Why is Southern History so Romanticized?

[antigone382]

53. Now hold on a second...

In my understanding, reconstruction is viewed to have been a failure precisely because after Lincoln's death, reconstruction became far *less* charitable. The fact is that the south was not educationally or financially prepared to adapt to industrialization in the way that the North had, and without addressing those issues, culture change was not going to succeed.

Another thing to take into account is that Jim Crow was not merely a product of the South. Racial tensions were very intentionally stoked by pro-big business interests (many of them located in the North) anxious to prevent a powerful populist political movement uniting the poor across racial and ethnic lines. You can read the history of how coal companies very intentionally mixed their workforce between local whites, blacks, immigrants, and convicts, and deliberately fed the hostilities between these groups to prevent their organizing into effective unions. Certainly, Jim Crow fed on attitudes that were prevalent in the south--but it was not merely the South thumbing their noses at the North and calls for a united human fellowship. The architects of the ideology which led to Jim Crow were powerful businessmen, and the politicians they owned.