The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes. By Conevery Bolton Valencius. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Pp. 460. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliographic essays, acknowledgments, index. $35.00.)The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes will stand as the authoritative history of some of the most massive earthquakes in world history-those that shook what is now southeastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas in 1811-1812. Not only has Conevery Bolton Valencius mastered the secondary literature and mined the primary documents, she has accomplished what no scholar before had managed. By viewing the cataclysmic events of 1811 and 1812 through the lens of twenty-first century seismology, she has provided an informed characterization of what probably caused the quakes and what precisely happened on those fateful days. This may be what one would expect of an accomplished scholar trained in Harvard's history of science program, but Valencius has rendered the account at once more persuasive and enduring by also carefully incorporating social and religious history into the narrative.The thoughtful and perceptive introduction poses four questions she intends to answer: (1) Why did the earthquakes matter at the time they occurred? (2) If they mattered so much at the time, how could they be nearly unknown to those living in the twenty-first century? (3) How and why were the earthquakes "suddenly" rediscovered by scientists? (4) What might be made of the threat of further activity along the New Madrid fault line? Valencius shapes the volume around these crucial questions. She addresses first how the quakes were understood at the time by using one of the American frontier's most iconic figures: Davy Crockett, who claimed to have slipped into an earthquake fissure while pursuing a bear. The tale has the advantage of responding, at least in an introductory way, to two of the author's questions: How the earthquakes were understood and experienced by early nineteenth century frontiers people and the manner in which they came to be the subject of folklore. Over time, chroniclers diminished the fissure as an aspect of the tale just as the public in general lost interest in the earthquakes. Technological and agricultural innovation eradicated most of the traces leftby the earthquakes and, as modern communication reduced folk tales themselves to romantic artifacts, the earthquakes faded from the national consciousness.Even as the veracity of folk tales and oral accounts became suspect in terms of understanding both the scope and the cause of earthquakes, "two profound changes shaped the discipline of modern seismology: the instrumentalization of seismic observation in the decades surrounding the turn of the [nineteenth to twentieth] century and the reconceptualization of the earth's composition and movement" (p. …
{"title":"The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes","authors":"J. Whayne","doi":"10.5860/choice.51-4459","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.51-4459","url":null,"abstract":"The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes. By Conevery Bolton Valencius. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Pp. 460. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliographic essays, acknowledgments, index. $35.00.)The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes will stand as the authoritative history of some of the most massive earthquakes in world history-those that shook what is now southeastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas in 1811-1812. Not only has Conevery Bolton Valencius mastered the secondary literature and mined the primary documents, she has accomplished what no scholar before had managed. By viewing the cataclysmic events of 1811 and 1812 through the lens of twenty-first century seismology, she has provided an informed characterization of what probably caused the quakes and what precisely happened on those fateful days. This may be what one would expect of an accomplished scholar trained in Harvard's history of science program, but Valencius has rendered the account at once more persuasive and enduring by also carefully incorporating social and religious history into the narrative.The thoughtful and perceptive introduction poses four questions she intends to answer: (1) Why did the earthquakes matter at the time they occurred? (2) If they mattered so much at the time, how could they be nearly unknown to those living in the twenty-first century? (3) How and why were the earthquakes \"suddenly\" rediscovered by scientists? (4) What might be made of the threat of further activity along the New Madrid fault line? Valencius shapes the volume around these crucial questions. She addresses first how the quakes were understood at the time by using one of the American frontier's most iconic figures: Davy Crockett, who claimed to have slipped into an earthquake fissure while pursuing a bear. The tale has the advantage of responding, at least in an introductory way, to two of the author's questions: How the earthquakes were understood and experienced by early nineteenth century frontiers people and the manner in which they came to be the subject of folklore. Over time, chroniclers diminished the fissure as an aspect of the tale just as the public in general lost interest in the earthquakes. Technological and agricultural innovation eradicated most of the traces leftby the earthquakes and, as modern communication reduced folk tales themselves to romantic artifacts, the earthquakes faded from the national consciousness.Even as the veracity of folk tales and oral accounts became suspect in terms of understanding both the scope and the cause of earthquakes, \"two profound changes shaped the discipline of modern seismology: the instrumentalization of seismic observation in the decades surrounding the turn of the [nineteenth to twentieth] century and the reconceptualization of the earth's composition and movement\" (p. …","PeriodicalId":51953,"journal":{"name":"ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"73 1","pages":"331"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71145199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sharecropper's Troubadour: John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and the African American Song Tradition. By Michael K. Honey. