"TELLING ABOUT THE SOUTH":  NATIONAL GRADUATE
 STUDENT CONFERENCE TO FOCUS ON SOUTHERN STRUGGLES
 FOR JUSTICE AND HONORÊHISTORIAN PAUL GASTON 

	CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., March 14 -- The University of Virginia's
Southern History Program will host its fourth annual "Telling About
the South" national conference for graduate students March 21-23. 
	This year's conference will focus on southern struggles for
justice and will honor U.Va. professor and noted historian of the
south Paul M. Gaston, who is retiring from the faculty. The conference
is free and open to the public and will feature a lecture by Gaston
and discussions of scholarly papers and new historical research by
graduate students from several eastern and southern universities. 
	The program will open with Gaston's retrospective talk, titled
"My South, Your South," at 7 p.m. Friday, March 21, in Minor Hall
Auditorium. The author of "The New South Creed:  A Study in Southern
Mythmaking," one of the most influential books about the New South, as
well as studies of the Alabama utopian community of Fairhope, Gaston
has taught southern history at U.Va. since 1957 and has long been
active in civil rights and racial justice causes. He served as
president of the Southern Regional Council, the south's oldest
biracial anti-discrimination organization, from 1984 to 1988 and
received a State Council of Higher Education for Virginia Outstanding
Faculty Award in 1994.
	Conference sessions March 22 and March 23 will be held in
Monroe Hall 130 and will focus on topics of justice from various
periods of southern history. March 22 sessions run from 9:30 a.m. to
3:30 p.m.; March 23 sessions run from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
	A special program from 4-6 p.m. Saturday, March 22, in the
Dome Room of the Rotunda will feature colleagues and former students
honoring Gaston's contributions to southern struggles for justice as
an historian, teacher and activist.
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March 13, 1997
	For additional information please contact Matthew Dunne,
conference coordinator, at (804) 977-1388, or Bob Brickhouse, U.Va.
News Services, at (804) 924-6856.  Television reporters should call
our TV News Office at (804) 924-7550.