Editing Old South (section)

==Culture==
The social structure of the Old South was made an important research topic for scholars by [[Ulrich Bonnell Phillips]] in the early 20th century.<ref>Charles C. Bolton, "Planters, Plain Folk, and Poor Whites in the Old South." in Lacy Ford, ed., ''A Companion to the Civil War and Reconstruction'' (2005), pp 75-94.</ref>  The romanticized image of the "Old South" tells of slavery's plantations, as famously typified in ''[[Gone with the Wind (novel)|Gone with the Wind]]'', a blockbuster 1936 novel and its adaptation in a [[Gone with the Wind (film)|1939 Hollywood film]], along with the animated Disney film, ''[[Song of the South]]'' (1946).   

Historians in recent decades have paid much more attention to the enslaved people of the South and the world they made for themselves.<ref>John W. Blassingame, ''Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South'' (2nd ed. 1979)</ref><ref>Deborah Gray White, ''Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South'' (1999) </ref> To a lesser extent, they have also studied the poor subsistence farmers, known as "yeoman farmers", who owned little property and no slaves.<ref>Samuel C. Hyde, ''Plain Folk Yeomanry in the Antebellum South'' (2004).</ref>