""It's a short list, presented straightforwardly, except for one phrase in the first sentence: "to breach the Magnolia Curtain of racial discrimination." Those words-a bit of poetry in the newsreel-implied a truth both obvious and largely unspoken: The South had used its prejudices and its claims to heritage, among other bricks and mortar, to cordon itself off from the rest of the nation.""
""His usage seems less pointed than Boeth's, on account of him being an actual Southerner; Falco might have been born in Pennsylvania, but he grew up near Gurdon, Arkansas, moved east to Memphis as a young man, and has been closely associated with that city ever since (despite spending the past 30 years living in Europe). He's always been on the southern side of the Magnolia Curtain, so he can see what it conceals from those who erected it in the first place:""
A 1954 Time column used the phrase "to breach the Magnolia Curtain of racial discrimination" to describe Southern segregation and listed early civil rights breakthroughs. The phrase implied that Southern prejudices and appeals to heritage cordoned the region off from the rest of the nation. The term entered wider use during the Civil Rights era and surfaced in 1964 when Richard Boeth titled a piece "Behind the Magnolia Curtain" to expose regional hypocrisies. In 1981 Memphis musician Tav Falco adopted the phrase for a Panther Burns album. Falco's Southern upbringing and Memphis ties informed his focus on vibrant, often overlooked Southern culture, especially music.
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