Salvation South

In 2015, novelist Jonathan Odell, a Mississippi native, shared the stage with a legend of Southern literature, Pat Conroy, at Georgia’s Decatur Book Festival. In this lovely remembrance, he recalls how Conroy treated his fans like family.

In Salvation South’s story lineup this week, we do a deep dive into the Ring Shout — an essential piece of Southern culture. We throw in some Elvis Presley and Pat Conroy for a bonus.

The Ring Shout — an ecstatic and transcendent spiritual dance rooted in West Africa — rose historically through the South as a tool of Black resistance. Today, its cultural significance and power serve the purpose of collective healing and the expression of Black joy.

How a Yankee found religion in the music of the boy from Tupelo

Musicians as exciting as Willi Carlisle come along once in a blue moon.

“Salvation.” It’s right there in our name. It’s an elusive state attained via unexpected detours and poorly drawn maps. Willi Carlisle’s second album, “Peculiar, Missouri,” lays bare the peculiar path that this Arkansas man traveled to a place where he can see salvation waiting for him.

An Episcopal priest’s poem ponders what we mean when we ask the question, “And who is my neighbor?”

Atlanta’s Abra Lee is on a quest to recognize Black America’s greatest horticulturists.

A short story about a North Carolina country woman who takes a bus into a better, brighter life — but one that lasts only for a day.

A special message to everyone who’s visiting us for the first time from Georgia Public Broadcasting.

Poet Joshua Lavender, a South Georgia native, brings us verses that resurrect how folks talk in the country.

Last week, Charles McNair brought us the story of the 50-year reunion of the Dothan High School class of 1972, the first fully integrated class in that Alabama town. This week, his friend James “Shack” Thompson brings us a remembrance of the Black high school that closed when desegregation happened.