COME ON DOWN TO SEE FOR YOURSELF : SOUTHERN RAILROAD TRACKS AS RACIAL SEGREGATORS--THE CASE OF GREENVILLE NORTH CAROLINA

ECU Author/Contributor (non-ECU co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)

LaTasha R. Jones (Creator)

Institution

East Carolina University (ECU )

Web Site: http://www.ecu.edu/lib/

Advisor

Alex Albright

Abstract: Throughout American culture and through varying mediums railroad tracks have been depicted as tropes of socioeconomic repression technological development and even bountiful migration. For instance Joseph's Millichap in Dixie Limited (2002) details the symbolic use of the railroad in Southern literature and culture; he details the work of various writers such as Faulkner O'Connor Wolfe Ellison and Welty. Darcy Zabel in The (Underground) Railroad in African American Literature (2004) also focuses on the symbolic use and meaning of railroads in literature but specifically to literature garnered by black American writers. There has also been discourse on the broad concept of the "railroad track syndrome." They are usually in the form of nonfiction narratives. In them the "syndrome" may also be referred to as and/or correlated to the concept of "the other side of the tracks." The train tracks in West Greenville that intersect 5th Street (formerly Martin Luther King Jr. Drive) serve as the focal point for this area-specific illustration of the railroad track syndrome and the other side of the tracks. The aim here is to exemplify through a collection of creative nonfiction essays and photographs (all photographs can be viewed at www.latasharjones.com) the obvious divide demarcated by Greenville's train tracks the implied and explicit impacts that the divide has had on the communities in question and finally the personal connections that I have drawn from it all. 

Additional Information

Publication

Thesis

Date: 2012

Keywords

Literature, American studies, Sociology

Subjects

Railroads in literature

Railroad tracks--Symbolic aspects--North Carolina--Greenville

Segregation--Symbolic aspects--North Carolina--Greenville

American literature--African American authors--History and criticism

Greenville (N.C.)--Race relations

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