For this is still a place where you must have either been born, or have people there, to feel it is your native ground. Natives will tell you this. They are proud to be Americans, but they are also proud to be Virginians, South Carolinians, Tennesseans, Mississippians and Texans. But they are conscious of another loyalty too, one that transcends the usual ties of national patriotism and state pride. It is a loyalty to a place where habits are strong and memories are long. If those memories could speak, they would tell stories of a region powerfully shaped by its history and determined to pass it on to future generations.
Southern stalwarts
“[Southerners] are … tough, stubborn, compassionate, driven, stylish, eccentric, hard workers, strong in the face of adversity, and gracious. We have attitude, but we also possess great diplomacy and tact … with a strong sense of belonging and community. I always say, ‘Southern by the grace of God.’” — René Doggett Berrien, born in Chattanooga, now living in New Jersey“[The South is a] state of mind, not a flag.” — Wes Phelps, Chattanooga“I may not agree with all of the political and religious affiliations of my neighbors, [but] we are still a community, and we band together to protect our little slice of the countryside. The South is proud and strong, and the history is rich and interesting. … I am proud of my heritage, and will always be.” — Woody Merrell, born in Reliance, Tenn., now living in St. George, Utah“I’m very proud to be a Southerner. I think the issues we see today stem from the fact that we are very deeply rooted in our traditions. We stop when a funeral goes by because … that is just what you do. [But we are also] holding on to some traditions that may not be helpful. … Some Southerners take pride in the tradition of ignorance.” — Jake Redish, Chattanooga“I’m proud to be from the South! I think I’m blessed to be born and live here.” — Dan Davis, Flintstone, Ga.“[Being Southern means] letting somebody over on the interstate, saying ‘Excuse me’ when you bump into someone, saying ‘Thank you and have a nice day’ when you go through the drive-through, and drinking tea even sweeter than your manners.” — Amber Smith, Chattanooga“There are plenty of things to dislike about the South, but I’m certainly still a proud Southerner. We have great literature, epic folk music traditions, fine spirits, world-renowned hospitality and the best damn food.” — Chris Kerys Dolan, Chattanooga“I’ve lived in the South most of my life and I can honestly say that it is the only place that feels like home. … Every home has flaws. The floors creak, the doors don’t hang right, or the faucets leak. You deal with them, fix what you can when you can, and work around what you haven’t gotten to yet. Well, the South’s like that, too. … Yes, we have made some egregious mistakes in the past. … You cannot change the past, but you can learn from it … [and] you only learn from it by confronting it.”— Julia Buckner, Chattanooga“I love where I live, and I detest the rednecks and KKK that like the rebel [flag]! Wish they would just get over it sooner [rather] than later!!!” — Barbara Sitten, East Ridge“I am rather uncertain about all the negative publicity we Southerners have been getting since that horrible shooting in South Carolina. Why is that? Because the killer waved a Confederate flag? … My witness of what happened here in the South just after the incident was of true, deep sorrow and shock at what had just taken place. Then — in true Southern form — I saw people of all races, religions, and social standings coming together. We cried together, prayed together, stood together. No one from here that I encountered ever mentioned color or race, only heartbreak and deepest sympathy. This is the South I know.” — Teresa Ketterer Norton, Chattanooga
There are many Southerners still caught in the grip of a civil war, only there are no battle lines to draw, and victor and vanquished are one and the same.
It is an internal struggle, a clash between bone-deep pride in the South's distinctive cultural heritage and a patchwork quilt of shame implicating them in a history of racial injustice, narrow-mindedness and a rogues gallery of other atrocities.
The South is the birthplace of country music and rock'n'roll, but many still hear the echoing, not-quite-faded chorus of police attack dogs and fire hoses. Far more Southerners enlist in the U.S. military than any other region, but its back roads are dotted with proudly fluttering flags of rebellion.
Dixie's church pews are packed on Sundays and "bless their heart" is the quintessential Southern euphemism, but the former Confederate states host more than 280 active hate groups, according the Southern Poverty Law Center. The South treasures the ideal of the chivalric Southern gentleman, yet the center says it's home to five states where a woman is most likely to be killed by a man.
This culture of intermingled darkness and grace may have nurtured the gunman who ended nine lives in a Charleston church yet it's equally responsible for the cavalcade of Christian forgiveness his victims offered in response.
In the face of violence and embarrassing statistics that place the South in the national spotlight and reinforce long-lived stereotypes, Southerners say they sometimes struggle to embrace the positive aspects of their heritage.
"What [being Southern] means for me is pressing against the constraints of what a Southerner is expected to be," says Chattanoogan Michael Gilliland.
Gilliland, 34, is the board chair of community activism nonprofit Chattanooga Organized for Action, a group that focuses on social justice. The name of his ancestor, William Gilliland, is inscribed on a plaque at Ross's Landing that lists Chattanooga's founding settlers.
"White settlers," he corrects himself.
