#262 Atlanta & Charlotte: Women's History in the Urban South w/ La Shonda Mims

The Road to Now

Benjamin Sawyer

Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the 20^th Century, leaders in Atlanta and Charlotte championed a "New South" vision that they hoped would attract the investment needed to transform their regional trading hubs into world-class urban centers. The success in both cases was undeniable, but it was also not equal. Despite Charlotte's success as a banking hub, it has lagged far behind Atlanta in terms of its economy and its place in American culture. And one possible reason for this gap may be in the way the two cities treated their gay and lesbian communities.

In this episode, historian La Shonda Mims joins Ben for a discussion about the history of lesbian communities in Atlanta and Charlotte, the ways they shaped and reflected the cities they inhabited, and how tracing the development of lesbian spaces can help us better understand urban history. La Shonda also explains how lesbians' stories in urban spaces can reveal the greater social and economic realities that women have experienced throughout US history.

Dr. La Shonda Mims is Assistant Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University. She is author of Drastic Dykes and Accidental Activists: Queer Women in the Urban South (UNC Press, 2022) and recently published a piece entitled "LGBTQ Pride in the South has been Marked by Resistance and Resilience" in The Washington Post's Made By History.

This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone and thank you for listening to The Road to Now.
0:07.5	Before you start this episode, just wanted to let everyone know that the extended cut of this episode with 20 minutes of extra material and my conversation with Lashonda Mims is available on our Patreon page.
0:19.1	If you want to check it out there, it's patreon.com slash the road to now.
0:23.2	We've got the bonus for this episode, the last episode, and moving forward, full and edited
0:28.5	cuts will be there.
0:30.4	So that's usually 20, 30 minutes of extra material that we cut down and don't have in the
0:35.5	main episode.
0:36.5	If you want to support this podcast and get the bonuses there and other extra perks, please
0:40.6	join us on Patreon.
0:42.3	That is patreon.com slash the road to now.
0:45.9	If you're already there, thank you so much.
0:48.7	If not, we'd love to have you.
0:51.2	Either way, please enjoy this episode with Lashonda Mims. I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the
0:57.3	Road to Now and not just any Road to Now, kind of special Road to Now, honestly, because
1:01.5	we're here at my house and in-person Road to Now. Bob Crawford was drafted into the NHL so
1:08.9	he can't be here. Different Bob Crawford. Okay. No, Bob couldn't be here today.
1:12.3	He is on assignment. And so it's me. And, you know, sometimes things work out because it turns out
1:19.5	that the day that Bob couldn't be here, we had a great scholar named Lashonda Mims, keyed up,
1:26.9	and Lashonda lives approximately 0.8 miles from my house.
1:31.3	And we actually, I think we work apart.
1:33.4	Our offices are further apart on MTSU's campus than our houses are apart in Nashville.
1:37.9	And Lashonda has written this fantastic new book.
	...

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