The South after the war

CHARLOTTE -- Nearly a century and a half after it ended, the Civil War remains the defining event of the South. Yet it's not the only thing that has ever happened here - and the last 144 years have seen changes almost as profound as the end of slavery.

That's a gap that the Levine Museum of the New South aims to close. The museum picks up where the Civil War left off, tracing the evolution of the South from Reconstruction to the present day. It's an interactive museum dealing with events and trends that are still unfolding, with as much sociology as history.

"This museum taps into a very large scholarly literature about the New South, and how it has reinvented itself again and again and again," says Tom Hanchett, the museum's staff historian. "That has brought about a very different South from the one of small towns and farms that was here before. All of a sudden, we're no longer the backwater of America. We're the magnet that lots of people are migrating toward."

The Museum of the New South has been around in some fashion since 1991 and moved into its current location in 1995. It's in downtown Charlotte near Discovery Place and the Mint Museum of Craft + Design, all of which can be the perfect weekend complement if you're going to a Carolina Panthers or Charlotte Bobcats game.

It became the Levine Museum of the New South after the Levine family (founders of Family Dollar, the variety store chain based in North Carolina) gave the lead gift in a late-1990s capital campaign. That funded the creation of the museum's permanent collection, "Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers: Charlotte and the Carolina Piedmont in the New South."

"Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers" traces the South's evolution over the past century from an agricultural center to industry to banking and technology. It has more than 1,000 artifacts, images and video clips, including re-creations of a one-room tenant farmer's house and some iconic reminders of the Jim Crow era of segregation (separate water fountains, lunch counters and such).

"Changing Places: From Black and White to Technicolor," which is on display through February, adds multiculturalism to the mix by emphasizing the influx of Latino and Asian immigrants to the South. One particularly striking exhibit demonstrates how far apart people of different cultures tend to stand during conversation -- from 36 inches in Japan down to less than a foot in Brazil and the Middle East. It's 24 to 30 inches for Americans.

Other collections on display this fall include "Charlotte Through Our Eyes" (which consists of photographs taken by at-risk youth) and "Blindsided by Disaster: The 20th Anniversary of Hurricane Hugo." There's also "Video Talkback," in which visitors record responses that become part of the exhibits.

"History is stories people come with, whether they grew up here or someplace else," Hanchett says. "Communities going through as much change as Southern cities need a place to share those stories and build new ones going forward."

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