Why read Atlanta, Cradle of the New South?

Book cover of Atlanta, Cradle of the New South: Race and Remembering in the Civil War's Aftermath

Book description

After conquering Atlanta in the summer of 1864 and occupying it for two months, Union forces laid waste to the city in November. William T. Sherman's invasion was a pivotal moment in the history of the South and Atlanta's rebuilding over the following fifty years came to represent the contested…

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American history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Atlanta, Cradle of the New South as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Wendy Hamand Venet

Author

This book looks at Atlanta’s role in the emergence of a “New South” and the way that journalist and civic leader Henry Grady used the story of Atlanta’s wartime burning and destruction and its postwar rebuilding to rebrand the city. While supporting segregation in the South, Grady urged northern Whites to invest in the New South economy and denied that the region had a race problem. Black Atlantans presented an alternate narrative, one that emphasized the war as a first step in the fight for freedom and equality. The Atlanta Race Riot of 1906 left Grady’s New South concept “tattered…

From Wendy's list on 19th century Atlanta Georgia.