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. xix, 210. Acknowledgments, foreword by Pete Seeger, introduction, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95.)In Sharecropper's Troubadour, labor historian Michael K. Honey provides readers with a moving and worthwhile oral history of African- American union activist and folk singer John L. Handcox. The book is also a call to action. "Hopefully," writes Honey, "Sharecropper's Troubadour will help us to understand the sharecroppers' revolt of the 1930s in a personal and emotive way" (p. 3). Honey wants Handcox's life in the trenches to inspire a new generation of social justice advocates. "As laboring people today fight for some way to make their way in the global economy," Honey implores his readers, "it remains useful to remember when evangelicals, labor radicals, 'white' folks and people of color, women and men, combined their dreams and mixed their tactics" (p. 154).Born near Brinkley, in Monroe County, Arkansas, John Handcox "grew up in one of the hardest places and at one of the hardest times to be black in America" (p. 12). However, Handcox's early life cautions historians not to paint the African-American experience under Jim Crow with broad strokes. Handcox's parents owned land (though it wouldn't "raise a fuss"), he was literate from a young age (and loved the poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar), and was quite skeptical of formal religion (p. 18). Still, Handcox's oral histories note the precarious nature of life in rural Arkansas for those who relied upon the land. One year's success would not necessarily translate into long-term success. After Handcox's father's death, the family moved to St. Francis County in the Arkansas Delta where he experienced natural disasters, unfathomable poverty, the ruthless practice of debt peonage, and threats of violence. "In the 1930s, deadly repression against labor organizers occurred across the country," writes Honey, "but eastern Arkansas was in a class unto itself" (p. 84).Throughout the book, Handcox offers poignant yet stark firsthand accounts of life during Jim Crow. "The way I see it, under slavery we used to be the master's slave," declared Handcox, "but after slavery we became everybody's slave" (p. 11). Never one to take life lying down, Handcox become a socialist, a folk singer, and a labor organizer for the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union in the 1930s. Most of the book dwells on the Depression years, which also saw the height of Handcox's relative fame. Relying heavily on oral history methodology, Honey uses Handcox as a conduit for understanding the sharecropper movement in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Missouri. …
{"title":"Sharecropper's Troubadour: John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and the African American Song Tradition","authors":"R. H. Ferguson","doi":"10.5860/choice.51-6076","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.51-6076","url":null,"abstract":"Sharecropper's Troubadour: John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and the African American Song Tradition. By Michael K. Honey. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. xix, 210. Acknowledgments, foreword by Pete Seeger, introduction, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95.)In Sharecropper's Troubadour, labor historian Michael K. Honey provides readers with a moving and worthwhile oral history of African- American union activist and folk singer John L. Handcox. The book is also a call to action. \"Hopefully,\" writes Honey, \"Sharecropper's Troubadour will help us to understand the sharecroppers' revolt of the 1930s in a personal and emotive way\" (p. 3). Honey wants Handcox's life in the trenches to inspire a new generation of social justice advocates. \"As laboring people today fight for some way to make their way in the global economy,\" Honey implores his readers, \"it remains useful to remember when evangelicals, labor radicals, 'white' folks and people of color, women and men, combined their dreams and mixed their tactics\" (p. 154).Born near Brinkley, in Monroe County, Arkansas, John Handcox \"grew up in one of the hardest places and at one of the hardest times to be black in America\" (p. 12). However, Handcox's early life cautions historians not to paint the African-American experience under Jim Crow with broad strokes. Handcox's parents owned land (though it wouldn't \"raise a fuss\"), he was literate from a young age (and loved the poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar), and was quite skeptical of formal religion (p. 18). Still, Handcox's oral histories note the precarious nature of life in rural Arkansas for those who relied upon the land. One year's success would not necessarily translate into long-term success. After Handcox's father's death, the family moved to St. Francis County in the Arkansas Delta where he experienced natural disasters, unfathomable poverty, the ruthless practice of debt peonage, and threats of violence. \"In the 1930s, deadly repression against labor organizers occurred across the country,\" writes Honey, \"but eastern Arkansas was in a class