The LBJ Foundation honors
DAVID A. BATEMAN, Cornell University
IRA KATZNELSON, Columbia University
JOHN S. LAPINSKI, University of Pennsylvania
with the 32nd D.B. Hardeman Prize for the best book on the United States Congress
Southern Nation: Congress and White Supremacy after Reconstruction
Discussion moderator: Peniel Joseph, LBJ School of Public Affairs
hosted by the LBJ Washington Center
Thursday, May 27, 2021, 1 p.m. - 2 p.m. ET
This is a virtual event.
WATCH:
About the Book
Southern Nation: Congress and White Supremacy after Reconstruction
By David A. Bateman, Ira Katznelson and John S. Lapinski
How southern members of Congress remade the United States in their own image after the Civil War
No question has loomed larger in the American experience than the role of the South. Southern Nation examines how southern members of Congress shaped national public policy and American institutions from Reconstruction to the New Deal—and along the way remade the region and the nation in their own image.
The central paradox of southern politics was how such a highly diverse region could be transformed into a coherent and unified bloc—a veritable nation within a nation that exercised extraordinary influence in politics. This book shows how this unlikely transformation occurred in Congress, the institutional site where the South's representatives forged a new relationship with the rest of the nation. Drawing on an innovative theory of southern lawmaking, in-depth analyses of key historical sources and congressional data, Southern Nation traces how southern legislators confronted the dilemma of needing federal investment while opposing interference with the South's racial hierarchy, a problem they navigated with mixed results before choosing to prioritize white supremacy above all else.
Southern Nation reveals how southern members of Congress gradually won for themselves an unparalleled role in policymaking, and left all southerners—whites and blacks—disadvantaged to this day. At first, the successful defense of the South's capacity to govern race relations left southern political leaders locally empowered but marginalized nationally. With changing rules in Congress, however, southern representatives soon became strategically positioned to profoundly influence national affairs.
About the Authors
David A. Bateman is an associate professor of government at Cornell University, where he is a co-director of the Politics of Race, Immigration, Class, and Ethnicity (PRICE) Initiative. He is the author of Disenfranchising Democracy: Constructing the Electorate in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, and co-author with Ira Katznelson and John S. Lapinski of Southern Nation: Congress and White Supremacy after Reconstruction. His research focuses on democratic institutions, including legislatures, political rights and citizenship, as well as ideas and ideologies of race and racism. His current research examines Black political and labor activism in the early 20th century and its impact on American statebuilding.
Ira Katznelson is Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University. His Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (2013) was awarded the Bancroft Prize in History and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award in Political Science. In addition to Southern Nation: Congress and White Supremacy after Reconstruction (2018; with David Bateman and John Lapinski), other recent books include Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns (2008; with Andreas Kalyvas), When Affirmative Action Was White (2006), and Desolation and Enlightenment: Political Knowledge After Total War, Totalitarianism, and the Holocaust (2003). He has served as Pitt Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge (2017-18), and as president of the Social Science Research Council (2012-17), the American Political Science Association (2005-06), and the Social Science History Association (1997-98).
John Lapinski, Ph.D., is the Robert A. Fox Professor of Political Science, faculty director of the Robert A. Fox Leadership Program and the director of the Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies. He also serves as the faculty director for the Executive Masters of Public Administration program within the Fels Institute of Government and as the director of the Elections Unit at NBC News. In his role for NBC News, Lapinski is responsible for projecting races for the network and produces election-related stories through exit polls for NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo and all of NBC's digital properties. Dr. Lapinski earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 2000, and previously was an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Yale University. He came to Penn in 2006. His primary area of research is concerned with understanding national elections as well as lawmaking in Congress through empirical analysis. He is the author of The Substance of Representation (Princeton University Press, 2013) and co-author (with David A. Bateman and Ira Katznelson) of Southern Nation (Princeton University Press, 2018).
About the Moderator
Peniel E. Joseph in the Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and professor of history and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of numerous books on African American history, most recently, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., which was named by TIME magazine as one of 100 Must Read Books of 2020; PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography Finalist; Best Books of the Year-The Guardian; Times Literary Supplement; Best Political Books of 2020-Financial Times; Benjamin Hooks National Book Award Finalist; Best Political Books of 2020-Financial Times; New York Times Sunday Book Review Editor's Pick.
About the D.B. Hardeman Prize
The D.B. Hardeman Prize is awarded for the best book on the U.S. Congress, from the fields of biography, history, journalism, and political science. Hardeman, a dedicated student of and avid collector of books about the Congress, was a long-time assistant to legendary Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn of Texas. Submissions are judged on the basis of five criteria: (1) contribution to scholarship, (2) contribution to the public's understanding of Congress, (3) literary craftsmanship, (4) originality and (5) depth of research.