Grace Elizabeth Hale

I picked this book up from the new books shelf of my local library at the same time I picked up The Blueprint. While The Blueprint explores what would have happened if the Civil Rights movement had been met with outright Civil War won by the south, In the Pines explores the history of white supremacy in Jefferson Davis County, Mississippi including a lynching carried out and covered up by the author’s own grandfather. It describes how white southerners systematically destroyed and dismantled what they were unwilling to integrate—from swimming pools, to schools, to democracy itself. The reality is we are not far from the dystopia described in The Blueprint, even without the 2nd civil war. Although I appreciated the author’s personal perspective, and growing up in the south I have personal experience with racism in the family, the author’s relationship with the perpetrator makes for a very uncomfortable telling. She does not shy away from exposing (to the extent possible) what must have occurred, but neither does she shy away from her childhood memories of a grandfather she loved and who loved her. It’s hard to reconcile. It also points to the reality that many of us know people who have lynched, but just haven’t sought to know it.… (lisätietoja)

Lots of research here with plenty of notes about Athens, Georgia as a purported locus for alternative music's start. Hale is totally invested in this revisionist history of 70's-80's cultural politics. The jacket photo has The B-52s pictured but most of the book is about R.E.M. and other lesser knowns. Overall, this is great book about the evolution of the local scene which proved to be an unlikely setting in the South for trends simultaneously seen elsewhere. There are many of the usual suspects which get the expected browbeating: Reagan militarism, Christian conservatism, White racists. Overall a basic source of material for roots rock revivalists R.E.M., and perhaps The Black Crows. The one good thing I read here was that the B-52's Kate Pierson (born in NJ) moved to Georgia after having read too much Flannery O'Connor. Photos, Index, Extended Notes.… (lisätietoja)