Vermont Life, Volume 14, Issue 3, page 18 (1960)
"Yankee Kingdom"
In this article, Ralph Nading Hill poses a question as to whether or not vermont as an area of “rural individualism” can survive in the face of a modern, urbanized world. Imbedded in this article is language and meaning which invokes some of our earlier discussion surrounding a fear of urbanization as an inherent fear of an imagined racial “other.”
In the cultural imaginary that Vermont Life seems to invoke through this article, we an observe the ways in which Vermont is positioned by the magazine as a stronghold against time itself. The words "rural" and "individual" are indicative of this. Yet, upon a closer reading of the article we can begin to delimitate some of the ways in which Vermont Life Magazine's cultural imagining of Vermont is imbued with the systemic racism that is being protested across the country.
Published in the spring of 1960, this issue of Vermont Life was edited in the wake of the organized sit-ins occurring at establishments throughout the American South.
Unsurprisingly, there is no mention of such events here. Instead, Hill invokes the "modern world" as a nebulous term to encompass the social upheaval taking place throughout the country. In the article, Hill speculates that it may be the people of Vermont's "moral heritage" which has positioned them as a rural, agrarian utopia. This "kingdom," of course, relies rhetorically on its separation from larger racial and moral conflicts taking place throughout the United States.