Race, Rights, and Resistance in Southern Literature in the Age of Obama

“Where Is the Voice Coming From?” (Eudora Welty), “Nineteen Fifty-Five” (Alice Walker), “Everything that Rises Must Converge” (Flannery O’Connor), and “Negro Progress” (Tony Grooms) are fictional evocations of realistic places, people, and events in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, that are especially appropriate in the Age of Obama for discussion of the roles of the public artist and the private human regarding race, rights, and resistance.