Book excerpt: Providing both the black and white civic and church responses to these developments, he demonstrates how the emergence of movies fostered the rise of Lexington's contradictory self-image as both a cosmopolitan center and a guardian of traditional southern values. Greeted at times with suspicion and contempt, movies gradually won the hearts of Lexingtonians because movie-hall owners convinced the public that the movies' promise of pleasure rested safely within the bounds of middle-class propriety.