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How do southerners feel about the ways in which the rest of the country regards them? In this volume, twelve observers of the modern South discuss its persistent image as a people and place at odds with mainstream American ideals and values. Ranging from the South's climate to its religious fundamentalism to its great outpouring of fiction and autobiography, the contributors show how and why our perceptions of the region have been continually refashioned by national/southern tensions, trends, and events. At the same time, they show that although the nation has sought, time and again, to change the region, America also has used the South to expose and modify some of its own darker impulses. As editors Larry J. Griffin and Don H. Doyle point out, no single approach could clarify the complexities underlying this persistent notion of a "Problem South." Representing a diversity of backgrounds and interests, the writings in this volume are the products of strong and independent minds that cut across disciplines, disagree among themselves, blend contemporary and historical insights, and confront conventional wisdom and expedient generalities. Filled with fresh insights into the dynamics of the region's long-troubled relationship with the rest of the nation, this volume allows us all to view the current state and future course of the South, as well as its link to the broader culture and polity, in a new light.

In the fall of 1971 the United States Congress startled the international community by voting to allow American corporations to resume chromium ore imports from Rhodesia. Clearing the Senate on October 6 and the House of Representatives on November 10, Section 503 of the 1971 Military Procurement Bill stipulated that the President could no longer restrict the importation of a strategic material from a non-communist country when that same material was being imported from a communist country. The official intent of Section 503 was to reduce American dependence on Soviet chrome imports. However, many outside observers, both foreign and domestic, claimed that this “national security” decision was as much pro-Rhodesian as it was anti-Soviet. In any case, Section 503, popularly known as the Byrd Amendment, committed the United States government to participate in a direct violation of the United Nations' mandatory economic sanctions against Rhodesia's illegal white minority government.