What social attitudes and cultural practices related to “A Rose for Emily” were prevalent during the time it was written?I am trying to write...

Prior to the Civil War, the South was more like its own
country than it was a part of the United States.  After the Civil War and
Reconstruction, both major defeats for the South, it was left rather vacuous, without
identity, "Christ-haunted" according to Flannery O'Connor, but still very much aware of
its former glory according to Faulkner, who didn't believe in the concept of
past:

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
(Requiem for a
Nun)

And

“[T]o
me,” Faulkner remarked, “no man is himself, he is the sum of his past. There is no such
thing really as was because the past is. It is a part of every man, every woman, and
every moment. All of his and her ancestry, background, is all a part of himself and
herself at any moment.”

As it relates to "A Rose
for Emily," the South (Emily) is trying to recapture and morbidly maintain the Old and
the Dead.  So, what the South was still very much aware of were the
following:

• Fundamentalist Protestant and
  evangelical zeal


• Chevalier
  heritage


• Agrarian virtue and plantation
  aristocracy


• White
  supremacy


• Purity of
  womanhood


• Birthplace of jazz, blues, and rock 'n
  roll


• Hotbed of sports
  (football)


• A "lost cause"; illegitimate; full of
  contradictions


• A fragmented, bi-polar culture
  

I've got two favorite quotes about the South.
 The first is from W. J. Cash and Lillian Smith from
everything2.com:

readability="12.212844036697">

href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Extant">Extant and not (as a
href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=cultural">cultural title="construct"
href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=construct">construct), the title="South" href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=South">South
continues to constitute a profound problem: how to resolve its contradictions? It is a
distinct and wonderful place, the source of href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=jazz">jazz and the title="Southern novel"
href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Southern%20novel">Southern
novel; it is also the site of href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=slavery">slavery, title="lynchings"
href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=lynchings">lynchings, and
hyper- href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=conservative">conservative
delusions of href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Christianity">Christianity. In
short, it is a href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=bipolar">bipolar culture
suffering a grave href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=existential">existential crisis,
and her residents posses the same href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=fragmentation">fragmentation of
identity, the same duality of existence, which makes the href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=South">South such a difficult
place to consider without href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=anxiety">anxiety.146

The
other is from John Shelton Reed's My Tears Spoiled My
Aim:

You're in the American South now,
a proud region with a distinctive history and culture. A place that echoes with names
like Thomas Jefferson and Robert E. Lee, Scarlett O'Hara and Uncle Remus, Martin Luther
King and William Faulkner, Billy Graham, Mahalia Jackson, Muhammad Ali, Elvis Presley.
Home of the country blues and country music, bluegrass and Dixieland jazz, gospel music
and rock and roll. Where menus offer both down-home biscuits and gravy and uptown shrimp
and grits. Where churches preach against "cigarettes, whiskey, and wild, wild women"
(all Southern products) and where American football is a
religion.