At the conclusion of the nineteenth century, one of the issues that attracted the attention of reformers in the South was road improvements. Populists who subscribed to the tenets of the good roads movement sought to provide farmers with better access to markets, make the cultural and employment opportunities of cities more available, and perhaps even halt the mass exodus of young people from the farms.

Dixie Highway: Road Building and the Making of the Modern South, 1900-1930

Northern Kentucky's Dixie Highway is a slice of Americana pie. Known also as U.S. 25 and the Lexington-Covington Turnpike, the once-rural route connects the urban cores of Cincinnati, Covington, and Newport to Central Kentucky. Originally a buffalo trail and named in the early 1800s, the route became a paved national highway in the 1920s. The creation of the thoroughfare encouraged the growth of several communities along its route that still thrive today. Images of America: Northern Kentucky's Dixie Highway captures historic images of the people and places along the Dixie Highway beginning in Covington and heading south through Boone County. The photographs--some taken as early as the mid-1800s--depict time's influence as well as those things that remain the same. The 200 images inside offer readers a chance to revisit the friends, familiar sites, and memorable times enjoyed along Northern Kentucky's Dixie Highway.

The Dixie Highway, once a main thoroughfare from Chicago to Miami, was part of an improved network of roads traversing the landscape of 10 states. A product of the Good Roads Movement of the early 20th century, construction on the highway in Illinois took place from 1916 to 1921. When completed in 1921, the Dixie Highway was the longest continuous paved road in the state. It ran through parts of Cook, Will, Kankakee, Iroquois, and Vermilion Counties, with service stations, roadside diners, and campgrounds sprouting up along the way. With over 200 vintage photographs, The Dixie Highway in Illinois takes readers on a tour from the Art Institute of Chicago, in the heart of the city on Michigan Avenue, to the Illinois state line east of Danville, exploring this historic highway and the communities it passes through.

"The story of Georgia's 'Dixie Mafia' has never been told. At its core was one man and he was bigger than life. He was the author and enforcer of the rules that governed the entire organization. He set the standard of code that made the 'Dixie Mafia" impenetrable. And he was the one that anyone who broke that code would have to face. His name was Billy Sunday Birt and this is his story" --page 4 cover.

Weaving multiple storylines with vivid description of characters ape, Haske's debut novel brings new life and a unique voice to the fiction of rural America. North Dixie Highway is a story of family bonds, devolution, and elusive revenge. When Buck Metzger's childhood is interrupted by the disappearance of his grandfather, several family members and close friends plot revenge on the suspected killer. From remote towns in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, to the Texas/Mexico border, to war-torn Bosnia, Metzger struggles for self-identity and resolution in a world of blue-collar ethics and liquor-fueled violence.

Examining the growth of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) following the birth of the civil rights movement, this book is filled with tales of the heroic efforts to halt their rise to power. Shortly after the success of the Montgomery bus boycott, the KKK—determined to keep segregation as the way of life in Alabama—staged a resurgence, and the strong-armed leadership of Governor George C. Wallace, who defied the new civil rights laws, empowered the Klan’s most violent members. Although Wallace’s power grew, not everyone accepted his unjust policies, and blacks such as Martin Luther King Jr., J. L. Chestnut, and Bernard LaFayette began fighting back in the courthouses and schoolhouses, as did young southern lawyers such as Charles “Chuck” Morgan, who became the ACLU’s southern director; Morris Dees, who cofounded the Southern Poverty Law Center; and Bill Baxley, Alabama attorney general, who successfully prosecuted the bomber of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church and legally halted some of Governor Wallace’s agencies designed to slow down integration. Dozens of exciting, extremely well-told stories demonstrate how blacks defied violence and whites defied public ostracism and indifference in the face of kidnappings, bombings, and murders.