unto itself\" (p. 84).Throughout the book, Handcox offers poignant yet stark firsthand accounts of life during Jim Crow. \"The way I see it, under slavery we used to be the master's slave,\" declared Handcox, \"but after slavery we became everybody's slave\" (p. 11). Never one to take life lying down, Handcox become a socialist, a folk singer, and a labor organizer for the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union in the 1930s. Most of the book dwells on the Depression years, which also saw the height of Handcox's relative fame. Relying heavily on oral history methodology, Honey uses Handcox as a conduit for understanding the sharecropper movement in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Missouri. …","PeriodicalId":51953,"journal":{"name":"ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"73 1","pages":"223"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71146524","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-07-01DOI: 10.34053/parry2019.riapag2.16
J. A. Kirk
Fifty years ago, on July 2, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed one of the twentieth century's landmark pieces of civil rights legislation into law. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had a wide-ranging coverage that tackled discrimination in education, voting rights, and labor relations. Its most immediate impact, however, came in the abolition of segregation in "public accommodations." Following on courts' piecemeal dismantling of certain segregated facilities and the community campaigns by civil rights activists that had intensified in the decade before, the 1964 Civil Rights Act finally outlawed segregation in all public places. These included any facility that was "owned, operated, or managed by or on behalf of any state or subdivision thereof," as well as commercial concerns.1 U.S. Supreme Court rulings that followed in cases such as Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States and Katzenbach v. McClung upheld the Civil Rights Act's contention that the U.S. Constitution's commerce clause gave Congress power to forbid racial discrimination even in privately run businesses.2Unlike the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling ten years earlier, the 1964 Civil Rights Act did not meet with a campaign of massive resistance to its implementation.3 Reflecting the impact of the civil rights movement in changing attitudes toward Jim Crow, many not yet desegregated facilities quickly moved to comply with the new law. That still leftcivil rights activists with the task of testing whether other facilities and businesses that claimed to have desegregated would actually admit and serve African-American customers, as well as the task of exerting direct pressure on those that continued to refuse to do so. Without African Americans actually turning up to use those facilities, there was no way of knowing if they had desegregated or not. This would be a painstaking endeavor, since it meant coordinating attempts of volunteers to use every single public facility or business in every single community across the South.4Most revealing about the response to the 1964 Civil Rights Act was the pattern of compliance and non-compliance that developed. There were few cast-iron certainties about how any given community would react to the desegregation of one set of facilities as opposed to another. In fact, it was the wide variety and range of responses that was often striking. Nevertheless, there were some broadly discernable tendencies. Firstly, it often proved easier to desegregate both publicly funded facilities and private businesses in Upper South states than in Lower South states, where attitudes toward segregation were more entrenched. Secondly, it often proved easier to desegregate facilities in urban areas than in rural areas. In rural areas, sentiment against change appeared to be more inflexible, local officials and businesses were more isolated and therefore more susceptible to community pressure to resist change, and African-American populations were smal
五十年前，1964年7月2日，林登·约翰逊总统签署了20世纪具有里程碑意义的民权法案之一。1964年的《民权法案》覆盖面很广，解决了教育、投票权和劳资关系方面的歧视问题。然而，它最直接的影响是废除了“公共设施”中的种族隔离。在法院逐步拆除某些隔离设施以及民权活动人士在10年前愈演愈烈的社区运动之后，1964年的《民权法案》(civil rights Act)最终宣布所有公共场所的种族隔离为非法。这些包括任何“由任何州或其分支机构拥有、运营或管理”的设施，以及商业关注随后，美国最高法院在“亚特兰大汽车旅馆之心诉美国”和“卡岑巴赫诉麦克朗”等案件中作出裁决，支持《民权法案》的论点，即美国宪法的商业条款赋予国会禁止种族歧视的权力，即使在私营企业中也是如此。与十年前最高法院对布朗诉教育委员会案的裁决不同，1964年《民权法案》的实施并没有遇到大规模的抵制运动民权运动改变了人们对吉姆·克劳的态度，这反映了民权运动的影响，许多尚未废除种族隔离的设施迅速采取行动，遵守新法律。民权活动人士仍然面临着一项任务，即测试其他声称已经废除种族隔离的设施和企业是否真的会接纳和服务非洲裔美国人，以及对那些继续拒绝这样做的机构和企业施加直接压力。如果非裔美国人不去使用这些设施，就无法知道他们是否废除了种族隔离。这将是一项艰苦的努力，因为这意味着要协调志愿者们使用南方每一个社区的每一个公共设施或企业。对1964年民权法案的回应最能说明问题的是随之而来的遵守和不遵守的模式。对于某一特定社区对某一种设施而非另一种设施废除种族隔离的反应，几乎没有铁定的定论。事实上，令人吃惊的往往是各种各样的反应。尽管如此，还是有一些明显的趋势。首先，事实证明，在上南方各州，废除公共设施和私营企业的种族隔离，往往比对种族隔离态度更为根深蒂固的下南方各州更容易。第二，在城市地区废除设施的种族隔离往往比在农村地区容易。在农村地区，反对变革的情绪似乎更加僵化，地方官员和企业更加孤立，因此更容易受到社区抵制变革的压力，非洲裔美国人人口较少，挑战现状的资源更少。相比之下，城市地区的白人普遍持更广泛的意见，包括更多地支持废除种族隔离;他们为官员和企业提供大量保护;他们拥有一个更大的非裔美国人社区，拥有更多的资源和支持结构来挑战种族隔离。第三，大型连锁餐饮和零售机构往往比小型独立企业更容易废除种族隔离。较大的连锁店通常更意识到自己的国家形象和地位，他们不太容易受到当地行动的影响，比如白人抵制，如果真的发生这种情况，他们可以选择搬迁到其他地方。较小的企业通常是家族企业，更有可能与社区情绪协调一致并对其敏感，因为它们依赖于当地对其客户的善意，如果它们违反了当地的习俗，它们更容易受到报复和失去较小的客户。…
