Table Of Contentpraise for
Southern History across the Color Line
“Demonstrate[s] excellence marked by the transgressive
verve of [an] innovative and progressive scholar. . . .
An extremely successful attempt to move with intellectual
rigor and consistency toward a meaningful interpretation
of a world mapped in blood by cruelty and violence.”
— Southern Literary Journal
“The theories, ideas, and analysis investigated in this text
advance our understanding of nineteenth- and twentieth- century
southern culture— both black and white— in unexpected, provocative,
and compelling ways. . . . A highly original and radically ambitious
book. This immensely important and insightful study underscores
the need for new thinking about the scholarship of southern
historiography that reaches beyond race. . . . A groundbreaking
contribution and a rewarding addition to the field of American
history, particularly southern historiography.”
— North Carolina Historical Review
“Painter wields both a scalpel and an ax as she dissects multiple
genera tions of southern- focused literature. . . . Compelling. . . .
[Southern History across the Color Line] provides an insightful
exploration into the historical factors that have led to an incomplete
literature on the mutual impact of the color line in the American
South. It deserves careful study by a wide- range of scholars and
students of southern history and race relations.”
— Gulf South Historical Review
“Painter’s thoughtful collection is the result of a career spent
in close examination of southern history. She demonstrates
how that text can still reveal much but only if we sharpen
and enlarge our intellectual armamentarium.”
— Florida Historical Quarterly
“Bold and innovative.”
— Canadian Journal of History
“Nell Painter’s Southern History across the Color Line is an important
and welcome collection. Her essays are always timely, telling, and
provocative. They take risks and often seek to confound categories,
topically and conceptually. And they chart the intellectual range
and growth of one of our leading historians and teachers.”
— steven hahn, New York University
“Nell Irvin Painter is one of the major historians of our time.
This invaluable collection brings together work that has influenced
a generation of scholars and will continue to shape scholarship for the
foreseeable future. Painter’s powerful and transgressive questioning
of the tenets of southern history and southern historiography has
opened up new ways of understanding both the centrality of race
and the necessity of moving beyond it. This is essential reading for
anyone who wishes to understand the American condition.”
— hazel v. carby, Yale University
SOU~ERN
HISTORY
ACRoSS THE
COLO| LINE
gender and american culture
Mary Kelley, editor
Editorial Advisory Board
Jane Sherron De Hart Janice Radway
John D’Emilio Robert Reid-Pharr
Linda K. Kerber Noliwe Rooks
Annelise Orleck Barbara Sicherman
Emerita Board Members
Nancy F. Cott Sara Evans
Cathy N. Davidson Wendy Martin
Thadious M. Davis Nell Irvin Painter
Guided by feminist and antiracist perspectives, this series examines
the construction and influence of gender and sexuality within the
full range of America’s cultures. Investigating in deep context the
ways in which gender works with and against such markers as race,
class, and region, the series presents outstanding interdisciplinary
scholarship, including works in history, literary studies, religion,
folklore, and the visual arts. In so doing, Gender and American
Culture seeks to reveal how identity and community are shaped by
gender and sexuality.
A complete list of books published in
Gender and American Culture
is available at www.uncpress.org.
SOU~ERN
HISTORY
ACROSS THE
COLO| LINE
NELL IRVIN
PAINTE|
. . .
Second Edition
With a new preface by the author
The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill
© 2021
The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Set in Galliard and Mantinia types
by Rebecca Evans
Manufactured in the United States of America
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member
of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Cover illustration: Nell Painter, Black Sea Composite Map 8,
Sullen, 2012, acrylic on Yupo, 26″ x 40″. Photo by Greg Leshé.
isbn 978-1-4696-6375-3 (cloth: alk. paper)
isbn 978-1-4696-6376-0 (pbk: alk. paper)
isbn 978-1-4696-6377-7 (ebook)
The Library of Congress has cataloged the original edition as follows:
© 2002
The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Set in Carter Cone Galliard and Mantinia types
by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress
Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Painter, Nell Irvin.
Southern history across the color line / Nell Irvin Painter
p. cm.— (Gender and American culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8078-2692-8 (alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-8078-5360-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)
isbn 078-1-4696-1099-3 (ebook)
1. Southern States— Historiography. 2. Southern
States— Race relations. 3. Southern States— Social
conditions. I. Title. II. Gender & American culture.
f208.2 .p35 2002
975′.007′2— dc21 2001053070
to john hope franklin
(1915–2009)
who showed it could be done
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contents
Preface to the Second Edition, ix
Introduction:
Southern History across the Color Line, 1
1. Soul Murder and Slavery:
Toward a Fully Loaded Cost Accounting, 13
2. “Social Equality” and “Rape” in the Fin- de- Siècle South, 37
3. Three Southern Women and Freud:
A Non- Exceptionalist Approach to Race, Class,
and Gender in the Slave South, 59
4. The Journal of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas:
A Testament of Wealth, Loss, and Adultery, 77
5. Hosea Hudson:
The Life and Times of a Black Communist, 128
6. Sexuality and Power in The Mind of the South, 170
Acknowledgments, 191
Notes, 193
Index, 225
