Cotton Culture in the South from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement

FAIN: ES-50390-11

Corporation Of Mercer University (Macon, GA 31207-1515)
Sarah E. Gardner (Project Director: March 2011 to April 2016)
David A. Davis (Co Project Director: March 2011 to April 2016)

A five-week institute for twenty-five school teachers on the South's cotton culture from the close of the Civil War to the rise of the civil rights movement.

Mercer University is proposing to host a five week NEH institute for high school teachers on Cotton Culture in the South from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement from June twenty fifth to July twenty seventh, 2012. In 2010 Mercer hosted a successful institute on the same topic and we feel that interest is still strong. The institute will allow twenty-five teachers of English, history, economics, government, geography, art, and music to learn about the complex social structures of the US South in the crucial, yet frequently misunderstood hundred years after the Civil War a period that included both major social problems and amazing cultural development. An interdisciplinary panel of experts on the South will use the cultivation of cotton the South's primary economic product during this time as a means to analyze and understand the regions history, geography, economics, politics, culture, and literature.