This Day in History: 1936-06-30

Gone with the Wind, a novel about the American South during the Civil War, is published on this day in 1936 and becomes a major motion picture by 1939.  The book and movie became leading symbols of a mythically gracious Southern culture. The myth has been strongly criticized for denying any acknowledgement of African American suffering under the pre-war slave and post-war Jim Crow systems. Like all big historical myths, the “GWTW myth” has a negative impact for those attempting to come to grips with modern realities.