"The rise and fall of the Branchhead Boys: North Carolina’s Scott family and the era of progressive politics." The Historian, 82(2), pp. 239–240

Understanding Wallaceism:Neither Gone nor Forgotten Jeff Frederick (bio) If he had attended the 2018 southern historical association Meeting in Birmingham, where scholars considered his impact in state and nation, ninety-nine-year-old George Wallace might have coursed up and down the hallways and recognized someone he met decades earlier. If so, he would have rolled up to them, extended his right hand, and called the person by name. If the governor was in the moment, as he often was from the late 1940s up to the May 15, 1972, assassination attempt in Laurel, Maryland, he would not only have remembered the name of the person whose hand he had just shaken, but also that person's hometown and maybe even something about his people or her line of work. Odds are, that person whose hand he shook would not have been any of the academics, as the governor would have had little political interest in working a room full of historians and "pointy-headed" professors whose bike parking ability he consistently and openly questioned. The assembled historians, understandably and justifiably, would have expressed a healthy dose of contempt for many of Wallace's actions, attitudes, and intransigence over his quarter-century or so of direct political, social, and cultural impact. Wallace, for his part, would have bypassed most of the registered attendees of the Southern Historical Association, and looked instead for the general manager of the Sheraton for a quick [End Page 201] conversation. Then, he would have spent most of his time chatting up the busboys, bell men, kitchen staff, maintenance workers, and attendants—prospective voters one and all, at least in 2018. The atmosphere where Wallace first made his mark has changed and then changed again. He cut his political teeth in an era where, like Willie Morris's description of Mississippi, "political rallies (were held) in some vast and dusty clearing in the middle of the woods. The barbeque and sweet potatoes and corn on the cob and biscuits were stacked on long tables and served up by country people." By his end of days, what with all the public apologies and other moments of seeking absolution, the earnest grace of many African Americans who felt the worst of Wallaceism had been taxed beyond measure. "I grew up here," Rita Kendrick, a middle-aged black woman, told journalist Rick Bragg shortly after the governor passed, "when you couldn't sit here and you couldn't eat there and you had to sit in the last row. He tried to keep it that way. You have to have a big heart to forgive him. I can, but it's hard." In between, George C. Wallace won four gubernatorial elections—five if you include Lurleen's—sometimes by standing on the back of a flatbed truck and letting loose with a raft of Alabama colloquialism. He also campaigned for president four times, used targeted direct mail appeals, appeared on national television, changed his wardrobe at the behest of Cornelia, his second wife, and occasionally stalked a stage in sold-out auditoriums located in the North. He adapted.1 Not unlike Wayne Flynt's description of his curiosity about Alabama—"Why does a state with so much human and natural potential settle so often for mediocrity? Why are Alabamians' expectations so low when excellence is so often within their grasp?"—I was drawn to studying George Wallace by the adaptations, the ironies, the inconsistencies, the tragedies, the unrecognized potential, the occasional forays into helping folk, the successful campaigns, the suffering he caused and the suffering he faced, the deep and enduring connection he had to so many Alabamians, and the shattering missteps; what [End Page 202] I refer to at times as sins of omission and sins of commission. Whereas Dan T. Carter's seminal work focused on the governor's influence on national politics, my writing was concerned with Wallace's impact on Alabama. And so it has been with others from within and outside of the academy who have attempted to explain the meaning and legacy of this man and his politics. The three historians and panelists who contributed to this article and to the...

Entomopathogenic nematodes (in the genus Steinernema and Heterorhabditis) have been studied and successfully commercialized as biological control agents. These organisms are highly virulent and safe for the non-target environment, animals and humans. For at least 200 target species, the nematode-bacteria complex has the potential to become a mass-marketed agricultural biopesticide. However, before nematodes can be successfully integrated into the agricultural system as a regular-use, “go-to” biopesticide, it is necessary to develop economical manufacturing processes. There are several manufacturing platforms: in vitro solid fermentation; in vitro liquid fermentation; and in vivo production. This review presents an analysis of each approach and discusses the advantages and disadvantages relative to the cost of production, technical expertise required, and quality of the final product.

