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Hidden Histories of Women in the New South. Ed. by Virginia Bernhard, Betty Brandon, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Theda Perdue, and Elizabeth Hayes Turner. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994. x, 253 pp. $34.95, ISBN 0-8262-0958-0.)
In this collection of essays, first presented as papers at the second Southern Conference on Women's History in 1931, the editors have selected a group of articles that examine the lives of southern women pushed to the margins of society and history: institutionalized women, rural women, and grass-roots activists. As the editors note, the essays explore southern women's history from three perspectives and are arranged in three corresponding sections: "Institutions of social control, gender prescriptions and government programs, and racial cooperation in the pursuit of social change."
All of these essays scrutinize southern history through the matrix of race, class, and gender. One of the admirable qualities of the collection is each author's commitment to examining the experiences of both Black and white women. All...