About the Author

William Ferris is Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History and senior associate director of the centre for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ferris coedited the encyclopaedia of Southern Culture and is the author of Blues from the Delta. In 1991, Rolling Stone magazine named him among the top ten professors in the United States.