In Labor s Promised Land, Mark Fannin examines the ways in which the social stratification and rigid cultural norms of southern hierarchy were co-opted by those laboring to organize workers in the South. Using the distinct but related examples of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers and the Southern Tenant Farmers Union as case studies, Fannin illustrates how central themes of southern identity were used to mobilize the most disillusioned and exploited elements of the working class in the region.
By subverting customary values to promote movements in which solidarity was more powerful than...