Unpacking “Fringe” Political Beliefs, Analyzing Seabird Behavior, and How Structural Inequality in the South Survived the US Civil War

Noah Rossin '27

Fellowship name: Theodore Samuel Danzig '22 Memorial Fellowship

Faculty advisor: Associate Professor of GovernmentJeffrey Selinger

Project title: Paths into Dixie: Racial Orders, Political Development, and the Consequences of White Supremacist Autocratization in the American South.

Rossin is exploring how different former Confederate states in the South implemented the violent restoration of white supremacist rule after Reconstruction. He has been looking particularly at the period between 1890 and 1910 and the divergent policy outcomes their distinct approaches to consolidating power and public opinion produced.

For his fellowship, Rossin focused specifically on North Carolina, analyzing newspapers, popular media, legislative discussion, and politicians' speeches, exploring how political actors in the South constructed the political, cultural, and electoral infrastructure to ensure white supremacist institutions dominated public life. Rossin intends to pursue this subject further for his honors project and plans to examine two other states in similar detail-Mississippi and Georgia. He hopes such analysis will help him to better understand how political systems transition out of democracy and to inform contemporary social and institutional policy that can address these ongoing ills.

"I primarily spent my time as a fellow performing a comprehensive review of relevant secondary literature, from foundational works on the 'long' civil rights era and structural inequality to Southern history to broader political development," said Rossin. "In doing so, I developed the ontological framework that will inform my methodology, leaving me with a strong foundation with which to pursue my honors project and later apply to graduate programs in political science."