{"title":"Going Off the Deep End The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Desegregation of Little Rock’s Public Swimming Pools","authors":"J. A. Kirk","doi":"10.34053/parry2019.riapag2.16","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.34053/parry2019.riapag2.16","url":null,"abstract":"Fifty years ago, on July 2, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed one of the twentieth century's landmark pieces of civil rights legislation into law. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had a wide-ranging coverage that tackled discrimination in education, voting rights, and labor relations. Its most immediate impact, however, came in the abolition of segregation in \"public accommodations.\" Following on courts' piecemeal dismantling of certain segregated facilities and the community campaigns by civil rights activists that had intensified in the decade before, the 1964 Civil Rights Act finally outlawed segregation in all public places. These included any facility that was \"owned, operated, or managed by or on behalf of any state or subdivision thereof,\" as well as commercial concerns.1 U.S. Supreme Court rulings that followed in cases such as Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States and Katzenbach v. McClung upheld the Civil Rights Act's contention that the U.S. Constitution's commerce clause gave Congress power to forbid racial discrimination even in privately run businesses.2Unlike the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling ten years earlier, the 1964 Civil Rights Act did not meet with a campaign of massive resistance to its implementation.3 Reflecting the impact of the civil rights movement in changing attitudes toward Jim Crow, many not yet desegregated facilities quickly moved to comply with the new law. That still leftcivil rights activists with the task of testing whether other facilities and businesses that claimed to have desegregated would actually admit and serve African-American customers, as well as the task of exerting direct pressure on those that continued to refuse to do so. Without African Americans actually turning up to use those facilities, there was no way of knowing if they had desegregated or not. This would be a painstaking endeavor, since it meant coordinating attempts of volunteers to use every single public facility or business in every single community across the South.4Most revealing about the response to the 1964 Civil Rights Act was the pattern of compliance and non-compliance that developed. There were few cast-iron certainties about how any given community would react to the desegregation of one set of facilities as opposed to another. In fact, it was the wide variety and range of responses that was often striking. Nevertheless, there were some broadly discernable tendencies. Firstly, it often proved easier to desegregate both publicly funded facilities and private businesses in Upper South states than in Lower South states, where attitudes toward segregation were more entrenched. Secondly, it often proved easier to desegregate facilities in urban areas than in rural areas. In rural areas, sentiment against change appeared to be more inflexible, local officials and businesses were more isolated and therefore more susceptible to community pressure to resist change, and African-American populations were smal","PeriodicalId":51953,"journal":{"name":"ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"73 1","pages":"138"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70000733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Right and Labor in America: Politics, Ideology, and Imagination. Edited by Nelson Lichtenstein and Elizabeth Tandy Shermer. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Pp. vii, 422. Notes, list of contributors, index, acknowledgments. $49.95.)The history of organized labor during the twentieth century is often presented as a tidy narrative of growth and decline. After struggling for existence during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, unions claimed a seat among the power brokers of modern America during the 1930s. Nearly one of three nonfarm workers belonged to a union by the 1950s, and a union job became a path to the middle class. By the 1980s, though, labor's fortunes had reversed. Ronald Reagan signaled the changing times when he crushed the air traffic controllers strike in 1981. By the end of the twentieth century, only about one in ten workers claimed union membership. A once-powerful social movement had been brought to its knees. What explains the dramatic decline of organized labor in the United States?This question has attracted much attention in the last two decades. Scholars have studied the fracturing of the New Deal coalition, the political suppression of the Cold War era, the racial politics of the 1960s and 1970s, deindustrialization, and the resurgence of conservatism. The Right and Labor in America makes a valuable contribution to the last interpretive category. Its fourteen essays focus on how conservative philosophies and activism after World War II challenged the existence of unions and workers' rights to organize. Four broad themes structure the volume: conservatives' ideological antipathy to class-based organizations; the role of region and race in shaping attitudes toward organized labor; conservatives' use of civil rights language through institutions such as the National Right to Work Committee; and conservatives' allegations that unions fostered corruption and posed threats to democracy.Two essays, in particular, should attract attention from readers interested in Arkansas history. Michael Pierce, associate professor of history at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, shows how attitudes toward organized labor in Northwest Arkansas paralleled broader shifts in the country. During the early twentieth century, the region harbored large pockets of pro-union and anti-corporate ideas. By the end of the century, the same region championed corporate tycoons Sam Walton and Don Tyson. Pierce suggests that Orval Faubus provided the bridge that linked these two eras. Faubus had been raised in a socialist, pro-union family and won the 1954 gubernatorial race with support of the Arkansas labor movement and African Americans. …
