May 5, 2020

Tom Hanchett’s “Sorting Out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875 to 1975″

Podcast: Download (Duration: 57:29 — 52.8MB)

In this episode 102 at our first Dinner and a Podcast at Poplar Tapas, we meet Tom Hanchett, author of “Sorting Out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875 to 1975 (2^nd Edition).

The New York Times says that “Tom Hanchett’s Sorting Out the New South City [discovers] surprising things about the development of Southern cities.”

And Southern Cultures says of the book: “This is a southern story of the emergence of mercantile, industrial, banking, and real estate entrepreneurs and how they shaped a city in an era of black disenfranchisement, Jim Crow, and the waning political power of white workers. . . . [Hanchett] provides a broad context for understanding that the shape of our cities is far from happenstance.”

The re-release of the book serves as a call for cities not to forget their past as they chart their future. Tom starts the show with a reading from the Preface to the Second Edition.

Connect with the author

Check out the author’s website here: www.HistorySouth.org

Check out the author’s social media here:

https://www.facebook.com/tom.hanchett

https://www.twitter.com/HistorySouth

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About the Author

Author Tom Hanchett came to Charlotte in 1981 to study older neighborhoods for the Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission. What began as a fourteen-month grant stretched into six years, as Tom discovered the rich history of this city that did not think of itself as historic. Tom’s UNC PhD dissertation in American history was the basis for his 1998 book, Sorting Out the New South City. Tom taught at Emory University in Atlanta, Youngstown State in in Ohio, and Cornell University in New York before getting a call from the fledgling Levine Museum of the New South back in Charlotte. In sixteen years at Levine Museum, Tom co-led the creation of a string of award-winning exhibitions.

Tom retired from Levine Museum at the end of 2015 but continues to work as a freelance community historian. The city that Tom Hanchett came to as a youngster right out of college in 1981 seems to have fully adopted him. A Charlotte Magazine profile called him “Charlotte’s Dr. History” and the magazine named him a Charlottean of the Year. Among other contributions he continues to make to the fabric of the city, Tom serves as honorary Historian-in-Residence with the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room at the uptown Charlotte Mecklenburg Library and writes a monthly column called “Food from Home” for the Charlotte Observer.

Tom is honored that UNC Press has re-issued Sorting Out the New South City. He says this about the city and his book: “Charlotte is nowhere near perfect; [but] knowing our history can help us understand that and take action to make things better. What Charlotte does have, in great measure, is a sense of possibility. In this fast-growing city, there’s a shared feeling that people can make history.”

Making Mid-rolls Fun

Our mid-roll guest this week is Fabi Preslar, with Spark Publications.

Fabi Preslar is owner and president of SPARK Publications, a national, award-winning, independent publishing firm specializing in the design of niche magazines, special publications, and independently published books for print, digital, and interactive media.

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