Director's Column

Southerners once pervasively used the phrase "Southern way of life," and by all accounts manners were a central part of the "Southern way." Educated families prized the graceful behavior of a hospitable South. Religious families might show an ethic of kindness that reflected their values. Elvis was only the most famous of Southerners for whom "yes, ma'am" and "no, ma'am" tripped off the tongue. Racial etiquette, though, helped keep African Americans "in their place."

These varied meanings were among those examined in a fascinating week in October as the lecturers at the Porter L. Fortune Jr. History Symposium spoke on "Manners and Southern History" and the participants of Southern Foodways Symposium pondered "Southern Food in Black and White."

The historians unraveled the ways manners reflected and reinforced a hierarchal society, proscribing behavior for men and women, black and white, rich and poor. They demonstrated that the system of manners was not static, but evolving, even playing a role in massive resistance to the end of Jim Crow segregation. Ted Ownby, professor of history and Southern Studies and director of graduate students at the Center, organized the symposium and will edit a first-rate set of papers for publication.

Eating was a revealing metaphor for Southern manners, and the annual Foodways Symposium approached that topic through such panels as "Mammy and Ole Miss: Domestic Relations," a humorous reminiscence by activist Bernard Lafayette on the sustaining role of food on the civil rights movement, such individual presentations as Rafra Zafar's "How Did Macaroni and Cheese Get So Black?," and edible demonstrations of such shared biracial foods as fried chicken and catfish.

The Foodways Symposium closed with moving gospel music by Lafayette County's own Jones Sisters. To demonstrate that this year's theme was more than of historical interest, we distributed a list of constructive actions that everyone who attended the symposium could take to bring together the diverse populations of the South, and the nation, over our shared appreciation of Southern food. It was truly a witness to how the dinner table may represent the best place to nurture the racial reconciliation that the contemporary South seeks.

Charles Reagan Wilson