Burton traces the evolution of Edgefield County from the antebellum period through Reconstruction and beyond. From amassed information on every household in this large rural community, he tests the many generalizations about southern black and white families of this period and finds that they were strikingly similar. Wealth, rather than race or class, was the main factor that influenced family structure, and the matriarchal family was but a myth.

The rise in standards of living throughout the U. S. in the wake of World War II brought significant changes to the lives of southern textile workers. Mill workers' wages rose, their purchasing power grew, and their economic expectations increased--with little help from the unions. Timothy Minchin argues that the reasons behind the failure of textile unions in the postwar South lie not in stereotypical assumptions of mill workers' passivity or anti-union hostility but in these large-scale social changes. Minchin addresses the challenges faced by the TWUA--competition from nonunion mills that...

Together, and separately, black and white Baptists created different but intertwined cultures that profoundly shaped the South. Adopting a biracial and bicultural focus, Paul Harvey works to redefine southern religious history, and by extension southern culture, as the product of such interaction--the result of whites and blacks having drawn from and influenced each other even while remaining separate and distinct.

Harvey explores the parallels and divergences of black and white religious institutions as manifested through differences in worship styles, sacred music, and political...

In 1891, thousands of Tennessee miners rose up against the use of convict labor by the state's coal companies, eventually engulfing five mountain communities in a rebellion against government authority. Propelled by the insurgent sensibilities of Populism and Gilded Age unionism, the miners initially sought to abolish the convict lease system through legal challenges and legislative lobbying. When nonviolent tactics failed to achieve reform, the predominantly white miners repeatedly seized control of the stockades and expelled the mostly black convicts from the mining districts. Insurrection...