The Transformation of Plantation Politics: Black Politics, Concentrated Poverty, And Social Capital in the Mississippi Delta

by Wright Austin, Sharon D.

• ISBN13: 9780791468012
• ISBN10: 0791468011
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-07-01
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

The Transformation of Plantation Politics explores the effects of black political exclusion, the sharecropping system, and white resistance on the Mississippi Delta's current economic and political situation. Sharon D. Wright Austin's extensive interviews with residents of the region shed light on the transformations and legacies of the Delta's political and economic institutions. While African Americans now hold most of the major political offices in the region and are no longer formally excluded from political participation, educational opportunities, or lucrative jobs, Wright Austin shows that white wealth and black poverty continue to be the norm partly because of the deeply entrenched legacies of the Delta's history. Contributing to a greater theoretical understanding of black political efforts, this book demonstrates a need for a strong level of black social capital, intergroup capital, financial capital, political capital, and a human capital of educated and skilled workers. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Foreword	xi
Acknowledgments	xv
Abbreviations	xvii
Part One The Theoretical Framework
Chapter One The Influence of Local Elites in the Mississippi Delta	3	(22)
Part Two The Plantation Political and Economic Culture
Chapter Two The "Cotton-Obsessed, Negro-Obsessed" Delta Plantation Economy	25	(16)
Chapter Three Black Mobilization and Elite Resistance during the Height of Traditionalistic Plantation Political Rule	41	(20)
Part Three The Transformation and Legacies of the Plantation Culture
Chapter Four The Transformation of the Delta's Economy?: Legalized Gaming, Economic Change, and the Persistence of Black Concentrated Poverty	61	(34)
Chapter Five The Transformation of Delta Plantation Politics	95	(38)
Chapter Six Building Black and Intergroup Social Capital Ties in the Delta	133	(36)
Part Four Lessons Learned
Chapter Seven Concentrated Poverty, Political Power, and Social Capital in the Mississippi Delta	169	(8)
Notes	177	(30)
Appendixes	207	(10)
Bibliography	217	(18)
Index	235