Labor & Industry
Southern Industry, Labor, and Economics have been primary and secondary subjects of many essays and features in Southern Cultures. We've collected that content here, with the most recent material listed first.
To read an essay or feature in full, please follow its link below, which will take you directly to the essay or feature on Project Muse. Each of our most recent essays and features also is available with a single click as a $0.99 download for Kindle, Nook, or Sony Library Reader.
For related essays and features, you can also view our Global South Issue and our Food Issue online. Book Reviews of works about Labor and Industry are also included below.
To Right These Wrongs: The North Carolina Fund and the Battle to End Poverty and Inequality in 1960s America
by Robert R. Korstad and James L. Leloudis with photographs by Billy E. Barnes
reviewed by Michael K. Honey
"With poverty and unemployment at levels unprecedented since the Great Depression of the 1930s, as wages of those with jobs stagnate, as the federal government spends trillions for war and gives tax and bailout subsidies to the ultra-rich, we should be asking ourselves how it got to be this way and what can we do about it. To Right These Wrongs provides many of the answers."
Full Issue for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Reader
Southern Cultures, Volume 18, Number 1, Spring 2012
Boss Jocks: How Corrupt Radio Practices Helped Make Jacksonville One of the Great Music Cities
by Michael Ray Fitzgerald
"Kickbacks from government vendors, jobs for cronies, sweetheart deals for contractors' were commonplace-‘It may have been the most corrupt city in America.'"
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Full Issue for Kindle ($4.95 with embedded tracks), for Nook ($4.95, CD shipped separately), or for Sony Reader ($5.88, CD shipped separately)
Southern Cultures Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2011: Music
For the Records: How African American Consumers and Music Retailers Created Commercial Public Space in the 1960s and 1970s South
by Joshua Clark Davis
"Record selling certainly had its glamorous moments; retailers could regale younger customers with stories of nightlife and even rubbing elbows with famous musicians and celebrities."
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Southern Cultures Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2011: Music
Voices from the Southern Oral History Program
Mountain Feminist:
Helen Matthews Lewis, Appalachian Studies, and the Long Women's Movement
from an interview by Jessica Wilkerson
compiled and introduced by Jessica Wilkerson and David P. Cline
"They didn't take us to jail. They pulled us out individually, and the policeman said to me, ‘What would your daddy think if he saw you dancing with a nigger?'"
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Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 3, Fall 2011: Memory
Hot Springs, Arkansas
by Keith Maillard
"‘Well, of course I remember Pearl Harbor,' my mother says, the tone of her voice adding,What do you think I am, an idiot? She and my grandmother were working in the shop when they heard on the radio that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. She was five months pregnant with me. It was a Sunday. They'd never heard of Pearl Harbor.
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Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 3, Fall 2011: Memory
Women Working
photography and interview by Susan Harbage Page
When Susan Harbage Page worked in the early seventies alongside the women in this photo essay, in addition to friendships she also made a poignant record:"‘Rough. It is rough being a female.'"
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Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 2, Summer 2011: Photography II
Blacks and Irish on the Riverine Frontiers
by Christopher J. Smith
"Those employed to do the specialized work of digging, blasting, and reinforcing the canals usually were recruited from trades in which such skills were already essential, including Lancashire tin, copper, and chalk miners, and, especially, the immigrant Irish. These would continue to form the cornerstone of the English 'navvy' ['navigator'; a nineteenth-century English slang reference to canals and tunnels as 'navigations'] and 'sandhog' [modern parlance for tunnellers] population into the second half of the twentieth century."
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Volume 17, Number 1, Spring 2011: THE IRISH
"A lengthening chain in the shape of memories"
The Irish and Southern Culture
by William R. Ferris
"The Irish lived in the shotgun houses-single, double, and camelback-that were common in the area. Some worked in slaughterhouses, cotton presses, and a local sugar refinery. Others worked as butchers, blacksmiths, bricklayers, and draymen. Their legacy is celebrated today in the annual St. Patrick's Day parade, which begins at Parasol's Bar on Constance Street and winds through the Irish Channel."
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Volume 17, Number 1, Spring 2011: THE IRISH
"A recourse that could be depended upon"
Picking Blackberries and Getting By after the Civil War
by Bruce E. Baker
"The smaller bits and pieces by which people made a living, especially in rural areas--what the economic anthropologist Rhoda Halperin termed 'multiple livelihood strategies,' the multifaceted and quickly shifting combinations of activities carried out by kin networks--leave less obvious traces in the historical record."
