Even to this day, it's always ironic to see the northern liberal elitists look down their noses at the supposed segregating South -- from their own segregated neighborhoods.
There is not, and never has been, any native "racism" in the South. At least none that was here from the beginning. There's always going to be some people who hold distrust of another race, and they're found anywhere and anywhen... but as a culture, by itself, it just hasn't been here in the South.
It wasn't until after the war, when northern "carpetbaggers" and other opportunists came down, that we started seeing this kid of stuff. And as Bledsoe's book chronicles, it was in the North that segregation existed, where the "N"-word was so freely bandied about, that a black man could not so much as shake hands with a white, etc. Heck, the Confederates tented whites and blacks together... along with Indians and Mexicans and Italians and Chinese and... the Confederate States of America were the Rainbow Coalition WAAAAY before Jesse Jackson hit the scene! :-) In the North they were still segregated: heh-heh... imagine Hollywood producing a Confederate version of "Glory", that'd be something.
If there's any "racism" in the South today, it's because the carpetbaggers brought it here. And their modern-day descendants are still sucking away with it.