Download or read book Mean Things Happening in this Land written by H. L. Mitchell and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-10-22 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rare firsthand chronicle of one of the most racially progressive unions in twentieth-century America When, during the Great Depression, tenant farmers and sharecroppers were pushed off the land they had worked but never owned, many sought power in numbers by organizing unions. In 1934, seven black men and eleven white men organized the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. Socialist Harry Leland Mitchell was one of those men. Mean Things Happening in This Land is his autobiographical account of SFTU struggles—against poverty, New Deal agencies, communists, and above all, the southern planter class—to achieve economic justice in the cotton fields. In addition to its original foreword, by renowned socialist intellectual Michael Harrington, this edition contains a new preface by Samuel Mitchell and the author’s posthumous corrections and additions.
Download or read book Songs about Work written by Archie Green and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays offer striking portraits of working environments where song arose in response to prevailing conditions. Included are the protest blues of African American levee workers, the corridos of Chicano farm workers, and the European songs of immigrant lumber workers in the Midwest.
Download or read book Working Class Heroes written by Mat Callahan and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2019-09-01 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Working-Class Heroes is an organic melding of history, music, and politics that demonstrates with remarkably colorful evidence that workers everywhere will struggle to improve their conditions of life. And among them will be workers who share an insight: in order to better our lot, we must act collectively to change the world. This profusely illustrated treasury of song sheets, lyrics, photographs, histories, and biographical sketches explores the notion that our best hope lies in the capacity of ordinary working people to awaken to the need to emancipate ourselves and all of humanity. Featuring over a dozen songwriters, from Joe Hill to Aunt Molly Jackson,Working-Class Heroes delivers a lyrical death blow to the falsehood that so-called political songs of the twentieth century were all written by intellectuals in New York. Many, like Ella May Wiggins, were murdered by the bosses. Others, like Sarah Ogan Gunning, watched their children starve to death and their husbands die of black lung, only to rise up singing against the system that caused so much misery. Most of the songs collected here are from the early twentieth century, yet their striking relevance to current affairs invites us to explore the historical conditions that inspired their creation: systemic crisis, advancing fascism, and the threat of world war. In the face of violent terror, these working-class songwriters bravely stood up to fight oppression. Such courage is immortal, and the songs of such heroes can still lift our spirits, if we sing them today. Featured in this twenty-song collection are Sarah Ogan Gunning, Ralph Chaplin, Woody Guthrie, Ella May Wiggins, Joe Hill, Paul Robeson, John Handcox, Aunt Molly Jackson, Jim Garland, Alfred Hayes, Joseph Brandon, and several anonymous proletarian songwriters whose names have been long forgotten, though their words will never die.
Download or read book Sharecropper s Troubadour written by M. Honey and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Folk singer and labor organizer John Handcox was born to illiterate sharecroppers, but went on to become one of the most beloved folk singers of the prewar labor movement. This beautifully told oral history gives us Handcox in his own words, recounting a journey that began in the Deep South and went on to shape the labor music tradition.
Download or read book Communist Methods of Infiltration education written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Un-American Activities and published by . This book was released on 1953 with total page 1566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Gods of the Mississippi written by Michael Pasquier and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-27 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the colonial period to the present, the Mississippi River has impacted religious communities from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. Exploring the religious landscape along the 2,530 miles of the largest river system in North America, the essays in Gods of the Mississippi make a compelling case for American religion in motion—not just from east to west, but also from north to south. With discussion of topics such as the religions of the Black Atlantic, religion and empire, antebellum religious movements, the Mormons at Nauvoo, black religion in the delta, Catholicism in the Deep South, and Johnny Cash and religion, this volume contributes to a richer understanding of this diverse, dynamic, and fluid religious world.
Download or read book Hearings written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Un-American Activities and published by . This book was released on 1953 with total page 1522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Folksongs of Protest written by John Greenway and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015-09-30 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.
Download or read book Hearings and Reports 83rd Congress 1st Session written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Un-American Activities and published by . This book was released on 1953 with total page 1190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Hearings Regarding Jack R McMichael written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Un-American Activities and published by . This book was released on 1953 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Communist Methods of Infiltration government labor written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Un-American Activities and published by . This book was released on 1953 with total page 1186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Depression Folk written by Ronald D. Cohen and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2016-08-26 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While music lovers and music historians alike understand that folk music played an increasingly pivotal role in American labor and politics during the economic and social tumult of the Great Depression, how did this relationship come to be? Ronald D. Cohen sheds new light on the complex cultural history of folk music in America, detailing the musicians, government agencies, and record companies that had a lasting impact during the 1930s and beyond. Covering myriad musical styles and performers, Cohen narrates a singular history that begins in nineteenth-century labor politics and popular music culture, following the rise of unions and Communism to the subsequent Red Scare and increasing power of the Conservative movement in American politics--with American folk and vernacular music centered throughout. Detailing the influence and achievements of such notable musicians as Pete Seeger, Big Bill Broonzy, and Woody Guthrie, Cohen explores the intersections of politics, economics, and race, using the roots of American folk music to explore one of the United States' most troubled times. Becoming entangled with the ascending American left wing, folk music became synonymous with protest and sharing the troubles of real people through song.
