A Fabric Of Defeat

In this book, Bryant Simon brings to life the politics of white South Carolina millhands during the first half of the twentieth century. His revealing and moving account explores how this group of southern laborers thought about and participated in politics and public power. Taking a broad view of politics, Simon looks at laborers as they engaged in political activity in many venues--at the polling station, on front porches, and on the shop floor--and examines their political involvement at the local, state, and national levels. He describes the campaign styles and rhetoric of such politicians as Coleman Blease and Olin Johnston (himself a former millhand), who eagerly sought the workers' votes. He draws a detailed picture of mill workers casting ballots, carrying placards, marching on the state capital, writing to lawmakers, and picketing factories. These millhands' politics reflected their public and private thoughts about whiteness and blackness, war and the New Deal, democracy and justice, gender and sexuality, class relations and consumption. Ultimately, the people depicted here are neither romanticized nor dismissed as the stereotypically racist and uneducated "rednecks" found in many accounts of southern politics. Southern workers understood the political and social forces that shaped their lives, argues Simon, and they developed complex political strategies to deal with those forces.

The 1898 lynching of Tom Johnson and Joe Kizer is retold in this groundbreaking book. Unlike other histories of lynching that rely on conventional historical records, this study focuses on the objects associated with the lynching, including newspaper articles, fragments of the victims' clothing, photographs, and souvenirs such as sticks from the hanging tree. This material culture approach uncovers how people tried to integrate the meaning of the lynching into their everyday lives through objects. These seemingly ordinary items are repositories for the comprehension, interpretation, and commemoration of racial violence and white supremacy. Elijah Gaddis showcases an approach to objects as materials of history and memory, insisting that we live in a world suffused with the material traces of racial violence, past and present.

This is the first effort to provide a broad assessment of how well the Brown v. Board of Education decision that declared an end to segregated schools in the United States was implemented. Written by a distinguished group of historians, the twelve essays in this collection examine how African Americans and their supporters in twelve states—Arkansas, North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Delaware, Missouri, Indiana, Nevada, and Wisconsin—dealt with the Court’s mandate to desegregate “with all deliberate speed.” The process followed many diverse paths. Some of the common themes in these efforts were the importance of black activism, especially the crucial role played by the NAACP; entrenched white opposition to school integration, which wasn’t just a southern state issue, as is shown in Delaware, Wisconsin, and Indiana; and the role of the federal government, a sometimes inconstant and sometimes reluctant source of support for implementing Brown.

The transformation of the American South--from authoritarian to democratic rule--is the most important political development since World War II. It has re-sorted voters into parties, remapped presidential elections, and helped polarize Congress. Most important, it is the final step in America's democratization. Paths Out of Dixie illuminates this sea change by analyzing the democratization experiences of Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Robert Mickey argues that Southern states, from the 1890s until the early 1970s, constituted pockets of authoritarian rule trapped within and sustained by a federal democracy. These enclaves--devoted to cheap agricultural labor and white supremacy--were established by conservative Democrats to protect their careers and clients. From the abolition of the whites-only Democratic primary in 1944 until the national party reforms of the early 1970s, enclaves were battered and destroyed by a series of democratization pressures from inside and outside their borders. Drawing on archival research, Mickey traces how Deep South rulers--dissimilar in their internal conflict and political institutions--varied in their responses to these challenges. Ultimately, enclaves differed in their degree of violence, incorporation of African Americans, and reconciliation of Democrats with the national party. These diverse paths generated political and economic legacies that continue to reverberate today. Focusing on enclave rulers, their governance challenges, and the monumental achievements of their adversaries, Paths Out of Dixie shows how the struggles of the recent past have reshaped the South and, in so doing, America's political development.

Includes cases argued and determined in the District Courts of the United States and, Mar./May 1880-Oct./Nov. 1912, the Circuit Courts of the United States; Sept./Dec. 1891-Sept./Nov. 1924, the Circuit Courts of Appeals of the United States; Aug./Oct. 1911-Jan./Feb. 1914, the Commerce Court of the United States; Sept./Oct. 1919-Sept./Nov. 1924, the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia.

Volume One: This volume, which spans the long period from the sixteenth century through the Civil War era, is remarkable for the religious, racial, ethnic, and class diversity of the women it features. Essays on plantation mistresses, overseers' wives, nonslaveholding women from the upcountry, slave women, and free black women in antebellum Charleston are certain to challenge notions about the slave South and about the significance of women to the state's economy. South Carolina's unusual history of religious tolerance is explored through the experiences of women of various faiths, and accounts of women from Europe, the West Indies, and other colonies reflect the diverse origins of the state's immigrants.

Customary rights -- Homegrown unions -- Union-management cooperation -- New rules -- Dirty deal -- A battle of righteousness -- We must get together in our organization -- No turning back -- Anatomy of a strike -- Which side are you on? -- Aftermath.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the 1999 National Book Award for Nonfiction, finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, Embracing Defeat is John W. Dower's brilliant examination of Japan in the immediate, shattering aftermath of World War II. Drawing on a vast range of Japanese sources and illustrated with dozens of astonishing documentary photographs, Embracing Defeat is the fullest and most important history of the more than six years of American occupation, which affected every level of Japanese society, often in ways neither side could anticipate. Dower, whom Stephen E. Ambrose has called "America's foremost historian of the Second World War in the Pacific," gives us the rich and turbulent interplay between West and East, the victor and the vanquished, in a way never before attempted, from top-level manipulations concerning the fate of Emperor Hirohito to the hopes and fears of men and women in every walk of life. Already regarded as the benchmark in its field, Embracing Defeat is a work of colossal scholarship and history of the very first order. John W. Dower is the Elting E. Morison Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for War Without Mercy.