OXFORD, Miss. – While the South hasn’t completely forsaken
old prejudices, there are positive signs they’re becoming
part of a storied past.
That’s the message Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
Cynthia Tucker conveyed Thursday in her address at the
University of Mississippi, kicking off the 30th-anniversary
celebration of UM’s Center for the Study of Southern
Culture.
Tucker, editorial page editor at the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, encouraged the South to open its arms
to its “new” neighbors in Mexico, as she reflected on
changes in the South over the last three decades.
“I’ve been saddened by the hatred of immigration and
disappointed that the South, having recently cast off Jim
Crow, would pick up new yet eerily similar prejudices,” she
said. “We should greet (our new neighbors) with fried
chicken and fried catfish and teach them how to properly
sweeten iced tea.”
Speaking to a capacity crowd in the auditorium of the new
Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics, Tucker
said she was delighted and honored to be on the Ole Miss
campus for the first time and that she is a longtime fan of
the center and its work.
After reading from a November 2005 column she had written
about Condoleeza Rice following the death of Rosa Parks,
Tucker said, “That column captures the staggering changes
that took place in the South in a relatively short time my
lifetime. It has not been a smooth and easy journey. I love
the South, and I’ve left it only briefly, but my love is
neither irrational nor uncritical. I would never say the
South has completely forsaken old prejudices but mostly I
think we’ve put that behind us, for good, I hope.”
The center began its work in November 1977. The gathering
this weekend of alumni, students, faculty, staff and
friends is to reflect on the center’s past, look at the
present and plan for the future.
Ted Ownby, CSSC interim director and professor of history
and Southern studies, said he enjoyed the way Tucker moved
between her own columns and commentary, because it was an
effective way to think about what’s changing in the recent
South.
“Two of her columns dealt with thinking historically, and
that’s part of Southern studies, to think about the present
by thinking broadly about history,” Ownby said. “We do as
good a job as we can in discussing race relations and look
at what doesn’t fit into conventional categories of black
and white. It was especially helpful that she connected
issues of immigration and ethnicity to the fairly recent
past of the South.”
The center supports and houses diverse projects such as
Living Blues magazine, the Southern Foodways Alliance and
documentary studies.
Tucker’s syndicated columns appear in nearly 50 newspapers
across the nation. She won the Pulitzer Prize for
Commentary earlier this year. She frequently appears on the
“Newshour with Jim Lehrer” and “CNN and Company.”
A native of Monroeville, Ala., Tucker graduated from Auburn
University and went on to serve as a reporter covering
Africa and Central America, as well as local governments,
national politics, crime and education. She was a Neiman
Fellow at Harvard University in 1998.
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