美国的权利与劳工:政治、意识形态与想象。尼尔森·利希滕斯坦和伊丽莎白·坦迪·谢默编辑。(费城:宾夕法尼亚大学出版社，2012。第七页，422页。注释，贡献者名单，索引，致谢。49.95美元)。20世纪劳工组织的历史经常被描绘成一个关于成长和衰落的简洁叙述。在镀金时代(Gilded Age)和进步时代(Progressive Era)为生存而挣扎之后，工会在20世纪30年代在现代美国的权力经纪人中占据了一席之地。到20世纪50年代，几乎三分之一的非农业工人属于工会，工会工作成为通往中产阶级的一条道路。然而，到了20世纪80年代，劳工的命运发生了逆转。罗纳德·里根(Ronald Reagan)在1981年镇压了空中交通管制员的罢工，标志着时代的变化。到20世纪末，只有十分之一的工人成为工会会员。一场一度强大的社会运动被击垮了。如何解释美国劳工组织的急剧衰落?在过去的二十年里，这个问题引起了人们的广泛关注。学者们研究了新政联盟的破裂、冷战时期的政治压制、20世纪60年代和70年代的种族政治、去工业化和保守主义的复苏。《美国的权利与劳动》对最后一类解释作出了宝贵的贡献。它的14篇文章集中在第二次世界大战后的保守主义哲学和激进主义如何挑战工会的存在和工人的组织权利。全书有四大主题:保守派在意识形态上对以阶级为基础的组织的反感;地区和种族在形成对有组织劳工的态度中的作用;保守派通过国家工作权利委员会(National Right to Work Committee)等机构使用民权语言;保守派指责工会滋生腐败，对民主构成威胁。特别是两篇文章，应该引起对阿肯色州历史感兴趣的读者的注意。费耶特维尔阿肯色大学历史系副教授迈克尔·皮尔斯(Michael Pierce)指出，阿肯色西北部对有组织劳工的态度是如何与全国范围内的转变相一致的。在20世纪早期，该地区藏匿着大量支持工会和反对企业的思想。到本世纪末，该地区成为企业大亨山姆•沃尔顿(Sam Walton)和唐•泰森(Don Tyson)的宠儿。皮尔斯认为奥瓦尔·福伯斯架起了连接这两个时代的桥梁。福伯斯生长在一个社会主义、支持工会的家庭，在阿肯色州劳工运动和非裔美国人的支持下，他赢得了1954年的州长竞选。…
{"title":"The Right and Labor in America: Politics, Ideology, and Imagination","authors":"Michael K. Rosenow","doi":"10.5860/choice.50-2276","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.50-2276","url":null,"abstract":"The Right and Labor in America: Politics, Ideology, and Imagination. Edited by Nelson Lichtenstein and Elizabeth Tandy Shermer. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Pp. vii, 422. Notes, list of contributors, index, acknowledgments. $49.95.)The history of organized labor during the twentieth century is often presented as a tidy narrative of growth and decline. After struggling for existence during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, unions claimed a seat among the power brokers of modern America during the 1930s. Nearly one of three nonfarm workers belonged to a union by the 1950s, and a union job became a path to the middle class. By the 1980s, though, labor's fortunes had reversed. Ronald Reagan signaled the changing times when he crushed the air traffic controllers strike in 1981. By the end of the twentieth century, only about one in ten workers claimed union membership. A once-powerful social movement had been brought to its knees. What explains the dramatic decline of organized labor in the United States?This question has attracted much attention in the last two decades. Scholars have studied the fracturing of the New Deal coalition, the political suppression of the Cold War era, the racial politics of the 1960s and 1970s, deindustrialization, and the resurgence of conservatism. The Right and Labor in America makes a valuable contribution to the last interpretive category. Its fourteen essays focus on how conservative philosophies and activism after World War II challenged the existence of unions and workers' rights to organize. Four broad themes structure the volume: conservatives' ideological antipathy to class-based organizations; the role of region and race in shaping attitudes toward organized labor; conservatives' use of civil rights language through institutions such as the National Right to Work Committee; and conservatives' allegations that unions fostered corruption and posed threats to democracy.Two essays, in particular, should attract attention from readers interested in Arkansas history. Michael Pierce, associate professor of history at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, shows how attitudes toward organized labor in Northwest Arkansas paralleled broader shifts in the country. During the early twentieth century, the region harbored large pockets of pro-union and anti-corporate ideas. By the end of the century, the same region championed corporate tycoons Sam Walton and Don Tyson. Pierce suggests that Orval Faubus provided the bridge that linked these two eras. Faubus had been raised in a socialist, pro-union family and won the 1954 gubernatorial race with support of the Arkansas labor movement and African Americans. …","PeriodicalId":51953,"journal":{"name":"ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"72 1","pages":"186"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71139661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War. By Megan Kate Nelson. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012. Pp. xvii, 332. Acknowledgments, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $69.95, cloth; $24.95, paper.)War inflicts destruction. On the surface, this statement is a truism, but Megan Kate Nelson uncovers the multiple layers of meaning that humans assign to the ruins of war, particularly those of cities, houses, forests, an bodies. Ruin Nation explores the complex and nuanced narratives that northerners and southerners developed during the Civil War in order to understand the ruins they created. Nelson effectively entwines cultural, gender, environmental, and military history in order to offer a unique perspective on war's destructiveness.Americans on both sides of the conflict interpreted the ruin of cities and houses through a shared discourse of civilized warfare. Nelson tells the story of three urban ruins: Hampton (VA), Chambersburg (PA), and Columbia (SC). When Confederate troops fired Hampton in August 1861, in order to keep the community out of the hands of invading Union troops and runaway slaves, they created the first urban ruins of the war. Union officials condemned the destruction as a savage act that gratuitously attacked non-combatants, an accusation that would be the centerpiece of all subsequent debates over the destruction of cities. Confederates countered by depicting Hampton residents as patriots who willingly made a necessary sacrifice for the cause. From the ruin of houses evolved another narrative. Southerners accused Union soldiers of violating the rules of civilized warfare when they vandalized, pillaged, tore down, or entered homes. Union soldiers and northerners articulated a defense that blamed southern civilians for the actions of Confederate armies.Nelson layers an intriguing gender analysis into her discussion of how Americans assigned meaning to the ruins of domestic spaces. Because southerners practically conflated the interior of homes with women's bodies, Nelson argues that historians have underappreciated the psychological impact of looting. When Union soldiers entered homes, it was a violent assertion of power that southerners likened to rape in their language describing such incidents. The Yankee soldier who violated domestic privacy thus embodied the dishonorable and unmanly nature of an uncivilized enemy.Less controversial was the war's consumption of forests. Nelson provides a unique and detailed narrative of soldiers' and armies' use of trees: as torches to light roads, as varied types of field fortifications, as cover in battle, as the material to express soldiers' architectural ingenuity in camp. …
