Southern by the grace of God: religion, race, and civil rights in Hollywood's American South

Introduction. The divine and the depraved : religion in Hollywood's south

"They'll take the Bible literally you know" : To Kill a Mockingbird and the origins of Hollywood's secular civil rights hero

"How come the only cheek gets turned in this country is the Negro cheek?" : African American christianity and civil rights in cinema, 1920-1990

"When things made sense, when we were the good guys" : reconstructed white southerners in the mid-1990s civil rights melodrama

"Jimmy Swaggart meet Huey Long in Hell" : Cape Fear's "Monster of the South"

"You don't see Billy Graham walking any picket lines" : redefining the civil rights genre in the "Age of Obama"

Conclusion. "Why there's this desire to write about all these horrible things that happened over civil rights, I don't know" : southern authenticity in the age of the civil rights melodrama.