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Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 4, Winter 2010
The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera
The Northern Rim of the Gulf Coast since World War II
by Harvey H. Jackson III
“‘I’m just here for the beer.’”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.69) or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 1, Spring 2010
The Edible South
by Marcie Cohen Ferris
“Even as southern populations (and landscapes) have evolved, food and place remain indelibly linked in the southern imagination.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 4, Winter 2009: Food I
Wormsloe’s Belly
Understanding the History of a Southern Plantation through Food
by Drew A. Swanson
“The plantation’s residents were such voracious drinkers that the remains of wine bottles were the most reliable way to date colonial discoveries during excavation of the old fort site.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 4, Winter 2009: Food I
Canning Tomatoes, Growing “Better and More Perfect Women”
The Girls’ Tomato Club Movement
by Elizabeth Engelhardt
“‘If somebody were to tell you that a group of little country girls who never have been near a big city have built up a business so large and important that papers all over the country are telling about it, you would think it was a new kind of fairy tale.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 4, Winter 2009: Food I
Eat It to Save It
April McGreger in Conversation with Tradition
by Whitney E. Brown
“There is a deep, pulsing current of heritage and emotion when your hands are in the dirt, and that’s a feeling worth recapturing in the age of the iPhone.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 4, Winter 2009: Food I
Mill Mother’s Lament
Ella May Wiggins and the Gastonia Textile Strike of 1929
by Patrick Huber
“Ella May Wiggins, the ‘poet laureate’ of the Gastonia Textile Strike of 1929, was silenced by a mill thug’s bullet on September 14, 1929.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 2009: Music III
Keeping Sin From Sacred Spaces
Southern Evangelicals and the Socio-Legal Control of Alcohol, 1865–1915
by Michael Lewis
“‘Alcohol undermines the health, enfeebles the will, makes the mind coarse and the tongue vulgar, brings discord to the family, deprives children of their rights, lowers the standard of morals, corrupts politics, fills prisons and asylums with human wrecks, mocks religion and ruins immortal souls.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 2, Summer 2009
“Everything Changed, but Ain’t Nothing Changed”:
Recovering a Generation of Southern Activists for Economic Justice
by Sarah C. Thuesen
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 3, Fall 2008: Civil Rights
Through a Purple (Green and Gold) Haze: New Orleans Mardi Gras in the American Imagination
by Anthony J. Stanonis
"The New Orleans Times-Picayune argued it was 'fortunate that being naked in other cities doesn't produce the same je ne sais quoi as stripping on a Bourbon Street balcony. Otherwise the tourism revenue we count on from Carnival might remain locked in coffers not our own.'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 2, Summer 2008: Katrina
Pete Daniel
Toxic Drift: Pesticides and Health in the Post-World War II South (review)
reviewed by Otis L. Graham
"'The corporate compulsion to market first, test later, and resist regulation has left a legacy of widespread sickness and death.'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 2008
The Wildest Show in the South: The Politics and Poetics of the Angola Prison Rodeo and Inmate Arts Festival
by Melissa R. Schrift
“Against the brutal backdrop of its own history Angola now poses itself as a progressive prison.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 2008
To Know Tobacco
Southern Identity in China in the Jim Crow Era
by Nan Enstad
“ Many southerners from rural areas did not yet have electricity or indoor plumbing in the early twentieth century. In Shanghai they encountered more modern amenities and an elaborate public nightlife, full of perfect strangers. ”
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 4, Winter 2007: Global South
Selling Which South?
Economic Change in Rural and Small-Town North Carolina in an Era of Globalization, 1940-2007
by Peter A. Coclanis and Louis M. Kyriakoudes
“If national planners and the federal government first became interested in rural manufacturing as a development strategy in the 1930s and 1940s, the South had by that time been poursuing such a strategy for generations, albeit with mixed success. ”
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 4, Winter 2007: Global South
The Institute and the Factory
Business Leadership and Change in the Global South
by John Russell
"We can't lead in this world for long by making people afraid. It simply is impossible to succeed while being afraid."
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 4, Winter 2007: Global South
Extra! Chicago Defender Race Records Ads Show from Afar
by Mark Dolan
"Lavishly illustrated ads told of broken love affairs, loneliness, violence, and jail, in concert with travel to and from the South--by train and boat, on foot and in memory."