{"title":"Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War","authors":"Lorien Foote","doi":"10.5860/choice.50-2271","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.50-2271","url":null,"abstract":"Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War. By Megan Kate Nelson. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012. Pp. xvii, 332. Acknowledgments, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $69.95, cloth; $24.95, paper.)War inflicts destruction. On the surface, this statement is a truism, but Megan Kate Nelson uncovers the multiple layers of meaning that humans assign to the ruins of war, particularly those of cities, houses, forests, an bodies. Ruin Nation explores the complex and nuanced narratives that northerners and southerners developed during the Civil War in order to understand the ruins they created. Nelson effectively entwines cultural, gender, environmental, and military history in order to offer a unique perspective on war's destructiveness.Americans on both sides of the conflict interpreted the ruin of cities and houses through a shared discourse of civilized warfare. Nelson tells the story of three urban ruins: Hampton (VA), Chambersburg (PA), and Columbia (SC). When Confederate troops fired Hampton in August 1861, in order to keep the community out of the hands of invading Union troops and runaway slaves, they created the first urban ruins of the war. Union officials condemned the destruction as a savage act that gratuitously attacked non-combatants, an accusation that would be the centerpiece of all subsequent debates over the destruction of cities. Confederates countered by depicting Hampton residents as patriots who willingly made a necessary sacrifice for the cause. From the ruin of houses evolved another narrative. Southerners accused Union soldiers of violating the rules of civilized warfare when they vandalized, pillaged, tore down, or entered homes. Union soldiers and northerners articulated a defense that blamed southern civilians for the actions of Confederate armies.Nelson layers an intriguing gender analysis into her discussion of how Americans assigned meaning to the ruins of domestic spaces. Because southerners practically conflated the interior of homes with women's bodies, Nelson argues that historians have underappreciated the psychological impact of looting. When Union soldiers entered homes, it was a violent assertion of power that southerners likened to rape in their language describing such incidents. The Yankee soldier who violated domestic privacy thus embodied the dishonorable and unmanly nature of an uncivilized enemy.Less controversial was the war's consumption of forests. Nelson provides a unique and detailed narrative of soldiers' and armies' use of trees: as torches to light roads, as varied types of field fortifications, as cover in battle, as the material to express soldiers' architectural ingenuity in camp. …","PeriodicalId":51953,"journal":{"name":"ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"72 1","pages":"79"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71139649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France","authors":"Sonia Toudji","doi":"10.5860/choice.50-2278","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.50-2278","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51953,"journal":{"name":"ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"72 1","pages":"74"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71139714","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Dispossession: Discrimination against African American Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights. By Pete Daniel. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Pp. xv, 332. Preface, illustrations, notes, ac- knowledgments, index. $34.95.)Pete Daniel makes his argument clear at the beginning of this book: "civil rights laws . . . only intensified the USDA's bureaucratic resolve to resist the concept of equal rights. . . . The staff perfected passive nullifica- tion, that is, pledging their support even as they purposefully undermined equal opportunity laws" (p. 1). The book covers more than the bureaucratic resolve of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), however, because USDA officials seem to play only a supporting role in the history that Daniel narrates. Instead, Dispossession shows how individuals at the local level harassed voters at county committee elections constituted to carry out USDA policy. Public employees of segregated extension offices, paid partially with federal appropriations funneled through state coffers but supplemented with local business and county-level public funding, worked at the county level to involve some farmers while ignoring oth- ers. Individuals dedicated to retaining white control worked the hardest in the parts of the South where black farmers constituted the majority of the population. Daniel recognizes their leverage, explaining