Social History of Southern USA in the 20th Century. Any recs?

[rousseau]

This is pretty specific, but I figure since everyone on this site is American someone could point me to a great one.

Thanks.

 

[bilby]

This is pretty specific, but I figure since everyone on this site is American someone could point me to a great one.

Thanks.

Yup, not a problem. I will help you out as soon as I work out WTF you are even asking for.

What is a 'rec'? Do I need to be American to know? (I can't get much more Southern without moving to Tasmania)...

 

[rousseau]

A recommendation for a book. I found one on Amazon with good reviews, will post here later, but chime-ins still welcome.

 

[Sarpedon]

A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn, while not specific to the south is an excellent starting point. I'll bet its bibliography would point you to more specific books as well.

 

[ideologyhunter]

A classic in the field is The Mind of the South (W. J. Cash, 1941.)
I don't know from your post if your main focus is the racial history of the South...that's my main interest in the history of the region, and there's an extensive literature that has grown around the Jim Crow era. Remembering Jim Crow (eds., Chafe and Gavins) made a powerful impression on me. The Most Southern Place on Earth (I don't have the author's name at hand) is a strong piece of writing on the Delta region. Dark Journey: Black Mississipians in the Age of Jim Crow by Neil R. McMillen is an excellent work. Individual case studies on lynchings and hell holes like Parchman Farm abound.

 

[ideologyhunter]

(Just checked.) The author of The Most Southern Place on Earth is James C. Cobb. Neil R. McMillen also wrote a scrupulously complete and devastating work on the white resistance to segregation: The Citizens' Council. An example of a specific study of place and politics is Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King -- you can hardly read this book without realizing that the federal government had to step in and interfere mightily in the way the Cotton Belt states were treating their own citizens. (It centers on a corrupt Florida sheriff whose reign of abuse and violence extended into the 1970s. A real American nightmare.)

 

[Duke Leto]

C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow was quite influential. If you want to go WAY back, David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America is good for the foundations that were laid in the Colonial Period.

 

[rousseau]

I started reading 'Remembering Jim Crow' last night. Boggles the mind that this type of stuff was happening in the last century. Also bought the 'Mind of the South' but it hasn't arrived yet.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Just read an interesting book on a Jewish family living in the South in the 20s/30s: The Jew Store, written by Stella Suberman, who was the youngest member of her family. 'Jew Store' is/was a Southernism for a dry goods store run by a Jewish merchant. Stella's father moved them in 1920 to a town in western Tennessee which she calls Concordia (to conceal its real name and the names of some of the locals who acted ignorantly toward her family.) She writes about the local Kluxers, the child labor of the time, the race relations in a small town, and the reflexive anti-Semitism of the some of the townspeople. A good read -- book clubs have picked this one fairly regularly.

 

[Bronzeage]

Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America

I have lived on the banks of the Mississippi River all my life. When I was young, the flood of 1927 was talked about the way we talk about Hurricane Katrina, today. There were many things which puzzled me about the stories I heard, and many more things about everyday life. This remarkable book answered those mysteries.

Anyone who wants to understand 20th century US history, has to read this book.

 

[Clivedurdle]

If Washington DC is Southern, I think it is, Ulf Hannerz Soulside.

And I am not.

 

[rousseau]

Am getting deep into 'The Mind of the South', it's a very enjoyable read.

You people are pretty good at recommendations, I'm tempted to make about 7 or 8 more threads all at once.

- - - Updated - - -

C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow was quite influential. If you want to go WAY back, David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America is good for the foundations that were laid in the Colonial Period.

I want to get my hands on this one too, but haven't found it at a reasonable price yet.

 

[Duke Leto]

- - - Updated - - -

C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow was quite influential. If you want to go WAY back, David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America is good for the foundations that were laid in the Colonial Period.

I want to get my hands on this one too, but haven't found it at a reasonable price yet.

Cheap alternative:

Find a university library that has it in stock and allows you access, set aside a few weekend afternoons for reading and camp out in a study carroll with the book of your choice. Leave the book at the library between sessions.

There's also the municipal library system of wherever in Ontario you are. I reside in a large suburban county in southeastern PA which has been under Republican rule from something like 1860 through 2011, and they still have a unified system of lending libraries with an online catalog that lists 4 available copies of "Albion's Seed", so presumably the less fanatically anti-government Canadian equivalent could work in your favor. (Due disclosure, the library systems were originally put in place by the individual townships and boroughs of the county (many of which have had intermittent Democratic control) 60+ years ago and got a unified IT infrastructure at the county level in the 1990s. The municipal Republicans were also never particularly doctrinairly Tea Partiers or even Reaganesque privatizers, and were probably "Liberal" insofar as local expenditures were concerned in the period from 1940-1980.)

 

[rousseau]

Yea, strangely enough I buy almost everything I read these days so sometimes forget that the library is a thing. I'll have to see if it's floating somewhere around my city.

edit: just checked the local library catalogue, and sure enough it's there and available to be checked out