In recent years, the scholarship on the massive resistance era has focused on adding depth and nuance to the story of various white responses to desegregation. Segregationists—and the responses they fashioned in the context of a sea of post–World War II protests, litigation, and legislation—became more complex if not necessarily more sympathetic figures, reacting locally, regionally, and nationally in different ways and at different times to class, gender, and racial upheaval. While some of these whites detonated bombs or looked the other way when townsfolk did, others ran for office making unrealistic promises of perpetual segregation; still others moved toward moderation, exchanging a dollop of reform for a promise to slow down the pace of the next wave of change. The larger point emerging out of much of this work is that whites consumed and responded to the changing nature of southern society in different ways, a small percentage even reacting heroically in support of a more equitable South.

In recent years, contemporary observers and scholars have argued that the distinctiveness of the American South has vanished.Historians sympathetic to this view have cited various causal factors including political shifts, economic changes, migration and demographic data, the rise of a suburban South, racial reconciliation, or a general sentiment that the North and South were always more alike than different.Southern exceptionalism, it is argued, is either gone or never was as significant as previously indicated.In fact, the operative and most persistent characteristics of the South have been cultural, not political or economic.As a result, reports of the distinctive South's demise have been premature.An examination of archetypal southern cultural characteristics such sport, food, gender, and presuppositions about family and faith indicate that the South in fact remains very much different from the rest of the country.Even elements of southern political culture remain relatively steadfast, most notably a predilection toward the politics of victimization.Despite the fall of the Confederacy, the end of slavery, the decline of the Solid Democratic South, and the comparative diminution of overt racial politics, northerners and southerners continue to manifest cultural differences and recognize these in each other.Southern culture persists.

Photorhabdus luminescens lives symbiotically with the nematode species Heterorhabditis bacteriophora. This symbiotic couple may become a bio-control key to replacing chemical pesticides. The nematode is able to infect a wide variety of destructive insects without causing harm to beneficial insect species. There are numerous advantages of biocontrol methods including decreased maintenance and less repeated use than chemical pesticides. Nematodes are also resilient to the environment for reproduction. To better assess the growth characteristics of Heterorhabditis bacteriophora, the growth kinetics of the bacterial symbiont Photorhabdus luminescens must be understood. By varying the media composition, optimal conditions were found to present the highest specific growth rate and the shortest doubling time of P. luminescens. These conditions could be scaled into mass production with high yield.

