New Encyclopedia : From A to Z, the Southern Point of View

Did you know that Southern poultry farmers account for 61% of the nation’s chicken production, that Coca-Cola was concocted by an Atlanta pharmacist 100 years ago mainly as a cure for hangovers and that there are only four rabbis in the whole state of Mississippi?

How about this: What modern-day invention has contributed the most to the decline in the South’s traditional cultural isolationism, agrarianism, romanticism, poverty, neighborliness, strong sense of place and summer evenings on the front porch.

Answer: the air conditioner, of course.

Facts and Figures

These are only a few of the facts and figures being compiled by scholars at the University of Mississippi here in Oxford for the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.

Already seven years in the making, the 1,200-page alphabetized and illustrated volume is set for publication in late 1987 and promises to be the most complete reference work ever produced on the mind, mores and mythology of Dixie, with entries ranging from Architects of Colonial Williamsburg to Zydeco Blues.

“There are other reference books on the South that look at the region from the point of view of a particular field of study, like sociology or music,” said William Ferris, director of the university’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture and one of the two co-editors of the new encyclopedia. “But this is the first that will offer a panoramic view of the region, with the best and worst aspects of Southern culture.”

Comprising more than 1,000 entries, the book is a kind of “Everything You Wanted to Know About the South--and More.” There are treatises on such diverse themes as agricultural and rural life, class and social structure, ethnic and cultural minorities, sports and leisure, and women and family life.

Biographical subjects range from Thomas Jefferson, the Virginia-born aristocrat-farmer-statesman-intellectual who wrote the Declaration of Independence, to legendary mule trader Ray Lum of Mississippi, who summed up his philosophy of life in these words: “You live and learn, and you die and forget.”

Other listings cover such Dixieana as Maiden Aunts, Cheerleading and Baton Twirling, Moon Pies, Convict Leasing, Kudzu, Okra, Snake Handlers, Pickup Trucks, Armadillos, Spanish Moss and the Rebel Yell.

Entry on Candy Bar

There is even an entry on Goo-Goo Clusters, a candy bar made from chocolate, caramel, marshmallow and peanuts that is known throughout the South from its advertisements on the Grand Ol’ Opry broadcasts.

“There’s a famous Southern saying that the first thing a baby wants is a Goo-Goo bar,” said Charles Wilson, a University of Mississippi professor of history and Southern studies who is the co-editor.

Contributions on subjects have come from more than 800 experts from across the South and as far away as Europe. For example, the French literary biographer Michel Fabre wrote the entry on the great Mississippi-born writer Richard Wright, author of “Black Boy” and “Native Son.”

One of the hardest specialists to find was someone to write the entry on Southern-style sex. Florence King, author of the steamy “Southern Ladies and Gentlemen” and “Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady,” turned down the invitation.

Author’s Refusal

“She said she felt she had written too much on the subject anyway and she only did so because the overheated imagination of the American public demanded that its writers write on sex,” Wilson said.

After months of searching, however, not one but two experts were found: one to write on sexual behavior and the other to look at attitudes on sex below the Mason-Dixon Line.

Yes, according to the encyclopedia, Southerners do it differently--or, at least, approach it in a different frame of mind.

“Southern culture has taught that there are proper roles or models for sex,” Wilson said. “So you get the coed who thinks she’s Scarlett O’Hara or the young man who thinks he’s Rhett Butler. Or the good ole boy who thinks he’s Billy Carter.”

Good Ole Girls

Incidentally, there is an entry on Good Ole Boys--and Good Ole Girls. Billy Carter, however, is found under the Carter Family listing.

The book is aimed at the broadest possible audience, from the serious scholar involved in academic research to the casual reader dabbling in Southern-style Trivial Pursuit. Thus, even though the majority of entries are by university professors, technical jargon is avoided.

Moreover, the book strives to give as complete a picture of a subject as possible. For example, the entry on the magnolia includes not only botanical information on this quintessential Southern blossom but an explanation of the term “Iron Magnolia,” used in reference to a type of Southern woman whose outwardly delicate manner masks an implacable will to power.

“The South offers an extraordinarily rich mix of resources for a work like this,” said Ferris, a Mississippi native who first conceived of the project while a folklore professor at Yale University.

In 1977, the University of Mississippi created the Southern studies center and hired Ferris as its first director two years later. The encyclopedia became the new institution’s flagship research effort and reflects Ferris’ belief that Southern culture is more than moonlight and magnolias.

Taught Pigs to Pray

At Yale, for instance, he once made a documentary film about a Mississippi farmer who taught his pigs to pray before slopping at the feed trough.

Since returning to Mississippi, Ferris has made Ole Miss’ Center for the Study of Southern Culture the home of a unique degree program in Southern studies, the world’s largest blues music archives and an annual William Faulkner conference that draws scholars from as far away as the Soviet Union and Japan--as well as the Southern encyclopedia.

Work on the reference volume is being financed by a total of $248,989 in grants from the National Foundation for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, the Atlantic-Richfield Foundation, and the Mary Doyle Trust of San Francisco, as well as by contributions from private individuals.

Those who contribute entries receive no pay for their efforts, however.

“This is largely a labor of love,” said Wilson, who was brought to Ole Miss in 1981 from Texas Technological University primarily to work on the encyclopedia project.

$40 Price Expected

The volume will be published by the University of North Carolina Press, which pioneered in publishing of books on Southern topics and is subsidizing some of the printing costs from its own development fund. The encyclopedia, which is scheduled to come out in the fall of 1987 in time for the Christmas book-buying season, is expected to retail for about $40.

Ferris said the project has stimulated the interest of scholars at the University of Massachusetts and at colleges in Utah and California to attempt similar efforts on their respective geographic regions.

“There is also international interest in this in Africa, Europe and the Soviet Union,” he said. “A number of groups there see this as a project they want to follow closely and possibly emulate.”

A SOUTHERN SAMPLER Nuggets of information about life in Dixie gleaned from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, now in preparation. “Pot likker,” the leftover cooking juice in a collard greens pot, is a Southern delicacy best sopped up with cornbread and is said to have aphrodisiac powers. In the South, 33% of tractors have air conditioning. Southern ministers once blamed a Yankee contraption, the automobile, for a sharp decline in sexual morality, family ties, religious worship, law and order, and spiritual values. At the age of 12, legendary Coach Paul Bryant of the University of Alabama fought a bear at the Lyric Theater in Fordyce, Ark. Thus his name Bear Bryant. Actress Bette Davis was New England born and bred, but won undying fame for her portrayals of scheming Southern vixens in the 1938 film “Jezebel” and the 1941 film “The Little Foxes.” Margaret Mitchell, whose novel “Gone with the Wind” glorified the cavalier tradition of the antebellum South, was in real life blackballed from membership in the Atlanta Junior League in the 1920’s after performing a shocking French Apache dance at a debutante charity ball. The knife was the main eating utensil in the 19th Century South and slurping coffee from a saucer was not considered bad manners. The common Southern phrase “goin jukin” means going out for good times drinking and dancing at a roadside “honkytonk.” Gilley’s ---- the gargantuan bar in Pasadena, Tex., that was the setting for the movie “Urban Cowboy” ---- can accommodate 4,500 customers at a time. Liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, an Alabama native, as a young man was a member of the Ku Klux Klan for two years.