It is commonplace to regard the US South as a political backwater. Many liberals see Southerners as irredeemable red-state voters, mired in racist parochialism or bible-thumping backwardness. It is of course true that many states in the South are today, and have been for the last century, bastions of low wages and business-friendly economics, while its political class has championed reactionary and racist social policies. But what the liberal account almost always gets wrong are the origins of Southern backwardness.

Southerners, we are told, are culturally distinct, and that culture is pathological. This has justified their abandonment by the Democratic Party and even, at times, the labor movement, both of which have often decided to dedicate their limited resources to what they view as more winnable fights in the North. If Southerners stand in the way of progress — despite that progress being in their own interests — their will must be circumvented on the journey to a more humane future.

But such popular accounts of Southern backwardness ignore several important details. Organized labor and progressive politics do not fail in the South because of some ingrained cultural irrationality. Rather, the proliferation of reactionary politics is the by-product of a labor movement that was, and continues to be, systematically suppressed.