edward Felsenthal Felsenthal is the Executive Chairman and former Editor in Chief of TIME. Jul 26, 2018 9:03 AM UTC It has defied a thousand obituaries, the region that winds from Virginia to Texas, through the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Smokies to the Delta, past the world’s largest peach, the Astroturf grave of Hank Williams and the gates of Graceland. The “No South” is how Louisiana novelist George Washington Cable envisioned it in a commencement speech to the University of Mississippi’s class of 1882\. Books with names like An Epitaph for Dixie followed. Hodding Carter III, a son of Mississippi (and an early mentor of mine), carried the theme forward in a 1990 essay for TIME: “The South as South, a living, ever regenerating mythic land of distinctive personality, is no more,” he wrote, declaring single-party politics dead and noting the emasculating effects of mass culture on regional identity. Long after slavery’s end, even as it became clear that the national shame of racial injustice was hardly unique to the region, the study of the ever-shifting Mind of the South has turned into an obsession–and a profession–for some. TIME devoted two prior issues to it, one in 1964, as the Civil Rights Act became law, and another in 1976 as Jimmy Carter hurtled toward the White House, the first President elected from the Deep South since the Civil War. But the debate over the New South has always been something of a straw man. As the historian Jack Temple Kirby explained in his book Media-Made Dixie (and as just about any Southerner knows from experience), the region is more layered, more diverse in culture and thought, than the stereotypes and much of the literature would have it. “There are Jews in the South?” is still a frequent response to my telling anyone from the Northeast Corridor that I grew up in Memphis. And as a nonsmoking social drinker who wouldn’t know five-card stud from Texas Hold’em, I confess to reeling at TIME’s apparent surprise in the ’76 issue that Carter “is not a hard drinker, poker player or profane and garrulous see-gar-chomping raconteur.” Yet there are certain enduring regional traits. One is the remarkable durability of single-party politics. The South, notwithstanding periodic head fakes, is today nearly as Republican as it was Democratic a century ago. Not only is it Donald Trump’s largest and most reliable bloc of support, but the GOP controls every single Southern state legislature. When the Democrats lost their last Southern legislative redoubt, Kentucky, two years ago, the Washington Post declared the party “basically extinct in the South.” Distinctive Southern music, food and, to borrow from [Julia Reed](http://time.com/5349544/julia-reed-does-eat-place/), a certain “never meet a stranger” civility, are also alive and well, despite recurring predictions that the region’s ways would be absorbed into broader American currents. Instead, the South has become a net exporter of culture–and a net importer of people. Years of reverse migration and economic expansion have transformed the demographics and psychographics of cities like Charlotte, Nashville and Atlanta. The population of the South as a whole will soon overtake that of the Northeast and Midwest combined, growth that will almost certainly translate into greater electoral and congressional power. The South is a place of more diversity and forward motion than many assume, a reality reflected in the stories of the extraordinary group of contributors to this issue, all of whom have intimate connections to the region. It’s certainly true of my own story. A descendant of Confederate soldiers on one side and Holocaust survivors who met in Memphis on the other, I grew up, as we all did, on tragedy and promise, past and present, myth and music. It’s the complicated story of the South, one that, as [the fearless Mississippi novelist Jesmyn Ward](http://time.com/5349517/jesmyn-ward-my-true-south/) puts it in the opening pages of our special section, “demands nuance, introspection and ruthless clarity.” _Edward Felsenthal is the Editor-in-Chief of TIME_ _This story is part of TIME’s August 6 special issue on the American South. 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