Download or read book The Humanity Archive written by Jermaine Fowler and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This sweeping survey of Black history shows how Black humanity has been erased and how its recovery can save the humanity of us all. Using history as a foundation, The Humanity Archive uses storytelling techniques to make history come alive and uncover the truth behind America's whitewashed history. The Humanity Archive focuses on the overlooked narratives in the pages of the past. Challenging dominant perspectives, author Jermaine Fowler goes outside the textbooks to find recognizably human stories. Connecting current issues with the heroic struggles of those who have come before us, Fowler brings hidden history to light. Praise for The Humanity Archive: From the African Slave Trade to Seneca Village to Biddy Mason and more, The Humanity Archive is a very enriching read on the history of Blackness around the world. I was hooked by Fowler's storytelling and would recommend others who want to pore over a book that outlines critical moments in history—without putting you to sleep. — Philip Lewis, Senior Editor, HuffPost Fowler sees historical storytelling and the sharing of knowledge as a vocation and a means of fostering empathy and understanding between cultures. A deft storyteller with a sonorous voice, Fowler's passion for his material is palpable as he unfurls the hidden histories. — Vanity Fair Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Jermaine Fowler is a storyteller and self-proclaimed intellectual adventurer who spent his youth seeking knowledge on the shelves of his local free public library. Between research and lecturing, he is the host of the top-rated history podcast, The Humanity Archive, praised as a must-listen by Vanity Fair. Challenging dominant perspectives, Fowler goes outside the textbooks to find recognizably human stories. Connecting current issues with the heroic struggles of those who've come before us, he brings hidden history to light and makes it powerfully relevant.
Download or read book American Congo written by Nan Elizabeth Woodruff and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of how rural Black people struggled against the oppressive sharecropping system of the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta during the first half of the twentieth century. Here, white planters forged a world of terror and poverty for Black workers, one that resembled the horrific deprivations of the African Congo under Belgium’s King Leopold II. Delta planters did not cut off the heads and hands of their African American workers but, aided by local law enforcement, they engaged in peonage, murder, theft, and disfranchisement. As individuals and through collective struggle, in conjunction with national organizations like the NAACP and local groups like the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, Black men and women fought back, demanding a just return for their crops and laying claim to a democratic vision of citizenship. Their efforts were amplified by the two world wars and the depression, which expanded the mobility and economic opportunities of Black people and provoked federal involvement in the region. Nan Woodruff shows how the freedom fighters of the 1960s would draw on this half-century tradition of protest, thus expanding our standard notions of the civil rights movement and illuminating a neglected but significant slice of the American Black experience.
Download or read book Southern Exposure written by and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rural Worlds Lost written by Jack Temple Kirby and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1986-12-01 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Immediately following the Civil War, and for many years thereafter, southerners proclaimed a “New” South, implying not only the end of slavery but also the beginning of a new era of growth, industrialization, and prosperity. Time has shown that those declarations—at least in terms of progress and prosperity—were premature by several decades. Life for an Alabama tenant farmer in 1920 did not differ significantly from the life his grandfather led fifty years earlier. In fact, the South remained primarily a land of poor farming folks until the 1940s. Only then, and after World War II, did the real New South of industrial growth and urban development begin to emerge. Jack Temple Kirby’s massive and engaging study examines the rural southern world of the first half of this century, its collapse, and the resulting “modernization” of southern society. The American South was the last region of the Western world to undergo this process, and Rural Worlds Lost is the first book to so thoroughly assess the profound changes modernization has wrought. Kirby painstakingly charts the structural changes in agriculture that have occurred in the South and the effects these changes have had on people both at work and in the community. He is quick to note that there is not just one South but many, emphasizing the South’s diversity not only in terms of race but also in terms of crop type and topography, and the resultant cultural differences of various areas of the region. He also skillfully compares southern life and institutions with those in other parts of the country, noting discrepancies and similarities. Perhaps even more significant, however, is Kirby’s focus on the lives and communities of ordinary people and how they have been transformed by the effects of modernization. By using the oral histories collected by WPA interviewers, Kirby shows firsthand how rural southerners lived in the 1930s and what forces shaped their views on life. He assesses the impact of cash upon traditional rural economies, the revolutionary effects of New Deal programs on the rich and poor, and the forms and cultural results of migration. Kirby also treats home life, recording attitudes toward marriage, and sex, health maintenance, and class relationships, not to mention sports and leisure, moonshining, and the southerner’s longstanding love-hate relationship with the mule. Rural Worlds Lost, based on exceptionally extensive research in archives throughout the South and in federal agricultural censuses, definitively charts the enormous changes that have taken place in the South in this century. Writing about Kirby’s previous book, Media-Made Dixie, Time Magazine noted Kirby’s “scholarship of rare lucidity.” That same high level of scholarship, as well as an undeniable affection for the region, is abundantly evident in this new, path-breaking book.
Download or read book The Final Frontiers 1880 1930 written by John Otto and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1999-09-30 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the settlement history of the alluvial bottomlands of the lower Mississippi Valley from 1880 to 1930, this study details how cotton-growers transformed the swamplands of northwestern Mississippi, northeastern Louisiana, northeastern Arkansas, and southern Missouri into cotton fields. Although these alluvial bottomlands contained the richest cotton soils in the American South, cotton-growers in the Southern bottomlands faced a host of environmental problems, including dense forests, seasonal floods, water-logged soils, poor transportation, malarial fevers and insect pests. This interdisciplinary approach uses primary and secondary sources from the fields of history, geography, sociology, agronomy, and ecology to fill an important gap in our knowledge of American environmental history. Requiring laborers to clear and cultivate their lands, cotton-growers recruited black and white workers from the upland areas of the Southern states. Growers also supported the levee districts which built imposing embankments to hold the floodwaters in check. Canals and drainage ditches were constructed to drain the lands, and local railways and graveled railways soon ended the area's isolation. Finally, quinine and patent medicines would offer some relief from the malarial fevers that afflicted bottomland residents, and commercial poisons would combat the local pests that attacked the cotton plants, including the boll weevils which arrived in the early twentieth century.
