Whitewashing the South: White Memories of Segregation and Civil Rights

Kristen Lavelle, assistant professor of sociology, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, presents on her 2014 book, "Whitewashing the South: White Memories of Segregation and Civil Rights." Lavelle’s research explores how ordinary white southerners recall living through extraordinary times—the Jim Crow era and the Civil Rights Movement. Drawing on interviews with the oldest living generation of white southerners – lifelong residents of Greensboro, North Carolina, known as the “birthplace of the sit-in movement" – Lavelle focuses on the complexities and nuances of how lifelong southerners remember race and racism. She highlights how people both acknowledged and downplayed Jim Crow racial oppression, appreciated desegregation and yet criticized the civil rights movement, and favorably assessed racial progress while resenting reminders of an unflattering past. The interviews showed how Greensboro's civil rights activism and school desegregation transition have been remembered and forgotten. More broadly, this research speaks to how people use memory to construct reality and a sense of self. (Sept. 26, 2016)

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