His own childhood was in lockstep with the image many have of the boilerplate Southern stereotype. The son of a Pentecostal preacher, he was raised in a traditional, conservative environment in which the "The Smurfs" cartoon was forbidden because "it had a wizard in it."
Growing up, Gilliland says he was embarrassed of his Southern lineage and the ugly preconceptions that others hung on it.
"There's a monolithic idea of the South," he says. "Like the way we talk down here, there are a lot of examples of it being looked down on or people thinking we're stupid or unintelligent because we speak slower or with a drawl. That took me a long time to get over."
Eventually, however, he realized that, like many Southerners, his mistake was in allowing the perceptions of others, even those with a basis in fact, to define who he was rather than his actions.
"A lot of [those feelings are] unconscious," he says. "You have to realize that this is a pressure on you before you fight back against it. Those aren't the only stories. They don't have to define us now."
The roots of 'Southernness'
William Kuby, an assistant professor of history at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, teaches a variety of subjects relating to 19th- and 20th-century U.S. history, including courses that explore the interconnections between race, gender and class. Feelings of "Southernness," he says, are a complex combination of all those things.
A sense of shame for Southern heritage is taught rather than inherited, but so is a sense of pride. And both can be misplaced, he says.
"I often find that my white students' sense of Southern pride has emerged from false or limited understandings of history," he says. "Their primary and secondary education in African-American history involved a brief and shallow examination of slavery and a brief and celebratory examination of the Civil Rights Movement.
"That limited knowledge of U.S. history allows for a sense of pride to develop. But when they begin taking college-level history classes and coming to terms with the deep role that racism and racial inequality played in shaping this nation - and this region - that sense of pride is often replaced with a sense of shame."
But, Kuby adds, to define the South solely on the history of its race relations is to paint a one-dimensional picture of the region, not to mention making it a scapegoat for a pattern of injustice that exists in other parts of the country.
"From Northern slavery to protests against busing to present-day incidents of police brutality, there are countless ways in which white Northerners have been complicit in upholding systems of white supremacy," he says. "And by holding fast to images of a 'backward South,' many white non-Southerners are able to absolve themselves of a sense of cultural shame that they might, in fact, have every reason to feel."
Popularly uncultured
To some, the mold of the stereotypical Southerner is built around the region's loudest, crassest or most violent natives - by its Bull Connors, its Alana "Honey Boo Boo" Johnsons, its Byron De La Beckwiths.
But the South also perches atop a rich, varied artistic tradition that gave the world Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin and Louis Armstrong, as well as writers such as Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Harper Lee and William Faulkner. Its screenwriters and filmmakers don't shy from addressing the region's checkered history, either, a creative crop that has produced films such as "Driving Miss Daisy," "The Help," "Deliverance" and "Django Unchained."
Chafing for change
“Part of me wants to leave the South and never look back, but another part of me wants to stay to show people that it isn’t just full of typical Southerners. And don’t get me wrong, just because someone has a thick accent and loves porch beers doesn’t make them dumb. It is the people that refuse to grow and change with the times.” — Joel Ruiz, formerly of Chattanooga, now living in Atlanta“There are many areas of Southern culture I do not identify with and actively seek to change … traditional, sexist values, the rampant and heavy racism against all groups who are not white [and] the extremist view of religion which is used to suppress the rights of others. I love being from the South, but I know a lot needs to change. I guess I’m an optimistic Southerner. I know we can and will do better.” — Elizabeth Warren“My love for this region is more and more at odds with the atrocious behavior I see from a great many of my fellow Southerners. … For cryin’ out loud, we should, as an entire region, embrace and welcome those who have also been made to feel less than whole, less than human, less than perfect, just by dint of being who and what they are, because by God, [Southerners] know damn good and well how that feels.” — Travis Kilgore, Rossville, Ga.“It took me a long time to become comfortable and then to even embrace my Southern heritage. This is a beautiful state; it’s a shame that its politics make it so ugly. … I won’t deny that years ago when traveling to other parts of the country outside of the Southeast, [I did] my best to mask my accent and not disclose where I’m from because I didn’t want people to see me with that stigma. Nowadays, I have more pride in my geographical region and wouldn’t care if someone knew who I was, due to my own acceptance of being born here and the things that come with that.” — Whit Gardner, Chattanooga“I’m proud of us when we get it right, [but] we rarely do. … We’ve got a lot of work to do here to progress. There’s a fine balance between holding on to old traditions and letting go of horrible things that we’ve done and the beliefs that go with them. We’ve got to start doing that work if we want to change the way that people see us and we see ourselves.” — Heather Kilgore, Rossville, Ga.“Too many people use tradition as an excuse to hang on to damaging and backwards attitudes and behaviors. I’m neither proud nor ashamed to be from the South, but I would probably be hesitant to self-identify as Southern anywhere outside of Dixie.” — Robert Parker, Chattanooga“Being a southerner is not a bad thing. It’s how we show it. Some do positive things — feed the hungry, build homes for the poor — but some seem to think the [Confederate] flag is all-or-nothing, and they need to get over it.” — Michael Smith, Crossville, Tenn.“I’m just a transplant, but I do know that anyone can be proud of something they had nothing to do with. It takes real courage to stand up for people who aren’t like you. I hope that Southern courage shows itself by choosing the high road and putting those it has historically oppressed ahead of the interests of nostalgia.” — Derick Anderson, born in Orlando, Fla., now living in Chattanooga“Our past is haunting us!” — Alice Garrigus, Chattanooga
Yet TV shows popularize and reinforce the stereotypes of rural, uneducated Southerners at every turn through reality series such as "Lady Hoggers," "Hillbilly Handfishin'," "Moonshiners" and "Duck Dynasty." Even when networks shine a light on Southern intellectuals, it's in the form of shows like National Geographic's "Rocket City Rednecks" - whose stars are bona fide rocket scientists - which come trailing a slew of awww-shucks caveats.
