Confronting Southern Poverty in the Great Depression : The Report on Economic Conditions of the South with Related Documents

by Carlton, David L.; Coclanis, Peter A.

• ISBN13: 9780312114978
• ISBN10: 0312114974
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-01-15
• Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's

Summary

The National Emergency Countil's 1938 Report on Economic Conditions of the South caused Franklin Roosevelt to view the south as "the Nation's #1 economic problem" and quickly became a standard part of modern Southern history. This important and out-of-print document is reprinted here, along with primary accounts of the Depression-era South, statistical data, and contemporary reactions to the Report.

Author Biography

David L. Carlton is associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University, where he has taught since 1983. He is the author of Mill and Town in South Carolina, 1880-1920 (1982) and a number of publications dealing chiefly with the urban, industrial, and labor history of the American South. He is currently working on a study of the industrialization of North Carolina. Peter A. Coclanis is a member of the history department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of many works in economic history, including The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death in the South Carolina Low Country, 1670-1920 (1989), which won the Allan Nevins Prize of the Society of American Historians.

Table of Contents

Foreword	iii
Preface	iv
PART ONE Introduction: The Report in Historical Perspective	1	(38)
First Grapplings with Southern Poverty: Civil War to the Great Depression	2	(5)
The South Meets the Nation: The Depression and the New Deal	7	(4)
Southern Liberals, the New Deal, and the Creation of the Report	11	(10)
Release and Reception	21	(5)
The Failure to Follow Up	26	(6)
The Report in Modern Perspective	32	(7)
PART TWO The Document: Report on Economic Conditions of the South	39	(42)
PART THREE Related Pictures, Life Stories, Statistics, and Documents	81	(80)
Photographs	82	(6)
Personal: Life Stories from the Depression-Era South	88	(1)
``You're Gonna Have Lace Curtains'': A White Tenant Family, North Carolina	88	(10)
Mary A. Hicks
Willis S. Harrison
``Ain't Got No Screens'': A Black Tenant Family, Arkansas	98	(3)
Walter Rowland
``Old Man Dobbin and His Crowd'': White Cotton Mill Workers, North Carolina	101	(18)
Ida Moore
Quantitative: Statistical Evidence from Odum's Southern Regions	118	(1)
Per Capita Personal Income, by Geographic Divisions and States, 1929	119	(1)
Farm Income, Five- and Ten-Year Average	120	(1)
Preliminary Estimate of Soil Impoverishment and Destruction by Erosion	121	(1)
Proportion of Gainfully Occupied, 1930, Among the General Population 10 Years and Over, Females 10 Years and Over, and Children 10--17 Years	122	(2)
Percent Illiteracy Ten Years of Age and Over, 1930	124	(2)
Average Gross Income per Farm per Year, 1924--1928	126	(1)
Percent Illiteracy 10 Years of Age and Over, 1930	126	(1)
Cotton Economy in the Mississippi Delta	127	(2)
Contemporary Documents Relating to the Report	128	(1)
Using the Report in the ``Purge'': Speech at Barnesville, Georgia, August 11, 1938	129	(6)
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Two Editorials: From the Textile Bulletin and the Louisville Courier-Journal	135	(4)
Attack and Response: Hall's Comments and Mellett's Response	139	(10)
Fitzgerald Hall
Lowell Mellett
The Resolutions Committee, Southern Liberals Respond to the Report: The Southern Conference for Human Welfare, Birmingham, Alabama, November 20--23, 1938	149	(12)
APPENDIX Suggestions for Further Reading	161	(4)
Index	165