Hillbilly Hellraisers

J. Blake Perkins searches for the roots of rural defiance in the Ozarks--and discovers how it changed over time. Eschewing generalities, Perkins focuses on the experiences and attitudes of rural people themselves as they interacted with government in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He uncovers the reasons local disputes and uneven access to government power fostered markedly different reactions by hill people as time went by. Resistance in the earlier period sprang from upland small farmers' conflicts with capitalist elites who held the local levers of federal power. But as industry and agribusiness displaced family farms after World War II, a conservative cohort of town business elites, local political officials, and Midwestern immigrants arose from the region's new low-wage, union-averse economy. As Perkins argues, this modern anti-government conservatism bore little resemblance to the populist backcountry populism of an earlier age but had much in common with the movement elsewhere.

Counterculture flourished nationwide in the 1960s and 1970s, and while the hippies of Haight-Ashbury occupied the public eye, further off the beaten path in the Arkansas Ozarks a faction of back to the landers were quietly creating their own counterculture haven. In Hipbillies, Jared Phillips collects oral histories and delves into archival resources to provide a fresh scholarly discussion of this group, which was defined by anticonsumerism and a desire for self-sufficiency outside of modern industry. While there were indeed clashes between long haired hippies and cantankerous locals, Phillips shows how the region has always been a refuge for those seeking a life off the beaten path, and as such, is perhaps one of the last bastions for the dream of self-sufficiency in American life. Hipbillies presents a region steeped in tradition coming to terms with the modern world.

Between the world wars, America embraced an image of the Ozarks as a remote land of hills and hollers. The popular imagination stereotyped Ozarkers as ridge runners, hillbillies, and pioneers—a cast of colorful throwbacks hostile to change. But the real Ozarks reflected a more complex reality. Brooks Blevins tells the cultural history of the Ozarks as a regional variation of an American story. As he shows, the experiences of the Ozarkers have not diverged from the currents of mainstream life as sharply or consistently as the mythmakers would have it. If much of the region seemed to trail behind by a generation, the time lag was rooted more in poverty and geographic barriers than a conscious rejection of the modern world and its progressive spirit. In fact, the minority who clung to the old days seemed exotic largely because their anachronistic ways clashed against the backdrop of the evolving region around them. Blevins explores how these people’s disproportionate influence affected the creation of the idea of the Ozarks, and reveals the truer idea that exists at the intersection of myth and reality. The conclusion to the acclaimed trilogy, The History of the Ozarks, Volume 3: The Ozarkers offers an authoritative appraisal of the modern Ozarks and its people.

Alike in many aspects of their histories, Australia and the United States diverge in striking ways when it comes to their working classes, labor relations, and politics. Greg Patmore and Shelton Stromquist curate innovative essays that use transnational and comparative analysis to explore the two nations' differences. The contributors examine five major areas: World War I's impact on labor and socialist movements; the history of coerced labor; patterns of ethnic and class identification; forms of working-class collective action; and the struggles related to trade union democracy and independent working-class politics. Throughout, many essays highlight how hard-won transnational ties allowed Australians and Americans to influence each other's trade union and political cultures. Contributors: Robin Archer, Nikola Balnave, James R. Barrett, Bradley Bowden, Verity Burgmann, Robert Cherny, Peter Clayworth, Tom Goyens, Dianne Hall, Benjamin Huf, Jennie Jeppesen, Marjorie A. Jerrard, Jeffrey A. Johnson, Diane Kirkby, Elizabeth Malcolm, Patrick O'Leary, Greg Patmore, Scott Stephenson, Peta Stevenson-Clarke, Shelton Stromquist, and Nathan Wise

It is a bedrock American belief: the 1950s were a golden age of prosperity for autoworkers. Flush with high wages and enjoying the benefits of generous union contracts, these workers became the backbone of a thriving blue-collar middle class. It is also a myth. Daniel J. Clark began by interviewing dozens of former autoworkers in the Detroit area and found a different story--one of economic insecurity caused by frequent layoffs, unrealized contract provisions, and indispensable second jobs. Disruption in Detroit is a vivid portrait of workers and an industry that experienced anything but stable prosperity. As Clark reveals, the myths--whether of rising incomes or hard-nosed union bargaining success--came later. In the 1950s, ordinary autoworkers, union leaders, and auto company executives recognized that although jobs in their industry paid high wages, they were far from steady and often impossible to find.

Distilled from Arkansas: A Narrative History, the definitive work on the subject since its original publication in 2002, Arkansas: A Concise History is a succinct one-volume history of the state from the prehistory period to the present. Featuring four historians, each bringing his or her expertise to a range of topics, this volume introduces readers to the major issues that have confronted the state and traces the evolution of those issues across time. After a brief review of Arkansas’s natural history, readers will learn about the state’s native populations before exploring the colonial and plantation eras, early statehood, Arkansas’s entry into and role in the Civil War, and significant moments in national and global history, including Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, the Elaine race massacre, the Great Depression, both world wars, and the Civil Rights Movement. Linking these events together, Arkansas: A Concise History offers both an understanding of the state’s history and a perspective on that history’s implications for the political, economic, and social realities of today.

As the United States transformed into an industrial superpower, American socialists faced the vexing question of how to approach race. Lorenzo Costaguta balances intellectual and institutional history to illuminate the clash between two major points of view. On one side, white supremacists believed labor should accept and apply the ascendant tenets of scientific theories of race. But others stood with International Workingmen’s Association leaders J. P. McDonnell and F. A. Sorge in rejecting the idea that racial and ethnic division influenced worker-employer relations, arguing instead that class played the preeminent role. Costaguta charts the socialist movement’s journey through the conflict and down a path that ultimately abandoned scientific racism in favor of an internationalist class-focused and racial-conscious American socialism. As he shows, the shift relied on a strong immigrant influence personified by the cosmopolitan Marxist thinker and future IWW cofounder Daniel De Leon. The class-focused movement that emerged became American socialism’s most common approach to race in the twentieth century and beyond.

The labor movement in the United States is a bulwark of democracy and a driving force for social and economic equality. Yet its stories remain largely unknown to Americans. Robert Forrant and Mary Anne Trasciatti edit a collection of essays focused on nationwide efforts to propel the history of labor and working people into mainstream narratives of US history. In Part One, the contributors concentrate on ways to collect and interpret worker-oriented history for public consumption. Part Two moves from National Park sites to murals to examine the writing and visual representation of labor history. Together, the essayists explore how place-based labor history initiatives promote understanding of past struggles, create awareness of present challenges, and support efforts to build power, expand democracy, and achieve justice for working people. A wide-ranging blueprint for change, Where Are the Workers? shows how working-class perspectives can expand our historical memory and inform and inspire contemporary activism. Contributors: Jim Beauchesne, Rebekah Bryer, Rebecca Bush, Conor Casey, Rachel Donaldson, Kathleen Flynn, Elijah Gaddis, Susan Grabski, Amanda Kay Gustin, Karen Lane, Rob Linné, Erik Loomis, Tom MacMillan, Lou Martin, Scott McLaughlin, Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan, Karen Sieber, and Katrina Windon