Ask an Urban Historian: The South

Dr. Julian Chambliss is professor of history at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. His work has recently appeared in Encyclopedia of the Great Migration, Studies in American Culture and the Florida Historical Quarterly. He is the president of the Florida Conference of Historians and co-chair of the Social Science History Association’s Urban Network.

Roughly a quarter of the United States’ 10,000 “Irish Travellers” are in Murphy Village, S.C. Why have so many set up camp there?

The “Irish Travellers” in the United States are related to Irish horse traders that roamed Ireland for centuries. Often associated with gypsies, they are not technically defined as such. While they do self-identify as a distinct cultural subgroup, their status is contested (recognized by the United Kingdom, but rejected by Ireland). The Irish Travellers who first came to the United States left Ireland in 1850. Attracted to gentler climates because of their lifestyle, the Irish Travellers were well known in the South as wandering peddlers. The Murphy Village settlement was created in 1966 by Father Joseph Murphy, a Catholic priest who believed the Travellers’ traditional lifestyle could not continue in the modern world. The settlement serves as a permanent base for women and children, while male Travellers continue to roam for work. A closed society, the group maintains a clannish structure based on intermarriage and learning family trades (most Traveller children do not attend high school). South Carolina’s Murphy Village cluster is the largest enclave in the U.S. Some 350 families have been linked to the settlement. The group has drawn attention from law enforcement in Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama and South Carolina for years because of organized fraud allegations against group members. 

What are the concrete differences between Southern and Northern cities? Which is to say, why the distinction?

Southernism relates to the area covered by the Confederate States of America from 1861 to 1865. Slavery shaped the Southern way of life. From this grew dissimilar economic and social structures that helped heighten both regions’ unique attributes. The South’s agrarian economy didn’t foster an industrial desire, but the corresponding urbanization in the North did. As a result, most Southern cities were ports exporting cash crops. Socially, the economy’s dependency on slavery created a biracial society based on white domination. Yet, equally important was the structural inequality that placed social, economic and political power in the hands of an elite class. In this world, individual liberties of white men were protected, personal chivalry was normal and politics worked to support states’ rights. After the Civil War, Southerners embraced urbanization and industrialization as the key to recover from the war’s devastation, but they also mythologized Old Southern values.

Following the Civil War, it took the Supreme Court four years to declare the South’s secession from the United States unconstitutional. Why the time lapse?

The Supreme Court case Texas V. White did not begin as a court case about the legality of secession. The actual case centered on a state suit against George W. White and several others. It was filed in February 1867 by A.J. Hamilton, the governor of Texas during Reconstruction. The state acted to restrain the defendants from using bonds paid to them by Texas after secession for supplies used by the Confederate States of America (CSA). The historically important question in the case was whether or not Texas, having joined the CSA and having not yet completed Reconstruction, could pursue a lawsuit in the United States Supreme Court. Because of the issues in the case, the standing of all Reconstruction governments, and by extension the legality of secession, was affected. The case upheld Reconstruction and made clear the legal grounds for rejecting secession.