Charles C. Bolton – författare

Mobilization for World War II disrupted life in the Deep South of the United States, sparking new-and, in some cases, reigniting old-battles across the home front. Rural migrants flocked to towns and cities, hoping to take advantage of new war-related job opportunities. Wealthy landowners attempted to wield their enormous power to keep farm workers on the land, especially Black tenants and wage hands who provided much of the essential labor. Towns that attracted wartime industries, such as Pascagoula, Mississippi, which exploded with new demand for its shipbuilding industry, grew exponentially and quickly, making the men who owned these shipyards powerful millionaires and laying the foundation for economic concerns that continued well beyond the postwar years. The areas around southern military installations were transformed and experienced heightened racial tensions. Home Front Battles examines the many effects of World War II economic and military mobilization on the Deep South, including the federal government's attempts to solve some of the social problems that arose from a massive influx of migrants who were unfamiliar with a new world of work. It also underscores one of the primary home front battles, which began with the passage of the Selective Training and Service Act in 1940 and the creation of the Fair Employment Practices Committee in 1941, banning discriminatory military training and employment practices and making it clear that the federal government would be promoting the ideal of nondiscrimination as part of its wartime mobilization efforts. In the Deep South, where race relations were already tense, these directives and southern tradition clashed. White politicians-ranging from the liberal Georgia governor Ellis Arnall to Theodore Bilbo, the reactionary U.S. senator from Mississippi-disagreed about the long-term impact of wartime mobilization. At the same time, the fight for African American rights culminated with the elections of 1946, when Blacks in the Deep South tried to vote on a scale unprecedented in the twentieth century and white Southerners closed ranks to beat back their efforts-using tactics that ranged from social intimidation to outright violence.

This compelling collection of original documents and current scholarship sheds considerable light on the underside of the poor white experience in the antebellum South. In 1859, the Georgian Edward Isham, convicted in North Carolina of murdering a Piedmont farmer, dictated his life story to his court-appointed defense attorney. The autobiography left behind provides a rare look at the world of poor whites from the viewpoint of a member of this most elusive of the Old South's social groups. A selection of essays accompanying the autobiography examines the meaning of the document from a variety of perspectives: crime, frontier life, gender relations, labor, and the genre of nineteenth-century confessional literature.

In Poor Whites of the Antebellum South, Charles C. Bolton gives a distinct voice to one of the most elusive groups in the society of the Old South. Bolton''s detailed examination reveals much about the lives of these landless white tenants and laborers and their relationship to yeoman farmers, black slaves, free blacks and elite whites. Providing a provocative analysis of the failure of the Jeffersonian "yeoman ideal" of democracy in white-majority areas, this book also shows how poor whites represented a more significant presence on the political, economic, and social landscape than previously had been thought.Looking at two specific regions--the "settled" central piedmont of North Carolina and the "frontier" of northeast Mississippi--Bolton describes how poor whites played an important, though circumscribed, role in the local economy. Dependent on temporary employment, they represented a troubling presence in a society based on the principles of white independence and black slavery. Although perceived by southern leaders as a threat, poor whites, Bolton argues, did not form a political alliance with either free or enslaved blacks because of numerous factors including white racism, kinship ties, religion, education, and mobility. A concluding discussion of the crisis of 1860-61 examines the rejection of secession by significant numbers of poor whites, as well as the implications for their future as the Old South turned toward the new.Poor Whites of the Antebellum South sheds light on a group often neglected in southern history. It is an important contribution that will be of interest to all students and historians of the American South.

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.

Updated through the 1996 elections to reflect current historical thinking, the 8th edition A Synopsis of American History continues to provide a chronological summary of major political, economic, and diplomatic developments in American history, but it also analyzes the social, cultural, and intellectual currents of American life with attention to gender, minority, urban and industrial history.

Updated through the 1996 elections to reflect current historical thinking, the 8th edition A Synopsis of American History continues to provide a chronological summary of major political, economic, and diplomatic developments in American history, but it also analyzes the social, cultural, and intellectual currents of American life with attention to gender, minority, urban and industrial history.