The Shadow Remains: Victimization, the Gospel of Decline, and other Southern Ingredients in the Twenty-first Century Political Culture Jeff Frederick (bio) The year 1964 was one of extraordinary moment in alabama, southern, and national politics. The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed as massive resistance to integration continued to mount across the South. A variety of states pushed to use state funds to support private segregated schools, talked openly about closing schools if necessary, tightened voting restrictions, and deployed State Sovereignty Commissions to spy on civil rights protestors. And, of course, a presidential election took place. The mood for many white southern traditionalists who had been raised to know that black and female deference and the space and place restrictions of segregation were as natural as fried chicken from a cast iron skillet and hot water cornbread was one of disbelief. What in the world was going on? These frustrations emerged into the public square in many ways. Johnny Cash, son of an Arkansas sharecropper, topped the charts with “Understand Your Man,” an homage to male prerogative if ever there was one. “Don’t call my name out your window,” Cash sang, releasing the frustrations of many who saw an increasingly modern world as an undesirable development, “I’m leavin’. I won’t even turn my head. Don’t send your kinfolk to give me no talkin’. I’ll be gone, like I said. You’d just say the same old things that you be sayin’ all along. Just lay there in your bed and keep your mouth shut, Till I’m gone.” Also in 1964, Vincent Price starred in a cult classic film, The Last Man on Earth, where he, in the personage of Dr. Robert Morgan, [End Page 321] was the title character. Morgan, the film’s flimsy plot explained, was desperately trying to survive but also to cure the world of a societal plague that had turned the people of the earth into infected, zombie-like vampires. Morgan could fix the problem and return the world to its proper and civilized social construction, if only the vampire zombies would stop trying to kill him long enough to listen and do what he said.1 As in Cash’s song and Price’s movie, three similar themes were seeping deeper into the political discourse: good God-fearing traditionalists were being victimized by changes in the culture; people, societies, and even countries should be most properly defined by their enemies, not their friends; and a belief perhaps best characterized by the term Gospel of Decline—a sentiment that the region, country, and world were falling precipitously from greatness into absolute decay. And those three themes were emerging from Alabama roots. No single figure represented the politics of victimization, the importance of having the right enemies, and the Gospel of Decline as much as Governor George Wallace. Elected governor in 1962, inaugurated in 1963, and already running for president for the first of four times in 1964, Wallace understood the zeitgeist of the moment, at least from the perspective of the white, male southerner, and had no peer in articulating this ethos of doom and gloom. He was, as Dan Carter argued in The Politics of Rage, “the alchemist of the new social conservatism” and a seminal figure for the “conservative counterrevolution that reshaped American politics in the 1970’s and 1980’s.” But while the influence of Wallace and for that matter other Alabama-born and bred political actors was relatively opaque in the 1980’s, as a mixture of optimistic Reagan-era Americana and nostalgia about a “shining city on a hill” merged with code words and dog whistle appeals, by the twenty-first century the shadow of the former governor had lengthened until ideas like victimization and [End Page 322] the Gospel of Decline have become nearly universally accepted as unquestioned facts.2 Victimization emerged as a key Wallace theme in his first term. In his testimony to the Platform Committee at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, the governor excoriated the federal government for destroying southern schools through integration, trampling state and southern rights through unwanted decree, and arbitrarily wresting private property from...

Scott E. Buchanan's short, readable biography of one-term Georgia governor Marvin Griffin argues that the colorful native of Bainbridge was an important figure—and therefore a subject worthy for a book—for two reasons. Griffin, Buchanan argues, was more than just another southern segregationist; he was a man of “charm, wit, and abilities” and his administration recorded “considerable achievements” (p. 250). And, Buchanan suggests, Griffin was a seminal figure in the changing of the Georgia political guard: after the governor left electoral politics in 1962, the state's elected leaders were more likely to be Republican, less likely to be overtly racist, and more likely to be urban or at least tied to urban interests. Of these two contentions, Buchanan is more successful in identifying Griffin as a transition point than he is making a case that the governor stood apart from Georgia, let alone southern, governors of the era. To be sure, Griffin—lieutenant governor from 1948 to 1955 and governor from 1955 to 1959—could tell a story, captivate rural Georgians from the hustings, make effective political alliances, and find ways to reward supporters through patronage or access. These skills, though practiced with great flair by Griffin, were stock-in-trade for southern governors in the period directly before and after World War II. Virulently segregationist in and out of office, Griffin defended white supremacy wholeheartedly on the stump and in front of Citizens Council gatherings. The Griffin administration, like those of plenty other southern governors, was replete with corruption and scandal, a factor that damaged Griffin's attempt at a second term as governor in 1962. The Griffin administration did boost teacher salaries and education spending, and managed to build plenty of roads and attract industrial development to the state. But in the economic climate of the first two decades after World War II, nearly all southern governors could point to similar achievements, had similar views on race and the traditional propensity to “fire the Hell out of … enemies and take care of … friends” (p. 4).

