Tennessee Is the Capital of American Jihad

The road to jihad began here, where Highway 40 bisects the state Abraham Lincoln once called the “keystone of the southern arch,” heading southwest out of Nashville and Jackson and through endless miles of rich Mississippi delta before riding the steel scaffolding of the Hernando de Soto Bridge across the wide lazy waters.
Memphis is where the call-and-response songs of the cotton fields and the gospel hymns of the local black churches fused with the blues of the Southern chitlin’ circuit and the twang of country honky-tonks in the...