| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Lessons in Progress: State Universities and Progressivism in the New South, 1880–1920. By Michael Dennis. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001. xii, 272 pp. $39.95, ISBN 0-252-02617-9.)

Michael Dennis argues that southern universities, through their presidents, provided leadership for the region's progressive reform movement. Dennis aptly characterizes southern progressivism as a part of the New South movement for economic and commercial development. He conveys his argument in five chapters on four southern university presidents: Charles Dabney of the University of Tennessee, Walter Bernard Hill of the University of Georgia, Samuel Chiles Mitchell of the University of South Carolina, and Edwin Alderman of the University of Virginia. Each president gets his own chapter except Mitchell, who gets two chapters, the second of which is devoted to a political attack on Mitchell by South Carolina's governor. 1

Dabney is credited with professionalizing education at the University of Tennessee, helping to "realign university instruction to meet what progressives considered the social needs of the New South." He emphasized agricultural education, extension work, and teacher education, especially through the Summer School of the South. Organizationally he sought to bring the university up to date with procedures and processes taking place in business, and he promoted faculty research, which was to be accomplished through academic specialization and professionalization. . . .

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