Jonathan I. Leib

Separate times, shared spaces: Arthur Ashe, Monument Avenue and the politics of Richmond, Virginia’s symbolic landscape

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, monuments honouring white heroes of the Confederate States of America were erected along Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. In 1995, a vociferous debate occurred in Richmond over a proposal to ‘integrate’ the Avenue, still considered to be the South’s grandest Confederate memorial site, with a statue of the late African American Richmond native, tennis star and human rights activist Arthur Ashe. While on the surface, the main issue in the debate was where to locate the Ashe statue, the underlying debate over Richmond’s symbolic landscape centred on issues of race relations, identity and power in Richmond at the end of the twentieth century.

Whose South is it anyway? Race and the Confederate battle flag in South Carolina

Abstract The states of the former Confederacy are embroiled in vitriolic debates over the display and meaning of the Confederate battle flag. The purpose of this study is to examine this conflict in South Carolina through an analysis of two legislative votes taken in the states House of Representatives. After first discussing the studys relevance, this article provides a brief historical overview of the contested meanings of the flag. It then focuses upon the debate in South Carolina using a logistical regression analysis to model legislative voting on the issue. It finds legislative positions on the battle flag are strongly divided along partisan and racial lines. These finding are then discussed in the context of “ethnic” nationalism and whiteness studies.

Heritage versus Hate: A Geographical Analysis of Georgia's Confederate Battle Flag Debate

A debate has grown throughout the southeastern United States in the 1990s over the use of Confederate symbols. In Georgia, a vociferous fight took place in 1993 regarding a proposal to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag. The flag issue is divisive because there is no one accepted meaning attached to the symbolism embodied in the Confederate battle emblem. This paper examines the flag debate in Georgia and concludes that (1) the Georgia state flag is an example of an icon that acts as a centrifugal force splitting apart the states population rather than acting as a centripetal force, and (2) support for the current state flag is concentrated in white-majority legislative districts in the rural parts of the state and the suburbs surrounding Georgias largest cities.

Political Culture, Religion, and the Confederate Battle Flag Debate in Alabama

The American South is beset by a series of widespread and vitriolic debates over the meaning of symbols associated with the short-lived Confederate States of America (1861-1865). The largest proportion of these controversies pertains to the Confederate Battle Flag and the contrasting understanding of the flags meaning by both black and white southerners. The purpose of this article is to examine the debate over the flying of the Confederate Battle Flag in the chambers of the Alabama House of Representatives. After analyzing a 1999 vote by legislators on the issue, the controversy is considered in the context of the Souths traditionalistic political culture and historic adherence to conservative Protestantism. The article concludes that both political culture and religion aid in an understanding of the passionate condemnations and defenses of the Confederate Battle Flag.

Communities of interest and minority districting after Miller v. Johnson

Abstract The 1990s have witnessed growing controversy over the issues of minority districting and representation. These controversies have revolved around competing conceptions of the community of interest standard in redistricting. One conception, the transcendent community of interest, suggests that minority groups, in and of themselves, represent a community of interest that transcends space as a result of the groups shared history, culture and legacy of discrimination and segregation. A second view, the traditional geographic community of interest, defines the concept as a formal and/or functional region which can cut across racial and ethnic group divisions. In the early 1990s, the US Department of Justice displayed the transcendent community of interest concept in maximizing majority-minority districts across the South. In the mid-1990s, however, the US Supreme Court and Federal District Courts in invalidating some of these districts have strongly enunciated the traditional geographic conception. This article examines these issues and their potential impact on minority districting and representation by examining the case of Georgia, subject of the US Supreme Courts June 1995 decision in Miller v. Johnson which declared Georgias 11th congressional district unconstitutional. The last part of the article considers the future impact of this decision by examining how Georgias congressional districts were redrawn by a Federal District Court in December 1995 based on the concept of traditional, geographic community of interest districts.

Rebel with a cause? Iconography and public memory in the Southern United States

Recent years have witnessed debates in the American South between traditional white Southerners and African American Southerners over whether and how symbols from the regions two defining historical events – the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement – are displayed on the regions landscape. This paper examines the most contentious of these debates, the conflict over government sanction for flying the various flags of the Confederate States of America. This article first discusses the concepts of iconography and public memory, and then the role of Confederate flags in traditional white Southern iconography. We then examine four recent attempts in the states of Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina, and within the chambers of the U.S. Senate to remove government sanction for flying Confederate flags. We conclude from these debates that while icons can act as centripetal forces binding a people together, they can also emerge as centrifugal forces, further splitting apart a regions population along major cultural and racial divisions.

Fifty Years of Political Change in the South: Electing African Americans and Women to Public Office

In the 50 years since the founding of SEDAAG there has been marked political change in the South. In this article, we examine one aspect of change in southern politics—the election of women and African Americans to public office. Historically excluded from political power in the South, these two groups are in many ways highly indicative of the consequences of the changing politics of the region. This aspect of the changing South is examined through a historical summary of the success over time of African Americans and women in gaining access to political office in the region. We conclude that while recent increases in the levels of black representation in the region have been impressive (albeit thanks to federal pressure), the South continues to lag behind the rest of the country in electing women to public office.

Teaching Controversial Topics: Iconography and the Confederate Battle Flag in the South.

Abstract This article examines various strategies for teaching controversial topics. As a case study, I present examples from my experience teaching about the cultural/political geographic concept of iconography in southern classrooms using as an example recent debates over whether governments in the region should sanction the flying of the Confederate battle flag. First, I discuss the recent literature on the teaching of controversial issues. Second, I examine the concept of iconography and the debates over flying the flag. Third, I present different strategies that can be used to approach this controversial icon in a classroom setting. I conclude by arguing that there is no perfect solution to the teaching of controversial topics that will succeed for every topic, irrespective of time and place.

Sustaining the “Societal and Scriptural Fence”: Cultural, Social, and Political Topographies of Same-Sex Marriage in Alabama

In June 2006, voters in Alabama overwhelmingly approved a statewide referendum that added a prohibition against same-sex marriage to the states constitution. This research examines the Alabama vote by “placing” the politics of sexuality within the states multifaceted web of cultural and social space. We fuse a traditional electoral geography approach with an overall postpositivist cultural and social perspective, beginning with an assessment of the politics of place by situating Alabama as a place with a long history of battles over the so-called culture wars. The cultural politics of the legislative debate and the geographic distribution of the actual vote are also examined within a socio-demographic context, drawing some comparisons from a similar vote in Georgia in 2004, another state in the American Deep South. Those opposed to same-sex marriage in Alabama made effective use of various social constructions that are deeply embedded within a “moral” geography, situating the state as a fenced-off bastion of “religious traditional values,” a common theme throughout the American South. In this vein, social boundaries and territory were demarcated as a powerful political act in Alabama, a strategy that situated the state as hetero-normatively “in place,” while deeming sexual minorities as “out of place.”

Florida’s residual votes, voting technology, and the 2000 election

Abstract This essay examines the county-level pattern of Florida’s residual votes in the 2000 presidential election, focusing on voting problems in optical scan ballot counties. Differing methods for counting optical scan ballots had a considerable impact on county-level residual vote rates. Differences in residual vote rates were also associated with race and poverty