Southern Identity

In Go Set a Watchmen, Harper Lee describes a confrontation between Jean Louise (“Scout”) and Uncle Jack, Atticus’s brother. In a scenario doubtlessly familiar to many scholars of the South, after Jean Louise had the temerity to suggest that southerners fought the Civil War because of “the slaves and tariffs and things,” Uncle Jack attempts to explain to his wayward relative the real reason for the Civil War. He asserts that the South “was… a nation with its own people, existing within a nation,” and insists that southerners “fought to preserve their identity.” ¹ Uncle Jack describes the whole of southern history from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement as a struggle for identity. Many white southerners have believed, and continue to believe, that their identity is under attack. In the summer of 2015, Michael Hill, the president of the League of the South, condemned calls for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from public memorials and retailers’ shelves, declaring that “the Confederate battle flag… is not merely an historical banner that represents the South. It is a shorthand symbol of our very ethnic identity as a distinct people—Southerners.” ² Belief in southern nationhood and identity has influenced the course of southern history, and continues to shape political discourse in the South.