W.J. Cash, born in 1900 in
Gaffney,
South Carolina, was a
journalist and
author, well-known for his
treatise on the problems of
Southern culture,
identity, and
history, called
The Mind of The South.
A respected intellectual, he suffered profoundly from a number of emotional problems, chiefly neurasthenia and psychosomatic impotence, as well as alcoholism. In 1941, the year The Mind of the South was published, he committed suicide in Mexico, after having confided in his wife that he "heard Nazi's" discussing plans to assassinate him.