photos by Kelley Libby
From contributor Kelley Libby: For years, at historic plantation sites across the South, the focus was on the big house and not on the slave cabins. But cabins like that are now being resurrected by a program called Slave Dwelling Project on the grounds of Montpelier, James and Dolley Madison's home in Virginia.
“Folks started talking about the New South after the Civil War," says Tom Hanchett, staff historian at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, North Carolina. "Where we are now is the newest of the New Souths, the Newcomer South.” Tom speaks about the ever-evolving South, especially as it relates to food, from a booth in El Pulgarcito, a Honduran-Salvadoran-Mexican restaurant in the eastern part of the city.
Special music in this episode courtesy of Charlotte-based band UltimaNota.
Preeminent Southern folklorist Bill Ferris has spent the last 40 years documenting the South in print, photography and film. His latest book, The Storied South, is a collection of interviews with some of the South's (and country's) most iconic writers and artists, including Alice Walker, Alex Haley, Robert Penn Warren and Eudora Welty. We discuss the book, the importance of story and how Bill defines the South.
Featuring the song "Remember You Used to Love Me" by War Jacket .
Alice Walker, New Haven, Conn., 1977