Southern Workers and the Search for Community is the first major effort to interpret the enduring legacy of the southern textile industry, company-owned mill villages, and the union struggles of the 1930s. Focusing on Spartanburg County, South Carolina, G. C. Waldrep offers an eloquent study of the hopes and fears that define patterns of labor activism. Revealing a complex meshing of community ties and traditions with the goals and ideals of unionism, Waldrep shows how unions fed into a social vision of mutuality, equality, and interdependency already established in mill villages. This...