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BUILDING THE NEW SOUTH
THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION OF THE PIEDMONT AFTER THE CIVIL WAR
Landmarks,
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A Letter from the Directors
Dear Colleague:
We invite you to apply for
a weeklong workshop entitled
Building the New South: The Social and Economic Transformation of the
Piedmont after the Civil War.
The workshop is
sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities
Landmarks in American History and Culture Program and
will be hosted by
Elon University. This workshop will bring community college professors
together with some of the most eminent scholars in the history of the
American South to study and discuss the dramatic economic and social
transformation of the South in the decades after the Civil War. The
focus of the workshop will be the Piedmont, the portion of the South
where the most dramatic change—industrialization—took place. Landmarks
will be an integral part of the workshop and participants will visit a
19th century farm site, textile mills, a mill village, the
home of a leading industrialist, and a railroad shop complete with an
exhibit of 40 locomotives.
Two sessions will be available: the first is from
July 11-17, 2010; the second is from July 25-31, 2010.
Full-time and adjunct community college faculty in any humanities or
humanities-related discipline are encouraged to apply, but other
community college staff, including librarians and administrators, are
eligible to compete, provided they can advance the teaching and/or
research goals of the workshop.
An applicant need not have an advanced degree in order to
qualify. Each workshop will be limited to twenty-five participants.
Participants will receive a $1200 stipend to help pay for travel
expenses, books, a small meal fee which pays for a banquet dinner and
two box lunches, other food costs, and accommodations. The stipend will
be paid at the end of the workshop.
Stipends are taxable.
Workshop Purpose
The economic and social transformation of the South after the Civil War
is one of the grand topics in Southern history rivaled only by the Civil
War itself and the Civil Rights era. The broad outlines of the story are
well known if only because they are embedded in the films and books of
popular culture, most notably in
Gone with the Wind, but there is a rich and fascinating
scholarship—much of it written over the last thirty years—that analyzes
this transformation. Excellent studies have explored how the old
plantation system was replaced by tenant farming. Many former slaves
became sharecroppers, although a surprising number were able to become
landowners. In the Piedmont, freedmen were often more likely to work as
laborers; there, sharecropping was more a white institution. Small
land-owning farmers across the Piedmont shifted from the more
subsistence oriented farming of the pre-war era to cash crop farming and
shifted their focus to growing tobacco or cotton. For many, the new
rural economy was a cruel trap: small farmers struggled to make a go of
it, and sharecroppers found themselves mired in debt to landlords and
merchants with little hope of ever owning land or escaping poverty.
Struggling farmers, white and black, formed a movement of protest—the
Populist movement—in the 1880s and fought bitter political battles with
those who opposed reform until the death of the movement around the turn
of the century. Much of the wealth of the region was now in the towns,
and the rise of the merchant and the town, examined so brilliantly in
fictional form by William Faulkner, has also been the focus of a number
of fine studies.
It would be the dramatic rise of
industry in the Piedmont that would truly transform this region, and the
textile industry was far and away the most important of these new
industries. Hundreds of mills were built, and hundreds of mill towns
were constructed by the mill owners to house the workers who streamed
into these towns from the failing farms of the countryside; by the
1920s, the Piedmont of the South was the major textile region in the
world and was described by one journalist as “one long mill town.” But
opportunities in the textile industry and most others—tobacco was the
major exception—were for whites only; in the closing years of the 19th
century, Jim Crow segregation extended its reign over industrial
employment just as it would come to reign over every other facet of
life.
The purpose of this workshop is to help participants develop a deeper
understanding of this story by reading some of the best work, working
with some of the top scholars in the field of southern history, and
viewing the physical remains of the story at landmarks and museums. The
location of the workshop is ideal: Elon University is in the heart of
the North Carolina Piedmont and is located a few miles from Burlington
which was once one of the major textile mill centers in the South.
Workshop Format and Content
The workshop will consist of lecture and discussion sessions led by
project scholars, visits to landmarks and museums, archival research,
and work on individual projects. Before the workshop begins,
participants will read selections from the works by four of the
project’s scholars—Steven Hahn’s The Roots of Southern Populism; Bess Beatty’s Alamance:
The Holt Family and
Industrialization in a North Carolina County, 1837–1900;
James Leloudis's Like a Family:
The Making of a Cotton Mill World,
and Tom Hanchett’s
work on the development of Charlotte during the New South era. While in residence, participants will read
selections from works by other scholars and primary sources—interviews,
census materials, newspaper accounts, and manuscript documents—that are
linked to the landmarks that workshop members will visit.
Workshop participants will tour an historic site that interprets the 19th
century farmstead of John and Polly Garrett and will examine primary
source documents that reveal how farming changed for the Garretts.
They’ll visit Spencer Shops, once a major repair facility of the
Southern Railroad. The site has a number of locomotives and train cars,
an intact roundhouse, and a museum which interprets the role of the
railroad in North Carolina’s economic and social history. They’ll visit
the plantation home of the Holts, a family prominent in the textile
industry for over one hundred years, and they’ll take a bus tour of some
of the more important mills and mill villages in Burlington. The tour
will end at Glencoe, an intact and partially restored mill village.
There is a small museum on the Glencoe site in the old company store
which has a display of textile mill machinery and other artifacts.
