Response to "Dying for Dixie"

My initial feeling after reading this chapter of “Confederates in the Attic” was amazement at how people could still act that way. I was astonished that there are still people who are that ignorant. The whole over-production of the death and funeral of Michael Westerman made it seem as though the people of Guthrie had finally gotten a reason to justify the feelings they’ve had for so long. The beginning scene in the bar is just so outrageous. I honestly did not believe people like that still existed, but I’ve been lucky enough to have a Southern heritage that doesn’t involved using those words or pressing those beliefs on others.

As in my last post, I feel as though some things were left out in order to influence a certain picture into the reader’s mind. For a majority of the first 16 pages of this chapter, “Dying for Dixie,” Horowitz describes the town of Guthrie only through the shooting of Westerman – how the town reacted, how each family reacted and so on. In general, these descriptions left me thinking that the whole town was ignorant and stuck in the past. On page 104, Horowitz explains to us another part of Guthrie’s history. He tells us that Westerman and the man who was to become his murderer used to play basketball together and that Westerman’s mother worked in a factory that was evenly divided between black and white employees. Horowitz also tells us that interracial dating is common at the high school and that they had recently voted a black student as Homecoming Queen. These were the first signs of “normality” given by Horowitz to describe the town and people of Guthrie.