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2007: Music II
Economic Development and Globalization in South Carolina
by Lacy Ford and R. Phillip Stone
"'More of the same is not going to work, because you can only get so many BMWs.'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2007
"The South Got Something to Say"
Atlanta's Dirty South and the Southernization of Hip-Hop America
by Darren E. Grem
"We got the feel of the blues, the togetherness of funk music, the conviction of gospel music, the energy of rock, and the improvisation of jazz."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
Gary R. Mormino
Land of Sunshine, Land of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida (review)
reviewed by Stephen J. Whitfield
"'I spent thirty years of my life trying to get people to move down there,' the former mayor of Orlando has recalled. 'And then they all did.'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 3, Fall 2006
The Duke
by Duncan Murrell
“ The Dukes linked sex and the cigarette, which was audacious not only because they were abstemious Methodists but because there’s no earthly reason burning a foul weed in your mouth ought to invoke the pleasures of sex. And yet it does.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 2, Summer 2006: Tobacco
A New Cure for Brightleaf Tobacco:
The Origins of the Tobacco Queen during the Great Depression
by Blain Roberts
“‘All decked out in tobacco leaves,’ the caption read, ‘she might be aptly termed Miss Venus.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 2, Summer 2006: Tobacco
Tobacco’s Civil War
Images of the Sectional Conflict on Tobacco Package Labels
by Paul D. H. Quigley
“Decades before they used sex to sell cigarettes, they were using sectionalism to sell cigars.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 2, Summer 2006: Tobacco
The Grand Ole Opry and Big Tobacco
by Louis M. Kyriakoudes
“‘Its Grand Ole Opry Time—Another big Prince Albert show with Ernest Tubb’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 2, Summer 2006: Tobacco
From Smiles to Miles
Delta Air Lines Flight Attendants and Southern Hospitality
by Drew Whitelegg
“In 1965 Braniff introduced the ‘air strip,’ in which a flight attendant disrobed bit-by-bit during the flight. Delta preferred coquetry to crudity.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 11, Number 4, Winter 2005
Promoting the Gothic South
by Rebecca C. McIntyre
“Taking a boat ride down a swampy southern river was a thrilling escape into the unknown, a peep show of the grotesque, a blending of the realistic and the fantastic, which thrilled in a strange and disturbing way.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 11, Number 2, Summer 2005
David L. Carlton and Peter A. Coclanis
The South, the Nation, and the World: Perspectives on Southern Economic Development (review)
reviewed by Gavin Wright
“Those slave traders and slave drivers were not in it for their health, and slavery continues to cast a long shadow over the region as well as the nation. What forces, motives and circumstances led southerners to make these choices, and what were the implications?”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 3, Fall 2004
Mill Village and The Stretch-Out
by Ron Rash
“I was only seventeen, a girl who still could trust a suit and smile.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2004
Jim Wright
Fixin' To Git: One Fan's Love Affair with NASCAR's Winston Cup (review)
reviewed by Dan Pierce
“As far as love affairs go, unfortunately, Fixin’ to Git is the equivalent of a one-night stand.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 4, Winter 2003
Into the Belly of the Beast
The 2002 North Carolina Flue-Cured Tobacco Tour
by Barbara Hahn
“The medical costs of dying young appear to ring a heavier charge on the public purse than do the myriad ills of old age. Movies and television portray Big Tobacco as evil personified, the devil, the beast.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 3, Fall 2003
Michelle Brattain
The Politics of Whiteness: Race, Workers, and Culture in the Modern South (review)
reviewed by Carl Burkart
“No wonder federal efforts to integrate schools and workplaces met with hard-line opposition from white mill-hands.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 1, Spring 2003
Back to Branson
by Jerry Rodnitzky
“Even Elvis promoted himself as just a simple country boy with rural, small-town virtues.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 2002
Ken Breslauer
Roadside Paradise (review)
reviewed by Robert E. Snyder
“Miami’s Monkey Jungle reversed the traditional exhibit format by placing humans inside protective walkways while primates ran free.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 7, Number 2, Summer 2001
The Most Southern Sport on Earth
NASCAR and the Unions
by Dan Pierce
“‘I have a pistol and I know how to use it. I’ve used it before.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 7, Number 2, Summer 2001
Tracking the Economic Divergence of North and South
by Peter A. Coclanis
"Plantations dominated the southern economy by the 1770s, and those who controlled them had decisively shaped the region’s economic course, and, perhaps, destiny.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 4, Winter 2000
William G. Thomas
Lawyering for the Railroad: Business, Law, and Power in the New South (review)
reviewed by Frank G. Queen
“‘I amused myself by counting the cars scattered along the track and turned over by recent wrecks, and got tired when the number reached twenty-five.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 4, Winter 2000