that "power- ful farmers and pliant bureaucrats operated the machinery that disbursed federal funds and information" (p. 11). He acknowledges the influence of agribusiness interests as well. Thus. Dispossession indicates that these three-white capitalist farmers, agribusiness, and bureaucrats-rather than the USDA alone, conspired against black farmers.Dispossession shows how the New Deal heralded a new era in U.S. agricultural policy. It accelerated land consolidation by capitalist farmers, predominately white. This resulted, as Daniel explains, from a coopera- tive effort that involved farmers, agricultural processors, and other corpo- rate interests (agribusiness) along with diverse public entities (agrigov- emment). They united in their commitment "to replace labor-intensive with capital-intensive farming operations" (p. 12). Daniel indicates that "federal agricultural policy and laborsaving science and technology be- came weapons that ruthlessly eliminated sharecroppers, tenants, and small farmers" (p. 12). The narrative includes numerous examples of the diverse, direct, and often aggressive ways that many interests, rather than a monolithic bureaucracy, negated the power that once accompanied land- ownership. The triumvirate also ignored or stalled while responding to black farmer's requests. African Americans with ties to the land faced all these roadblocks as they pursued goals as American as purchasing tractor tires, securing a loan to put their crop in the ground, receiving a legal share of their crop, or casting a vote.Daniel does not focus on any one state
{"title":"Dispossession: Discrimination against African American Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights","authors":"D. Reid","doi":"10.5860/choice.50-6932","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.50-6932","url":null,"abstract":"Dispossession: Discrimination against African American Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights. By Pete Daniel. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Pp. xv, 332. Preface, illustrations, notes, ac- knowledgments, index. $34.95.)Pete Daniel makes his argument clear at the beginning of this book: \"civil rights laws . . . only intensified the USDA's bureaucratic resolve to resist the concept of equal rights. . . . The staff perfected passive nullifica- tion, that is, pledging their support even as they purposefully undermined equal opportunity laws\" (p. 1). The book covers more than the bureaucratic resolve of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), however, because USDA officials seem to play only a supporting role in the history that Daniel narrates. Instead, Dispossession shows how individuals at the local level harassed voters at county committee elections constituted to carry out USDA policy. Public employees of segregated extension offices, paid partially with federal appropriations funneled through state coffers but supplemented with local business and county-level public funding, worked at the county level to involve some farmers while ignoring oth- ers. Individuals dedicated to retaining white control worked the hardest in the parts of the South where black farmers constituted the majority of the population. Daniel recognizes their leverage, explaining that \"power- ful farmers and pliant bureaucrats operated the machinery that disbursed federal funds and information\" (p. 11). He acknowledges the influence of agribusiness interests as well. Thus. Dispossession indicates that these three-white capitalist farmers, agribusiness, and bureaucrats-rather than the USDA alone, conspired against black farmers.Dispossession shows how the New Deal heralded a new era in U.S. agricultural policy. It accelerated land consolidation by capitalist farmers, predominately white. This resulted, as Daniel explains, from a coopera- tive effort that involved farmers, agricultural processors, and other corpo- rate interests (agribusiness) along with diverse public entities (agrigov- emment). They united in their commitment \"to replace labor-intensive with capital-intensive farming operations\" (p. 12). Daniel indicates that \"federal agricultural policy and laborsaving science and technology be- came weapons that ruthlessly eliminated sharecroppers, tenants, and small farmers\" (p. 12). The narrative includes numerous examples of the diverse, direct, and often aggressive ways that many interests, rather than a monolithic bureaucracy, negated the power that once accompanied land- ownership. The triumvirate also ignored or stalled while responding to black farmer's requests. African Americans with ties to the land faced all these roadblocks as they pursued goals as American as purchasing tractor tires, securing a loan to put their crop in the ground, receiving a legal share of their crop, or casting a vote.Daniel does not focus on any one state ","PeriodicalId":51953,"journal":{"name":"ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"72 1","pages":"288"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71142941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Oil! Titan of the Southwest","authors":"J. C. Hamilton, C. C. Rister","doi":"10.2307/40030621","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/40030621","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51953,"journal":{"name":"ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"16 1","pages":"113"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/40030621","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68727190","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"War on the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865","authors":"M. Robert","doi":"10.31390/CWBR.15.1.26","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31390/CWBR.15.1.26","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51953,"journal":{"name":"ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"15 1","pages":"179"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69689558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2012-10-01DOI: 10.1525/phr.2012.81.2.325
