Joseph Crespino

Joseph Crespino, Assistant Professor (B.A., Northwestern University, 1994; M.A. (Secondary School Education), University of Mississippi, 1996; M.A., Ph.D. (American History), Stanford University, 2002). Political and Social History of Twentieth-Century America; Southern History Since Reconstruction. Author of In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton University Press, Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America series, 2007). Articles include, "The Strange Career of Atticus Finch," Southern Cultures (2000) and "The Best Defense Is A Good Offense: The Stennis Amendment and the Fracturing of Liberal School Desegregation Policy," Journal of Policy History (2006). Reviews or editorials have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post Book World, and Commonweal. Dissertation: "Strategic Accommodation: Civil Rights Opponents in Mississippi and their Impact on American Racial Politics, 1953-1972" won the 2003 Dissertation Award from the Jepson School of Leadership at the University of Richmond. Book Projects In Progress: "The End of Southern History? Integrating the Modern South and the Nation" (edited collection with Matthew Lassiter, University of Michigan) and "American Kulturkampf: Segregation Academies and Church Schools Since Brown."

My research interests are in the political culture of twentieth century America, in particular, the American South in the second half of the century. My first book examined segregationist politics in Mississippi, generally considered to be the most recalcitrant southern state. The traditional view has been that by the 1960s white Mississippians, more than any other white southerners, were moral and political pariahs within a larger liberal nation, one that finally made good on its centuries old commitment to equality for all its citizens. I argue, however, that far from American pariahs, white Mississippians were key actors in a broad, popular reaction against modern liberalism that reshaped American politics in the closing decades of the twentieth century. When we place a group like white Mississippians at the center rather than at the margins of American politics, we get a very different—and, I would argue, a more revealing and incisive—view of American political development in the last half of the century.

My next two projects continue with this interest in the South and its relationship with the nation. The first is an edited collection with Matt Lassiter at the University of Michigan tentatively titled “The End of Southern History? Integrating the Modern South and the Nation.” Each of these essays grapple with the political and historiographic implications of the decline of southern distinctiveness in the post World War II period, when dramatic changes in the southern political economy undermined the structural forces that had long alienated the region from other parts of the country. We argue that southern exceptionalism was a key element in the construction of modern American political identity; the nation could be figured as modern, progressive, and liberal in large part because of the implicit juxtaposition with the outdated, backwards, conservative South.

My second book project examines the dramatic rise of private schools in the American South since the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Debates surrounding the growth of these schools have helped fuel the cultural and ideological struggles that reshaped American politics in the 1960s and 1970s. On one side, critics have characterized these schools as havens for right-wing, Christian fundamentalists trying to avoid public school desegregation. To their defenders, they were bulwarks against an increasingly secularized society that was hostile to religious faith and traditional values. My study will analyze a range of primary sources—including archival manuscript collections, government documents and court cases, interviews and a database that will trace the schools’ origins in various southern states—to evaluate these competing claims about the nature and the impact of these institutions. It will pay particular attention to this debate as it was manifested in fights over federal tax policy towards private religious schools in the 1970s and early 1980s. The study has important implications for the history of public school desegregation, evangelical politics and history, and the history of modern American conservatism.

Curriculum Vitae