The Most Southern Place on Earth

James C. Cobb is Bernadotte Schmitt Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His books include The Selling of the South, Industrialization and Southern Society, and The New Deal and the South.

"This is a solidly researched and well-written book that delineates one of the most disturbing chapters and places in American history. It deserves to be widely read not only as a story of this most southern place but also as a story of the United States."--The Journal of Southwest Georgia History"The work is best as a clear-thinking and sensitive history of racial and worker exploitation and as an argument that such exploitation has not been a great exception to the rest of American history but a particularly vivid culmination of it."--Ted Ownby, University of Mississippi"Well researched, great little details and stories make it fascinating. A good historical perspective of Delta region."--Ron Bernthal, Sullivan County Community College"Fascinating."--Philip Scranton, Rutgers University"Well written, and an excellent addition to the literature on the South since the Civil War. A must read!"--J. Paul Leslie, Nicholls State University"A lively, compassionate and disturbing book based on a wealth of sources."--The New York Times Book Review"Extensive, engrossing, and literate."--Stephen J. Whitfield, Brandeis University"An enthralling new history....Cobb's well-researched, well-written book is 'must' reading for anyone interested in the Delta."--Lexington Herald-Leader"Cobb...painstakingly lays out the historical roots for the Delta's huge impact on American history....Fascinating history."--Fanfare"Fulfilling the ironic meaning of the title, James Cobb provides the first comprehensive history of the Mississippi Delta to appear in half a century....His exposition of the often misunderstood sharecrop and tenant systems is a much needed contribution, but the sections devoted to the Delta's distinctive cultural life, both white and black, are outstanding. Like some of the notable works by Delta writers, whom Cobb discusses, The Most Southern Place onEarth will take its place among the classic texts in Southern studies."--Bertram Wyatt-Brown, University of Florida, author of Honor and Violence in the Old South"A classic study that probes complex worlds of race and class in the Mississippi Delta with unrelenting honesty."--William Ferris, Director, Center for the Study of Southern Culture, The University of Mississippi"The Mississippi Delta is God's laboratory for this old republic. Its wealth and poverty, arrogance and humility, passion and reason, black and white in a raw mix found no other place in the nation. How it comes out there may foretell the future of this country. No other author knows its history so well and puts it down fact by anguished fact in such compelling fashion. Anyone who wants to find the soul of this civilization needs to read what James Cobb haswritten."--Hugh Sidey, Washington Contributing Editor, Time Magazine"A brilliant book. Aside from providing a fascinating and readable portrait of the nation's most interesting subregion, James Cobb's remarkable study is apt to revolutionize the way we define southern culture. The Most Southern Place on Earth is a revealing, absorbing, and disturbing work."--Numan V. Bartley, University of Georgia"A virtual textbook crammed with facts about slavery, share cropping, the masculine perspective of the emerging blues tradition, red-lining, poverty politics, the complacency of the white elite and the unrealized triumphs of the civil rights era....Cobb pulls no punches in describing this sweet yet vexing land."--The Miami Herald"A stimulawting work ideally suited for an upperclassman seminor on southern identity."--Bill McBride, Louisiana School for Math, Science and Art"A benchmark work on the Mississippi Delta....Brilliant....Must reading....Will serve as fertile ground for empirical and further historical research on the Delta for decades to come."--Rural Sociology

• Introduction: "Pure Soil, Endlessly Deep, Dark, and Sweet"1. Plantation Frontier2. "The Stern Realities of War3. A "Harnessed Revolution"4. Conquering the Plantation Frontier5. New South Plantation Kingdom6. A World Apart7. "The Deepest South"8. "We Are at the Crossroads"9. "A Man's Life Isn't Worth a Penny with a Hole in It"10. "A Testing Ground for Democracy"11. "Somebody Done Nailed Us on the Cross"12. "The Blues Is a Lowdown Shakin' Chill"13. "More Writers per Square Foot ..."Epilogue: An American RegionNotesIndex