"Such shows promise new insight into Southern culture, but what they really represent is a typecast South: a mythically rural, white, poorly educated and thickly accented region that has yet to join the 21st century. If you listen closely, you may even hear banjos," writes Karen L. Cox, an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, in a 2011 editorial for the New York Times.
It's not that the South doesn't deserve some of the bad press it has received, says UTC associate professor of sociology Shela Van Ness, but its positive aspects could certainly do with a little more trumpeting as well.
"[This representation] puts us in a defensive position," says Van Ness, who moved here from Ohio 21 years ago. "There are a whole bunch of those shows that reflect poorly on the South and don't reflect its modernization and the new attitudes that people have here. More publicity showing the good things that we're doing needs to be out there."
Every spring, Chattanooga State Community College brings in Southern authors for Writers@Work, a conference designed to explode the stereotypes and offer students and the public a more multifaceted image of the region.
"We are, as a culture, so media-driven," event organizer and Chatt State Humanities Department Chair Joel Henderson told the Times Free Press earlier this year. "What we are trying to do is show that the South is often not as it is portrayed in mainstream media. It's not necessarily inbred and ignorant and backwoods. Instead, it has a very vibrant culture. Our students are not necessarily imbued with a sense of place, and if they are, it is one that oftentimes they may be ashamed of."
This year, Writers@Work's featured authors were Lila Quintero Weaver, an Argentinian immigrant and graphic novelist who was raised in the South during the Civil Rights Movement, and Alabama native Rick Bragg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former journalist whose family memoirs have been praised for "captur[ing] the rhythms of small-town life with grace and pathos."
Bragg says that, despite the tendency to oversimplify Southerners and Southern culture, it's misguided to smother the region in blanket generalizations.
"Any time you start writing about the South in absolutes, you are going to fail," he says. "It's too complicated for them."
Past imperfect
The tug-of-war of the Southern conscience is being acted out most dramatically in the wake of the massacre on June 17 in Charleston, S.C., of nine black church parishioners by accused gunman Dylann Roof, a white 21-year-old who told authorities he wanted to start a race war.
Many of Roof's photos online feature him posed with the Confederate Battle Flag, a juxtaposition that sparked an ongoing national debate between those who defend the flag as an emblem of the South's history and heritage and those who say it is a painful, outmoded reminder of slavery and racial oppression.
Regardless of how it is viewed, the Confederate flag is a divisive symbol, says Bragg, who in 1996 wrote for the New York Times about then-South Carolina Gov. David Beasley's call to remove the flag from the top of the state- house in Columbia. The move failed - and became a rallying cry for Beasley's opponents in the next election - but the flag eventually was moved in 2000 to a different memorial, yet one that was also on the statehouse grounds.
"The true meaning of the flag has nothing to do with racial hatred," Beasley told Bragg in 1996. "Hate-filled cowards cover their heads and hide under the cloak of night. [And because of them,] those of us who honor the flag are called racists. It is inexcusable when we are called a racist state. We are not."
The statehouse flag remained at its less-conspicuous perch until early this month, when it was ceremoniously removed for good after cries that followed in the wake of the Charleston massacre.
Growing up in rural Northeast Alabama, Bragg remembers re-enacting famous Civil War battles with his friends. They didn't have flags, he says, but they still argued fiercely over who had to be "the Yankees" before having at each other with stick "swords" and cap pistols.
"For a few years longer, I would play those games with great pride in the Confederacy," he recalls. "But as I got older and as I came to understand what that symbol meant - not just to black people but to many people - you have to ask yourself, 'Do you cling to that doomed ideal, or do you give in to your own human conscience?'
"I think for most of us - obviously the majority of us now, it seems - we give in to that conscience."
The ability to honor history and learn from it without dragging it into the future is going to be key to changing attitudes about the South, native and non-native alike, Gilliland says.
"The future isn't set," he says. "The question becomes not whether you're proud of the South but what part of the South that you're proud of. That's a question we're all going to have to ask.
"There is a heritage here and a history that people could and should be proud of. Largely, the question of what kind of South we identify with is going to determine whether we can be prideful or hide in shame."
Contact Casey Phillips at cphillips@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6205. Follow him on Twitter at @PhillipsCTFP.