Joseph E. Lowndes's new book is among the latest texts that consider the rise of modern conservatism as it relates to southern and national political developments in the post-World War II era. Traditional accounts have placed the New Right in the context of a backlash movement originating out of the cultural clashes of the 1960s, including the civil rights movement, feminism, and opposition to the Vietnam War. The backlash theory, in its most simplistic state, suggests that white southerners flocked quickly to the Republican Party as soon as the national Democratic Party embraced the civil rights movement. Lowndes finds this backlash thesis to be simplistic; he asserts that racism was more complex and pervasive as a cause, and exaggerated patriotism was but one of a list of major effects of the conservative ascendancy within American politics. For Lowndes, the construction of a modern conservative political identity was an evolving phenomenon born of southern but also northern influences, interconnected with the overt and coded language of economic conservatives, and replete with electoral and programmatic ramifications, not the least of which was a profound anti-statist sentiment.

Book Reviews Career in Crisis: Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant and the 1971 Season of Change. By John David Briley. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2006. xv, 322 pp. $29.95. ISBN 978-0-88146-025-4. John David Briley’s Career in Crisis is the latest entry in a growing list of books about legendary Alabama football coach Bear Bryant. Although it is neither as comprehensive as a recent work by Allen Barra (The Last Coach, New York, 2005), nor as insightful as Andrew Doyle’s cultural study (in Patrick Bryant Miller’s The Sporting World of the South, Urbana, Ill., 2002), nor as dramatic as Jim Dent’s account of Bryant’s first season at Texas A&M (The Junction Boys, New York, 1999), it is likely to be enjoyed by general sports readers, especially if they are Crimson Tide fans. Like Dent and author Keith Dunnavant (The Missing Ring, New York, 2007), Briley’s focus is not just on Bryant, but on a single season of one of the Bear’s teams. Briley argues that the 1971 squad was the “most important team during [Bryant’s] twenty-five year career at the Capstone” (p. 275). Situated against the context of the Tide’s first year with African-American players and on the heels of two mediocre campaigns, the 1971 team went undefeated in the regular season to win its first of eight Southeastern Conference (SEC) championships in the decade. Only a 38-6 Orange Bowl drubbing at the hands of the Nebraska Cornhuskers on January 1, 1972, prevented Bryant from garnering yet another national championship . Bryant, who pondered forays into politics and the possibility of coaching the Miami Dolphins after the disappointing seasons of the late 1960s, successfully retooled the Alabama offense to include the wishbone formation, a rushing style patterned largely after the University of Texas. The new attack was based on discipline, precision, and above all toughness. “I am through tip-toeing around and I’m through pussyfooting ,” Bryant announced to a reporter as he planned changes for his under-achieving team. “I’m going back to being Paul Bryant; if anybody does not like the way that Paul Bryant does things, you can get the hell out of here” (p. 46). The changes in recruiting and tactics eventually resulted in three more national championships in 1973, 1978, and 1979. Scholars will learn little new from Briley’s book, though the second chapter, “A Second Reconstruction,” details the 1969 lawsuit filed by the university’s Afro-American Student Association. The student group, T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 62 mindful of the cultural importance of college football at the state’s flagship university, asked the federal court to compel Bryant to actively recruit and sign black players. Bryant had been reluctant to integrate his team, although a few black players had previously participated in spring drills. The suit was eventually dismissed after Wilbur Jackson and John Mitchell joined the team and other black prospects were aggressively recruited. As many others have concluded, Briley identifies Bryant as a coach, not an activist or a pioneer; “Bryant was the one coach in the South who could have bucked the system and integrated in the mid-sixties . He saw himself as a football coach, not an agent for social change” (p. 35). Most of the rest of the book—constructed primarily through oral histories with former players and coaches—details the weekly practices and games of the season, often painstakingly. Briley provides reams of statistics in his text: numbers of tackles, sacks, carries, pass completions, heights, weights, poll rankings, and even yardage totals from the A-Day game, the annual spring football game which caps off-season practices. Die-hard Alabama football fans will find these metrics interesting; others will find them tedious. At times, the prose lapses into melodrama—“Terry Davis did a masterful job” (p. 138) and “Parkhouse had the heart of a lion and showed it throughout the game” (p. 134)—or oversimplification —“Bryant was going to make every effort for this one” (p. 225). Even so, the book is generally readable and the appendix useful. A...