Glencoe staff will take participants on a tour of the company business
office, the village, and of one of the village houses.
Participants will also visit the Levine Museum of the New South
and will spend time working with documents in the major repository of
primary sources for the South, the Wilson Library at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, home of the Southern Historical
Collection. Participants will begin to develop a project during the workshop—either a research project or a course unit related to the theme of the course. Time will be set aside on several days to work on projects and Peter Felten, director of Elon University’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CATL) and a professor of history will serve as a resource for participants who choose to work on course units. Dr. Felten’s specialty is the use of digital technology and media to enhance instruction. The workshop will conclude with short presentations by participants about their projects.
Workshop Faculty
A stellar cast of faculty will lead the workshop. Pulitzer prize-winning
historian Steven Hahn will begin the workshop with a discussion of how
the southern agrarian economy was changing before and after the Civil
War. Project co-director John Beck will lead participants in a
discussion of changing farming practices on the Garrett farm and a
discussion of the Glencoe mill village. Bess Beatty will lead a
discussion of her book on the Holt family and will explore how a family
of successful planters became major force in the development of the
southern textile industry. Levine Museum historian, Tom Hanchett, will
discuss how Charlotte became a regional rail and trading center and then
an industrial center. He will also explore how this transformation was
accompanied by the development of a full-fledged system of racial
segregation in the town. Jim Leloudis will lead a discussion of his acclaimed study of textile workers,
Like a Family. Peter Felten
will give a presentation on designing modules that engage students in
historical inquiry during an afternoon devoted to work on individual
projects. Project co-director Jim Bissett will join with historian Janet
Irons in the final session of the workshop to discuss two social
movements that rose in response to economic changes of the late 19th
century—Populism and unionism.
Accommodations
Elon University is a liberal arts institution with a student
population of approximately 5600 located in the small town of Elon,
North Carolina. Visitors to the university often comment on the beauty
of its tree-shaded, meticulously landscaped campus, and the campus has
been recognized by the Princeton
Review as one of the nation’s most beautiful.
The town of Elon is located on
the outskirts of Burlington, a much larger town with a full complement
of restaurants, a shopping mall, and so forth. Elon is approximately 25
miles from Greensboro and 35 miles from the Triangle (Chapel
Hill/Raleigh/Durham). Major airports are located in both Raleigh and
Greensboro. To
foster collegiality, we encourage participants to stay on campus and are
reserving a block of rooms in the Colonnades, Elon’s newest residence
hall. The Colonnades is a well-appointed, air-conditioned facility and
is conveniently located near the workshop meeting room, library,
university dining facilities, and several local restaurants. Rooms are
available for less than $200 for the week.
The
university also operates an inn near the campus (the
Acorn Inn)
and a variety of other motels are available nearby for those who
plan to bring family members or who wish to stay in other
accommodations.The meeting facilities of the university are excellent.
The campus has wireless, classrooms are equipped with projectors, and
fully equipped computer labs are available in the library and other
locations.
Participants will have a banquet dinner the first evening of the
workshop (Sunday). Lunch and dinner will be eaten at popular restaurants
in Chapel Hill and Charlotte on the two “road trips” participants will
take. On two other days, picnic lunches will be served when the group
visits local historic sites and museums. For the other meals,
participants may dine in the campus facilities which are quite good or
in local restaurants in Elon or Burlington. For evening meals, Chapel
Hill and Durham are a relatively short drive away on the interstate and
are two of the best “restaurant towns” in the United States. They're
especially noted for restaurants featuring the "new" southern cuisine.
Barbecue lovers should note that Elon is located at the epicenter of a
major concentration of barbecue restaurants featured in national food
magazines.
Applying
Prospective applicants must carefully read NEH application information
and instructions (Click
here) and should review material on the project website. An individual
may apply to a maximum of three (3) NEH summer programs (seminars,
Landmark programs, or institutes), but may participate in only one.
Applicants must be
There are four components
to the application:
1.
The application cover
sheet.
2.
Perhaps the most important
part of the completed application is an essay of one to two
double-spaced pages. This essay should include information about your
professional background and interest in the subject of the workshop;
your special perspectives, skills, or experiences that would contribute
to the workshop; and how the experience would enhance your teaching or
school service.
3.
Please include a resume or
CV detailing your educational qualifications and professional
experience.
4.
Additionally, you will need
to submit a letter of recommendation from your department chair or your
division head or a reference from another professional familiar with
your work. Please enclose your letter of recommendation, with the
author’s name signed across the back of the sealed envelope, with your
application package. Do not send the letter of reference
separately to the project co-director.
SUBMIT THREE COPIES OF THE
COVER SHEET, ESSAY, AND RESUME WITH THE LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION TO:
Your completed application
must be postmarked no later than March 2, 2010.
Only applications mailed to the
co-director can be considered.
Submitting the application
cover sheet to
the NEH site does not constitute a complete application.
Successful candidates will be notified by April 1, 2010, and will have
until April 5, 2010, to accept of decline the offer. Those not
accepted initially will be put on a waiting list and will be offered
acceptance as space becomes available. There is room for 25
participants in each of the two sessions.
Endowment programs do
not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex,
disability, or age. For further information, write to NEH
Equal Opportunity Officer, 1100 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C.
20506. TDD: 202/606-8282 (this is a special telephone device for
the deaf).
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