Gwinnett County, Georgia, and the Transformation of the American South, 1818–2018

Gwinnett County, Georgia, and the Transformation of the American South, 1818–2018
Author: Matthew Hild
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2022-07-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0820362085

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In Gwinnett County’s two hundred years, the area has been western, southern, rural, suburban, and now increasingly urban. Its stories include the displacement of Native peoples, white settlement, legal battles over Indian Removal, slavery and cotton, the Civil War and the Lost Cause, New South railroad and town development, Reconstruction and Jim Crow, business development and finance in a national economy, a Populist uprising and Black outmigration, the entrance of women into the political arena, the evolution of cotton culture, the development of modern infrastructure, and the transformation from rural to suburban to a multicultural urbanizing place. Gwinnett, as its chamber of commerce likes to say, has it all. However, Gwinnett has yet to be the focus of a major historical exploration—until now. Through a compilation of essays written by professional historians with expertise in a diverse array of eras and fields, Michael Gagnon and Matthew Hild’s collection finally tells these stories in a systematic way—avoiding the pitfalls of nonprofessional local histories that tend to ignore issues of race, class, or gender. While not claiming to be comprehensive, this book provides general readers and scholars alike with a glimpse at Gwinnett through the ages.

Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta

Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta
Author: Michael Pierce
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2022-05-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1610757750

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Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta examines the history of labor relations and racial conflict in the Mississippi Valley from the Civil War into the late twentieth century. This essay collection grew out of a conference marking the hundredth anniversary of one of the nation’s deadliest labor conflicts—the 1919 Elaine Massacre, during which white mobs ruthlessly slaughtered over two hundred African Americans across Phillips County, Arkansas, in response to a meeting of unionized Black sharecroppers. The essays here demonstrate that the brutality that unfolded in Phillips County was characteristic of the culture of race- and labor-based violence that prevailed in the century after the Civil War. They detail how Delta landowners began seeking cheap labor as soon as the slave system ended—securing a workforce by inflicting racial terror, eroding the Reconstruction Amendments in the courts, and obstructing federal financial-relief efforts. The result was a system of peonage that continued to exploit Blacks and poor whites for their labor, sometimes fatally. In response, laborers devised their own methods for sustaining themselves and their communities: forming unions, calling strikes, relocating, and occasionally operating outside the law. By shedding light on the broader context of the Elaine Massacre, Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta reveals that the fight against white supremacy in the Delta was necessarily a fight for better working conditions, fair labor practices, and economic justice.

Above and Beyond

Above and Beyond
Author: Catherine M Lewis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024-09-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780881469455

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Gwinnett County, northeast of Atlanta, Georgia, has been one of the fastest growing counties in the nation since the 1980s. Nobody walking the unpaved county roads could have imagined that, two centuries after its founding, it would become the second-most populous county in Georgia and one of the most dynamic and diverse in the nation. ABOVE AND BEYOND tells the story of that growth through one of its most significant families--the Masons. They first settled in Gwinnett in 1838 and have long played a major role in the development of one of the South's largest metropolitan areas. In the twentieth century, Wayne and Jimmy Mason were instrumental in transforming Gwinnett through private investment, business development, public works, and public service. The Masons' story reveals a great deal about the economic, business, political, and social climate in the South's most important business center after World War II.

Cornerstone of the Confederacy

Cornerstone of the Confederacy
Author: Keith S. Hébert
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2021
Genre: African Americans
ISBN: 9781621906520

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"This book traces the curious history of the Cornerstone Speech. Alexander H. Stephens's defense of the new Confederacy, delivered on March 21, 1861, the Cornerstone Speech was an uninhibited overture to a new nation founded on white supremacy and slavery, and an instant sensation. While the speech is widely cited, no full-length treatment of the work and its legacy exists - and it is poorly understood. Hébert examines how Stephens initially considered it, then how, with the help of others, he reinterpreted it to shore up major tenets of Lost Cause ideology after the Confederacy was defeated on the battlefield. The book also shows how this reactionary interpretation would inform Neo-Confederate ideas that abide to the present day in American culture"--