Richard Ostrander
From Bible Belt to Sun Belt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism. By Darren Dochuk. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010. Pp. xxiv, 520. Acknowledgments, map, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.) Historians have displayed renewed interest in the history of Southern California in recent years. Previously portrayed as an exception to national trends, the Southern California described by political and social historians today is a region that displays and anticipates political, racial, and cultural developments that end up affecting the rest of the nation. Darren Dochuk extends this interpretation of Southern California by locating evangelical Protestantism within the broader context of the development of Sun Belt conservatism. His title aptly summarizes much of the book's content: In the 1930s and 1940s, thousands of evangelicals from Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas migrated to Southern California in search of economic opportunity. They took with them their distinctive brand of "plain-folk" religion-a mix of southern democratic individualism and anti-establishment, revivalist Protestantism. Dochuk tells the fascinating story of how these migrants eventually gained a foothold in postwar California, achieved middle-class status and social influence in the 1950s, embraced the hard conservatism of Barry Goldwater during the Cold War, and later helped shape the softer, more irenic conservative movement that elevated Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980. It is a story that features famous evangelists such as Billy Graham, influential pastors such as J. Vernon McGee and E. V. Hill, religious colleges such as Pepperdine University, and religious entrepeneurs such as the famed LeftBehind author Tim LaHaye. Among the southerners who would develop an affinity for Southern California was an Arkansan by the name of John Brown-not the famous abolitionist but an early twentieth-century evangelist who established the college in Northwest Arkansas that bears his name. Though John Brown is relatively unknown today, he was important to the rise of Sun Belt conser vatism, serving as a microcosm of the role of Arkansas in Dochuk's account in general. Indeed, two Arkansas colleges-Harding University and John Brown University-played important roles in creating the conservative movements in Southern California, which, would, in turn, come to influence American society at large. …
{"title":"From Bible Belt to Sun Belt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism","authors":"Richard Ostrander","doi":"10.1525/phr.2012.81.2.325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2012.81.2.325","url":null,"abstract":"From Bible Belt to Sun Belt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism. By Darren Dochuk. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010. Pp. xxiv, 520. Acknowledgments, map, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.) Historians have displayed renewed interest in the history of Southern California in recent years. Previously portrayed as an exception to national trends, the Southern California described by political and social historians today is a region that displays and anticipates political, racial, and cultural developments that end up affecting the rest of the nation. Darren Dochuk extends this interpretation of Southern California by locating evangelical Protestantism within the broader context of the development of Sun Belt conservatism. His title aptly summarizes much of the book's content: In the 1930s and 1940s, thousands of evangelicals from Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas migrated to Southern California in search of economic opportunity. They took with them their distinctive brand of \"plain-folk\" religion-a mix of southern democratic individualism and anti-establishment, revivalist Protestantism. Dochuk tells the fascinating story of how these migrants eventually gained a foothold in postwar California, achieved middle-class status and social influence in the 1950s, embraced the hard conservatism of Barry Goldwater during the Cold War, and later helped shape the softer, more irenic conservative movement that elevated Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980. It is a story that features famous evangelists such as Billy Graham, influential pastors such as J. Vernon McGee and E. V. Hill, religious colleges such as Pepperdine University, and religious entrepeneurs such as the famed LeftBehind author Tim LaHaye. Among the southerners who would develop an affinity for Southern California was an Arkansan by the name of John Brown-not the famous abolitionist but an early twentieth-century evangelist who established the college in Northwest Arkansas that bears his name. Though John Brown is relatively unknown today, he was important to the rise of Sun Belt conser vatism, serving as a microcosm of the role of Arkansas in Dochuk's account in general. Indeed, two Arkansas colleges-Harding University and John Brown University-played important roles in creating the conservative movements in Southern California, which, would, in turn, come to influence American society at large. …","PeriodicalId":51953,"journal":{"name":"ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"71 1","pages":"328"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1525/phr.2012.81.2.325","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66908736","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：