Rituals of Initiation and Rebellion: Adolescent Responses to Segregation in Southern Autobiography

Commemorating Wilmington's Racial Violence of 1898: From Individual to Collective Memory

“…That writers continue to grapple with the region's racial heritage is hardly surprising, for it must be recognized that even the most recent autobiographers, such as McLaurin and Neilson, individuals now in their forties, personally experienced both the segregated South and the extreme social turmoil that accompanied its overthrow. 6 Recent autobiographers' continuing portrayals of their participation in segregation rituals convey the anger, pain, sadness, and guilt felt by participants. The occasional expression of a sense of guilt for the larger white society found in white autobiography, however, remains an individual response to the region's racial heritage and does not indicate a shift in racial attitudes on the part of the white majority.…”