Greenbackers, Knights of Labor, and Populists

Greenbackers, Knights of Labor, and Populists
Author: Matthew Hild
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2010-02-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0820336564

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Historians have widely studied the late-nineteenth-century southern agrarian revolts led by such groups as the Farmers' Alliance and the People's (or Populist) Party. Much work has also been done on southern labor insurgencies of the same period, as kindled by the Knights of Labor and others. However, says Matthew Hild, historians have given only minimal consideration to the convergence of these movements. Hild shows that the Populist (or People's) Party, the most important third party of the 1890s, established itself most solidly in Texas, Alabama, and, under the guise of the earlier Union Labor Party, Arkansas, where farmer-labor political coalitions from the 1870s to mid-1880s had laid the groundwork for populism's expansion. Third-party movements fared progressively worse in Georgia and North Carolina, where little such coalition building had occurred, and in places like Tennessee and South Carolina, where almost no history of farmer-labor solidarity existed. Hild warns against drawing any direct correlations between a strong Populist presence in a given place and a background of farmer-laborer insurgency. Yet such a background could only help Populists and was a necessary precondition for the initially farmer-oriented Populist Party to attract significant labor support. Other studies have found a lack of labor support to be a major reason for the failure of Populism, but Hild demonstrates that the Populists failed despite significant labor support in many parts of the South. Even strong farmer-labor coalitions could not carry the Populists to power in a region in which racism and violent and fraudulent elections were, tragically, central features of politics.

Transition to an Industrial South

Transition to an Industrial South
Author: Michael J. Gagnon
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2012-10-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807145084

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Renowned New South booster Henry Grady proposed industrialization as a basis of economic recovery for the former Confederacy. Born in 1850 in Athens, Georgia, to a family involved in the city's thriving manufacturing industries, Grady saw firsthand the potential of industrialization for the region. In Transition to an Industrial South, Michael J. Gagnon explores the creation of an industrial network in the antebellum South by focusing on the creation and expansion of cotton textile manufacture in Athens. By 1835, local entrepreneurs had built three cotton factories in Athens, started a bank, and created the Georgia Railroad. Although known best as a college town, Athens became an industrial center for Georgia in the antebellum period and maintained its stature as a factory hub even after competing cities supplanted it in the late nineteenth century. Georgia, too, remained the foremost industrial state in the South until the 1890s. Gagnon reveals the political nature of procuring manufacturing technology and building cotton mills in the South, and demonstrates the generational maturing of industrial laboring, managerial, and business classes well before the advent of the New South era. He also shows how a southern industrial society grew out of a culture of social and educational reform, economic improvements, and business interests in banking and railroading. Using Athens as a case study, Gagnon suggests that the connected networks of family, business, and financial relations provided a framework for southern industry to profit during the Civil War and served as a principal guide to prosperity in the immediate postbellum years.

Guten Tag, Y'all

Guten Tag, Y'all
Author: Marko Maunula
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2010-01-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0820336092

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Nicknamed "Euroville," Spartanburg, South Carolina, is a home away from home for BMW, Michelin, Ciba-Geigy, and numerous other European corporations. Enriching our understanding of what globalization means to millions of small-town, blue-collar Americans, Guten Tag, Y'all looks at Spartanburg as a model of how determined communities can shape and influence globalization to their benefit—and liking. "South Carolinians in general and Spartans in particular do not believe in revolutions or quick fixes of any sort," writes Marko Maunula. Portraying Spartanburg to be a highly organized, hierarchical community, Maunula shows how it retained much of its preexisting culture and many of its institutions as it transformed itself from a mill town to a global business headquarters. As Maunula discusses such topics as global currency flows, cold war politics, federal trade policies, technological advances, and the decline of the American textile industry, he profiles industrialist Roger Milliken, civic booster Richard E. (Dick) Tukey, and others who successfully "sold" their vision for Spartanburg both abroad and on the home front. Maunula also analyzes the complex cultural give-and-take by which multinational corporations are transformed from alien, nationally identifiable foreign business units into localized conglomerates. Guten Tag, Y'all is a multifaceted, engaging case study of international economic survival and success at the local level.

