Cold War Dixie

Militarization and Modernization in the American South

Kari Frederickson, Jane Dailey

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780820345208
  9780820345192
• eBook ISBN:
  9780820345666
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Focusing on the impact of the Savannah River Plant (SRP) on the communities it created, rejuvenated, or displaced, this book explores the parallel militarization and modernization of the Cold War-era South. The SRP, a scientific and industrial complex near Aiken, South Carolina, grew out of a 1950 partnership between the Atomic Energy Commission and the DuPont Corporation and was dedicated to producing materials for the hydrogen bomb. Kari Frederickson shows how the needs of the expanding national security state, in combination with the corporate culture of DuPont, transformed the economy, landscape, social relations, and politics of this corner of the South. In 1950, the area comprising the SRP and its surrounding communities was primarily poor, uneducated, rural, and staunchly Democratic; by the mid-1960s, it boasted the most PhDs per capita in the state and had become increasingly middle class, suburban, and Republican.

The SRP's story is notably dramatic; however, Frederickson argues, it is far from unique. The influx of new money, new workers, and new business practices stemming from Cold War-era federal initiatives helped drive the emergence of the Sunbelt. These factors also shaped local race relations. In the case of the SRP, DuPont's deeply conservative ethos blunted opportunities for social change, but it also helped contain the radical white backlash that was so prominent in places like the Mississippi Delta that received less Cold War investment.

NOTES

Abbreviations

ACC Minutes	Minutes, Aiken City Council, Aiken County Government Complex, Aiken, South Carolina
AED Records	E. I. Du Pont de Nemours and Company, Atomic Energy Division Records, Gregg-Graniteville Library, University of South Carolina at Aiken
ASR	Aiken Standard and Review
BRM	Burnet R. Maybank
BRM Papers	Burnet R. Maybank Papers, Special Collections, Marlene and Nathan Addlestone Library, College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina
CAN	Curtis A. Nelson
HLA	Harry L. Alston
HH	Harry Hammond
HOD	Harold O. DeWitt
HST Papers	Harry S. Truman Papers, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri
JAT	Julius A. Thomas
JSB	John Shaw Billings
JSB/FWB Papers	John Shaw Billings and Frederika Wade Billings Papers, Manuscripts, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina at Columbia
NCJ	Nelson C. Jackson
NUL-SRO	Papers of the National Urban League—Southern Regional Office, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
SHS	Samuel H. Swint
SHS Papers	Samuel H. Swint Papers, Gregg-Graniteville Library, University of South Carolina at Aiken
SRPP	E. I. Du Pont de Nemours and Company, Atomic Energy Division, Savannah River Plant Papers, Accession 1957, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware
WDW	William D. Workman
WDW Papers	William D. Workman Papers, Modern Political Collections, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina at Columbia

Introduction

1. Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt, 141. For military spending and the South, see also Markusen et al., Rise of the Gunbelt; David L. Carlton, “The American South and the U.S. Defense Economy,” in South, the Nation, and the World, ed. Carlton and Coclanis, 152–53; Hooks, “Guns and Butter.”

2. For the impact of the Cold War on western development generally, see Hevly and Findlay, Atomic West; Lotchin, Fortress California; Nash, American West Transformed; Nash, Federal Landscape; McGirr, Suburban Warriors; Fernlund, Cold War American West.

3. See Findlay and Hevly, Atomic Frontier Days; Gerber, On the Home Front; Sanger, Working on the Bomb; Hunner, Inventing Los Alamos; Fishbine, Children of Usher; Litchman, Secrets; Shroyer, Secret Mesa; Charles W. Johnson and Jackson, City behind a Fence; Olwell, At Work in the Atomic City; Leland Johnson and Schaffer, Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Hales, Atomic Spaces; Fischer, Los Alamos Experience.

4. Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt, 149. For examinations of southern military bases and their impact on their host communities, see Myers, Black, White, and Olive Drab; Lutz, Homefront; Phillips, “Building a New South Metropolis.”

5. The historiography of the civil rights movement is large and ever-expanding. Key older works include Dittmer, Local People; Carson, In Struggle; Payne, I’ve Got the Light; Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights. More recent works have expanded the parameters of the movement beyond the traditional 1954–65 framework, putting greater emphasis on activism during the New Deal and World War II eras. For civil rights activism in the 1930s and 1940s, see Sullivan, Days of Hope; Egerton, Speak Now against the Day; Frederickson, Dixiecrat Revolt; Brooks, Winning the Peace; Kruse and Tuck, Fog of War.

6. See Lassiter, Silent Majority; Kruse, White Flight.

7. Sullivan, Days of Hope; Egerton, Speak Now against the Day; Gilmore, Defying Dixie; Tyson, Radio Free Dixie; Woods, Black Struggle, Red Scare; Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights.

8. Stewart, “What Nature Suffers to Groe,” 12.

9. Mart A. Stewart, “Southern Environmental History,” in Companion, ed. Boles, 414–15.

10. The respective roles of race and class in the rebirth of the Republican Party in the South are topics of fierce scholarly debate. For those arguing for the primacy of race, see Carter, Politics of Rage; Carter,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• One. “This Most Essential Task”: The Decision to Build the Super
• Two. A Varied Landscape: Geography and Culture in the Savannah River Valley
• Three. “A Land Doomed and Damned”: The Costs of Militarization
• Four. “Bigger’n Any Lie”: Building the Bomb Plant
• Five. Rejecting the Garrison State: National Priorities and Local Limitations
• Six. “Better Living”: Life in a Cold War Company Town
• Seven. Shifting Landscapes: Politics and Race in a Cold War Community
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index