Gender Matters Race, Class and Sexuality in the Nineteenth-Century South [Hardcover]

What role did gender play in the secession crisis? In the loyalty of the civilian population during the Civil War? In the formation of the Ku Klux Klan? In class organization and conflict in the postwar textile industry? Why was the first woman senator from the U.S. South? What role did sexuality and gender play in the explosion of racial violence in the late nineteenth century? These questions and many others concerning the critical role that gender played in the major events of the nineteenth-century South and the nation more generally are addressed in this collection of essays.Introduction: Gender Matters in the Nineteenth-Century South The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender Gender and Loyalty on the Border * Gender and Disloyalty on the Border 'Stand by Your Man': The Ladies Memorial Association and the Reconstruction of Southern White Manhood 'You Can't Change History By Moving a Rock': Gender, Race, and the Cultural Politics of Confederate Memorialization Paternalism and Protest in Augusta's Cotton Mills: What's Gender Got to Do with It? The DeGrattonvied Controversy: Class, Race, and Gender in the New South Rebecca Latimer Felton and the Problem of 'Protection' in the New South Rebecca Latimer Felton and the Wife's Farm: The Class and Racial Politics of Gender Return Love, Hate, Rage, Lynching: Rebecca Latimer Felton and the Sexual Politics of Racial Violence Concluding Remarks

In her powerful and persuasive series of essays, Gender Matters, covering everything from women's roles in the Civil War South to the first woman (Georgian Rebecca Latimer Felton) to serve in the United States Senate to feminist challenges to white supremacists in the late 20th century, LeeAnn Whites convinces us not only that gender does matter, but that the struggle to understand the influence of status and sexuality on American history should move to center stage. Whites demonstrates with her elegant and impressive historical case studies that by moving gender to the forefrontló"