American Jewish Year Book 2020

American Jewish Year Book 2020
Author: Arnold Dashefsky
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 808
Release: 2022-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3030787060

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The American Jewish Year Book, which spans three different centuries, is the annual record of the North American Jewish communities and provides insight into their major trends. Part I of the current volume contains the lead article: Chapter 1, “Pastrami, Verklempt, and Tshoot-spa: Non-Jews’ Use of Jewish Language in the US” by Sarah Bunin Benor. Following this chapter are three on domestic and international events, which analyze the year’s events as they affect American Jewish communal and political affairs. Three chapters analyze the demography and geography of the US, Canada, and world Jewish populations. Part II provides lists of Jewish institutions, including federations, community centers, social service agencies, national organizations, synagogues, Hillels, camps, museums, and Israeli consulates. The final chapters present national and local Jewish periodicals and broadcast media; academic resources, including Jewish Studies programs, books, journals, articles, websites, and research libraries; and lists of major events in the past year, Jewish honorees, and obituaries. While written mostly by academics, this volume conveys an accessible style, making it of interest to public officials, professional and lay leaders in the Jewish community, as well as the general public and academic researchers. The American Jewish Year Book has been a key resource for social scientists exploring comparative and historical data on Jewish population patterns. No less important, the Year Book serves organization leaders and policy makers as the source for valuable data on Jewish communities and as a basis for planning. Serious evidence-based articles regularly appear in the Year Book that focus on analyses and reviews of critical issues facing American Jews and their communities which are indispensable for scholars and community leaders. Calvin Goldscheider, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Ungerleider Professor Emeritus of Judaic Studies, Brown University They have done it again. The American Jewish Year Book has produced yet another edition to add to its distinguished tradition of providing facts, figures and analyses of contemporary life in North America. Its well-researched and easily accessible essays offer the most up to date scrutiny of topics and challenges of importance to American Jewish life; to the American scene of which it is a part and to world Jewry. Whether one is an academic or professional member of the Jewish community (or just an interested reader of all things Jewish), there is not another more impressive and informative reading than the American Jewish Year Book. Debra Renee Kaufman, Professor Emerita and Matthews Distinguished University Professor, Northeastern University

Globalization and the American South

Globalization and the American South
Author: James Charles Cobb
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780820326474

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In 1955 the Fortune magazine list of America's largest corporations included just 18 with headquarters in the Southeast. By 2002 the number had grown to 123. In fact, the South attracted over half of the foreign businesses drawn to the United States in the 1990s. The eight original essays collected here consider this stunning dynamism in ways that help us see anew the region's place in that ever-accelerating, transnational flow of people, capital, and technology known collectively as "globalization." Moving between local and global perspectives, the essays discuss how once faraway places like Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Indian Subcontinent are now having an impact on the South. One essay, for example, looks at a range of issues behind the explosive growth of North Carolina's Latino population, which grew by almost 400 percent during the 1990s-miles ahead of the national growth percentage of 61. In another essay we learn why BMW workers in Germany, frustrated with the migration of jobs to South Carolina, refer to the American South as "our Mexico." Showing that global forces are often on both sides of the matchup--reshaping the South but also adapting to and exploiting its peculiarities--many of the essays make the point that, although the new ethnic food section at the local Winn-Dixie is one manifestation of globalization, so is the wide-ranging export of such originally southern phenomena as NASCAR and Kentucky Fried Chicken. If a single message emerges from the book, it is this: Beware of tidy accounts of worldwide integration. On one hand, globalization can play to southern shortcomings (think of the region's repute as a source of cheap labor); on the other, the influx of new peoples, customs, and ideas is poised to alter forever the South's historic black-white racial divide.