Henry Grady’s New South: Atlanta, a Brave and Beautiful City

Product Description

The popular image of Henry W. Grady is that of a champion of the postbellum South, a region that would forgive the North for defeating it and would mobilize its own many resources for hones business and agricultural competition. Biographies and collections of Grady’s essays and speeches that appeared shortly after his death enhanced this image, and for a half-century, Grady was considered the personification of the New South Movement, a movement which promised industrialization for the South, an improved Southern agriculture, and justice and opportunity for black Southerners. As managing editor of the Atlanta Constitution, he espoused the New South throughout the nation and was in demand as a speaker for audiences in New York and Boston.

Through extensive research, focusing on the decade of the 1880s in Georgia, Davis demonstrates that although Grady said all the right things to show that he wished to industrialize the South and that he was committed to the improvement of agriculture and fairness in racial matters, in fact he spent most of his efforts on behalf of Atlanta. His major interest was in making a difference for that city, leaving the rest of the South to enjoy whatever Atlanta could not garner for itself.



Review

“This is a very engaging book written in a pleasing and informal style. It provides important new insights into the personality and historical significance of Henry Grady. Such a study of Grady is long overdue.”—James C. Cobb, University of Tennessee

“Harold E. Davis has written a study of Henry Grady and the Atlanta Constitution that readers will find highly enjoyable [and he] writes so well that his study is a pleasure to read. I even found myself laughing out loud occasionally, a rare experience in reading a historical study….One of the clearest and most accurate accounts of the New South Movement.”—William F. Holmes, The University of Georgia


About the Author

Harold E. Davis is Research Professor Emeritus, Georgia State University, Atlanta.