John Egerton's The Americanization of Dixie: A Fifty-Year Retrospective

Abstract

2024 marks the fifty-year anniversary of the publication of John Egerton's The Americanization of Dixie: The Southernization of America (1974), a seminal work on regional and national identity. What did this book get right? What did it get wrong? Fifty years later, it still resonates. From states' rights to gun rights, from immigration to Black voter disfranchisement, from the resurgence of white supremacy to the ongoing significance of race in American life, various issues demonstrate not only how the South has Americanized but also how the nation on the whole has southernized.