Pg. 69: "In Search of Another Country"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Joseph Crespino's, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the 1960s, Mississippi was the heart of white southern resistance to the civil-rights movement. To many, it was a backward-looking society of racist authoritarianism and violence that was sorely out of step with modern liberal America. White Mississippians, however, had a different vision of themselves and their country, one so persuasive that by 1980 they had become important players in Ronald Reagan's newly ascendant Republican Party.

In this ambitious reassessment of racial politics in the deep South, Joseph Crespino reveals how Mississippi leaders strategically accommodated themselves to the demands of civil-rights activists and the federal government seeking to end Jim Crow, and in so doing contributed to a vibrant conservative countermovement. Crespino explains how white Mississippians linked their fight to preserve Jim Crow with other conservative causes--with evangelical Christians worried about liberalism infecting their churches, with cold warriors concerned about the Communist threat, and with parents worried about where and with whom their children were schooled. Crespino reveals important divisions among Mississippi whites, offering the most nuanced portrayal yet of how conservative southerners bridged the gap between the politics of Jim Crow and that of the modern Republican South.

This book lends new insight into how white Mississippians gave rise to a broad, popular reaction against modern liberalism that recast American politics in the closing decades of the twentieth century.

Among the early praise for the book:

In Search of Another Country represents a major advance in our understanding of the conservative counterrevolution that remade the American political landscape after the sixties. This book is the best retort to those who still see the civil rights movement in triumphalist terms. Elegantly written and meticulously researched, it could only have been written by someone with enormous respect for the complexity of the people of Mississippi, irrespective of where they stood in the fray."
--Charles Payne, Duke University

"In this bold and thoughtful study, Joseph Crespino explains how the race-based Republican 'southern strategy' became part of a broader, truly 'American' appeal that swept across the nation in the aftermath of the civil rights movement."
--James C. Cobb, author of Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity

"This is the most thoroughly researched and incisively interpreted account of one of the most complex social and political transitions ever to take place in any American state. No one is better equipped to write this book than this brilliant young historian, who out of his own personal observations growing up in Mississippi has captured with remarkable intuition and understanding the nuances of life in his native state. This is a must-read for anyone seeking a clearer understanding of the bitter struggles of the civil-rights movement and the political evolution that has followed."
--William Winter, former Governor of Mississippi

Joseph Crespino is Assistant Professor of History at Emory University. His articles include "The Strange Career of Atticus Finch," Southern Cultures (2000) and "The Best Defense Is A Good Offense: The Stennis Amendment and the Fracturing of Liberal School Desegregation Policy," Journal of Policy History (2006).

In Search of Another Country and its author were featured in yesterday's New York Times article, "Interpreting Some Overlooked Stories From the South."

The Page 69 Test: In Search of Another Country.

--Marshal Zeringue