A Golden Haze of Memory: The Making of Historic CharlestonUniv of North Carolina Press, 2006 M03 8 - 304 pages Charleston, South Carolina, today enjoys a reputation as a destination city for cultural and heritage tourism. In A Golden Haze of Memory, Stephanie E. Yuhl looks back to the crucial period between 1920 and 1940, when local leaders developed Charleston's trademark image as "America's Most Historic City." Eager to assert the national value of their regional cultural traditions and to situate Charleston as a bulwark against the chaos of modern America, these descendants of old-line families downplayed Confederate associations and emphasized the city's colonial and early national prominence. They created a vibrant network of individual artists, literary figures, and organizations--such as the all-white Society for the Preservation of Negro Spirituals--that nurtured architectural preservation, art, literature, and tourism while appropriating African American folk culture. In the process, they translated their selective and idiosyncratic personal, familial, and class memories into a collective identity for the city. The Charleston this group built, Yuhl argues, presented a sanitized yet highly marketable version of the American past. Their efforts invited attention and praise from outsiders while protecting social hierarchies and preserving the political and economic power of whites. Through the example of this colorful southern city, Yuhl posits a larger critique about the use of heritage and demonstrates how something as intangible as the recalled past can be transformed into real political, economic, and social power. |
Contents
| 1 | |
A Golden Haze of Memory and Association The Creation of a Historic Charleston Landscape | 21 |
The Legend Is Truer than the Fact Artistic Representations of Race Time and Place | 53 |
History Touches Legend in Charleston The Literary Packaging of Americas Most Historic City | 89 |
Here Came Remembrance Staging Race and Performing the Past | 127 |
Where Mellow Past and Present Meet Selling History by the Sea | 157 |
Afterword | 189 |
Organizational Memberships and Select Authorship of Major White Cultural Leaders in Charleston 1920 1940 | 195 |
Notes | 199 |
| 261 | |
| 279 | |
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African American Albert Simons Alice Allen architectural artists Association audience beauty became Book buildings called Carolina Press century Charleston Charlestonians Church city’s Civil claimed Collection colonial Company concert considered continued Courier created cultural described DuBose Heyward early elite white Elizabeth example ffff Frost Garden Gibbes Gullah historical House identity images individuals interest January John Bennett landscape literary living Low Country Manigault March memory Museum Negro newspaper clipping North noted novel organization past performances Pinckney plantation Poetry Society poets political popular Porgy present Preservation president Pringle produced professional pssc published quoted racial Ravenel recording region Renaissance Review rice Robert SCHS Scrapbook singing slave Smith social Society’s songs South Carolina Southern Spirituals SPOD SPS Papers Stoney story Street Susan Thomas tion tourist tradition University Press Verner visitors women writers York
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Page 3 - A city of ruins, of desolation, of vacant houses, of widowed women, of rotting wharves, of deserted warehouses, of weed-wild gardens, of miles of grass-grown streets, of acres of pitiful and voiceful barrenness...