"In this highly engaging and perceptive study, Alexander Macaulay challenges the characterization of The Citadel as a hidebound southern anachronism. Macaulay’s post-Word War II Citadel is more a reflection of the larger society than a reaction against it, an institution forced to reconsider its gendered and racialized notions of citizenship as the ground shifted beneath its feet."
—Kari Frederickson, author of The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932–1968

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Combining the nuanced perspective of an insider with the critical distance of a historian, Alexander Macaulay examines The Citadel’s reactions to major shifts in postwar life, from the rise of the counterculture to the demise of the Cold War.

The Citadel is widely considered one of the most traditional institutions in America and a bastion of southern conservatism. In Marching in Step Macaulay argues that The Citadel has actually experienced many changes since World War II—changes that often tell us as much about the United States as about the American South.

Macaulay explores how The Citadel was often an undiluted showcase for national debates over who deserved full recognition as a citizen—most famously first for black men and later for women. As the boundaries regarding race, gender, and citizenship were drawn and redrawn, Macaulay says, attitudes at The Citadel reflected rather than stood apart from those of mainstream America. In this study…

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