Selling the South: Gentrifying Alabama’s Appalachian culture

Selling the South: Gentrifying Alabama’s Appalachian culture

Take a walk around downtown Tuscaloosa, and you’ll see it: $80 houndstooth sweatshirts, boutique “Southern belle” dresses and Dixieland Delight-emblazoned mugs line the shelves of souvenir stores, being sold to out-of-state students and their families who may never actually set foot outside of the Tuscaloosa city limits. Meanwhile — just a few miles north — families with deep Appalachian roots are actively being dismissed. What students may not …