Old South Baton Rouge is the culmination of diligent archival research and more than ten years of collecting oral histories about the Old South Baton Rouge community, including McKinley High School, the Baton Rouge Bus Boycott, the once-thriving OSBR business corridor, and the numerous churches and civic groups of the neighborhood.

Founded in 1699, Baton Rouge was the site of countless historic events and the home to many people, including those of African ancestry. South Baton Rouge is an African American community located in Baton Rouge. It was one of the first places African Americans could receive a high school education in the state. The three-mile community around historic McKinley High School was the site of the nation's first successful bus boycott. When laws restricted where African Americans could live, work, learn, and play, South Baton Rouge was a refuge. African American restaurants, theaters, gas stations, and other businesses populated the community, and change-makers, including African American lawyers, judges, clergy, educators, and nurses, helped to sustain the community and other portions of the southern half of Louisiana's capital through the end of legal segregation and beyond.

Series statement from publisher's website.

Exhibiting a clear, straightforward style, his many works are marked by a comprehensiveness and a catholicity of view. There is hardly an element of southern thought or society, hardly a major movement of any kind or an event of any significance that has escaped his penetrating thought and discerning analysis. This volume of Eaton's selected writings forms a rich and provocative mosaic of southern life from the years of Thomas Jefferson to the close of the Civil War. These selections, perceptively edited by Albert D. Kinvan, 'show the wide range of Eaton's interests, including the impact of slavery, the influence of religion, and the art of politics, and they demonstrate the depth of his insight into the civilization of the Old South.

The Enigmatic South brings together leading scholars of the Civil War period to challenge existing perceptions of the advance to secession, the Civil War, and its aftermath. The pioneering research and innovative arguments of these historians bring crucial insights to the study of this era in American history. Christopher Childers, Sarah L. Hyde, and Julia Huston Nguyen consider the ways politics, religion, and education contributed to southern attitudes toward secession in the antebellum period. George C. Rable, Paul F. Paskoff, and John M. Sacher delve into the challenges the Confederate South faced as it sought legitimacy for its cause and military strength for the coming war with the North. Richard Follett, Samuel C. Hyde, Jr., and Eric H. Walther offer new perspectives on the changes the Civil War wrought on the economic and ideological landscape of the South. The essays in The Enigmatic South speak eloquently to previously unconsidered aspects and legacies of the Civil War and make a major contribution to our understanding of the rich history of a conflict whose aftereffects still linger in American culture and memory.

Families in Crisis in the Old South: Divorce, Slavery, and the Law