The Southern Agrarians, as they were known, blamed modernity, urbanization, and industrialization for destroying the best of American traditions in the name of progress, and they championed what they called an “agrarian” way of life, one steeped in independence, which they believed would answer the South’s economic, political, and racial problems. The Southern Agrarians included some of the South’s best-known white literary figures, but it was a housewife from Atlanta who truly popularized their version of Reconstruction. Margaret Mitchell had grown up enamored of Thomas Dixon’s books—as a
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