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By the time the Great Depression was well underway, Mississippi was still dealing with the lingering effects of the flood of 1927 and the Mississippi Valley drought of 1930. As Pres. Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, Mississippi senator Pat Harrison, chair of the Senate Committee on Finance, oversaw the passage of major New Deal legislation, from which Mississippi reaped many benefits. Other Mississippi politicians like Gov. Mike Connor initiated measures to improve the treatment of inmates at Parchman Prison in the Delta and Gov. Hugh White established the Balancing Agriculture with Industry initiative. Women also played an active role. The Natchez Garden Club successfully spurred tourism by starting the state's first pilgrimage in 1932. Mississippians found employment through the Public Works Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, which stimulated economic development through new and add-on construction in urban and rural areas and the construction of nine state parks. For black Mississippians, segregation and discrimination in New Deal benefits and jobs continued, but what they did receive from the federal government spurred a determination to fight for equality in the Jim Crow South.
Images of America: Mississippi in the Great Depression reveals the politics, the economy, the places, and the people persevering the nation's most trying economic era. By the time the Great Depression was well underway, Mississippi was still dealing with the lingering effects of the flood of 1927 and the Mississippi Valley drought of 1930. As Pres. Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, Mississippi senator Pat Harrison, chair of the Senate Committee on Finance, oversaw the passage of major New Deal legislation, from which Mississippi reaped many benefits. Other Mississippi politicians like Gov. Mike Connor initiated measures to improve the treatment of inmates at Parchman Prison in the Delta and Gov. Hugh White established the Balancing Agriculture with Industry initiative. Women also played an active role. The Natchez Garden Club successfully spurred tourism by starting the state's first pilgrimage in 1932. Mississippians found employment through the Public Works Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, which stimulated economic development through new and add-on construction in urban and rural areas and the construction of nine state parks. For black Mississippians, segregation and discrimination in New Deal benefits and jobs continued, but what they did receive from the federal government spurred a determination to fight for equality in the Jim Crow South. Lifelong Mississippian Richelle Putnam is an award-winning author, a Mississippi Arts Commission teaching artist, and a Mississippi Humanities speaker.
This collection of more than 600 oral histories recalls the Great Depression and provides a rich personal chronicle of the 1930s. The Depression altered the basic structure of American society and changed the way government, business, and the American people interacted. Capturing this historical era and its meaning, the stories in Remembering the Great Depression in the Rural South reflect the general despair of the people, but they also reveal the hope many found through the New Deal.
Collects photographs of Mississippians that Welty took in the 1930s when she worked for the Works Progress Administration.
A study of the inability of the churches to deal with the crisis of the Great Depression and the shift from church-based aid to a federal welfare state.
In the early days of 1937, the Ohio River, swollen by heavy winter rains, began rising. And rising. And rising. By the time the waters crested, the Ohio and Mississippi had climbed to record heights. Nearly four hundred people had died, while a million more had run from their homes. The deluge caused more than half a billion dollars of damage at a time when the Great Depression still battered the nation. Timed to coincide with the flood's seventy-fifth anniversary, The Thousand-Year Flood is the first comprehensive history of one of the most destructive disasters in American history. David Welky first shows how decades of settlement put Ohio valley farms and towns at risk and how politicians and planners repeatedly ignored the dangers. Then he tells the gripping story of the river's inexorable rise: residents fled to refugee camps and higher ground, towns imposed martial law, prisoners rioted, Red Cross nurses endured terrifying conditions, and FDR dispatched thousands of relief workers. In a landscape fraught with dangers—from unmoored gas tanks that became floating bombs to powerful currents of filthy floodwaters that swept away whole towns—people hastily raised sandbag barricades, piled into overloaded rowboats, and marveled at water that stretched as far as the eye could see. In the flood's aftermath, Welky explains, New Deal reformers, utopian dreamers, and hard-pressed locals restructured not only the flood-stricken valleys, but also the nation's relationship with its waterways, changes that continue to affect life along the rivers to this day. A striking narrative of danger and adventure—and the mix of heroism and generosity, greed and pettiness that always accompany disaster—The Thousand-Year Flood breathes new life into a fascinating yet little-remembered American story.
In post-Civil War years agriculture in Mississippi, as elsewhere, was in a depressed condition. The price of cotton steadily declined, and the farmer was hard put to meet the payments on his mortgage. At the same time the corporate and banking interests of the state seemed to prosper. There were reasons for this beyond the ken of the poor hill farmer—the redneck, as he was popularly termed. But the redneck came to regard this situation—chronic depression for him while his mercantile neighbor prospered—as a conspiracy against him, a conspiracy which was aided and abetted by the leaders of his party. Revolt of the Rednecks: Mississippi Politics 1876–1925 is a study of the struggle of the redneck to gain control of the Democratic Party in orger to effect reforms which would improve his lot. He was to be led into many bypaths and sluggish streams before he was to realize his aim in the election of Vardaman to the governorship in 1903. For almost two decades thereafter the rednecks were to hold undisputed control of the state government. The period was marked by many reforms and by some improvement in the economic plight of the farmer—an improvement largely owing to factors which were uninfluenced by state politics. The period closes in 1925 with the repudiation and defeat at the polls of the farmers' trusted leaders, Vardaman and Bilbo.
“Remarkably,” writes Ted Atkinson, “during a period roughly corresponding to the Great Depression, Faulkner wrote the novels and stories most often read, taught, and examined by scholars.” This is the first comprehensive study to consider his most acclaimed works in the context of those hard times. Atkinson sees Faulkner’s Depression-era novels and stories as an ideological battleground--in much the same way that 1930s America was. With their contrapuntal narratives that present alternative accounts of the same events, these works order multiple perspectives under the design of narrative unity. Thus, Faulkner’s ongoing engagement with cultural politics gives aesthetic expression to a fundamental ideological challenge of Depression-era America: how to shape what FDR called a “new order of things” out of such conflicting voices as the radical left, the Popular Front, and the Southern Agrarians. Focusing on aesthetic decadence in Mosquitoes and dispossession in The Sound and the Fury, Atkinson shows how Faulkner anticipated and mediated emergent sociocultural forces of the late 1920s and early 1930s. In Sanctuary; Light in August; Absalom, Absalom!; and “Dry September,” Faulkner explores social upheaval (in the form of lynching and mob violence), fascism, and the appeal of strong leadership during troubled times. As I Lay Dying, The Hamlet, “Barn Burning,” and “The Tall Men” reveal his “ambivalent agrarianism”--his sympathy for, yet anxiety about, the legions of poor and landless farmers and sharecroppers. In The Unvanquished, Faulkner views Depression concerns through the historical lens of the Civil War, highlighting the forces of destruction and reconstruction common to both events. Faulkner is no proletarian writer, says Atkinson. However, the dearth of overt references to the Depression in his work is not a sign that Faulkner was out of touch with the times or consumed with aesthetics to the point of ignoring social reality. Through his comprehensive social vision and his connections to the rural South, Hollywood, and New York, Faulkner offers readers remarkable new insight into Depression concerns.
Artist, columnist, and poet Gertrude McCarty Smith (1923–2007) of Collins, Mississippi, carried herself as a demure and proper southern lady, yet this was deceiving as she was a prolific, creative trailblazer who had collectors and dedicated readers from coast to coast, and even in Europe. She grew up during the Great Depression with only some vivid storytelling and pictures from the family Bible to inspire and kindle her artistic spirit. However, at the age of ten, her career launched when her grandmother coaxed her with a box of crayons to milk the family cow—her seventy-year love affair with the arts was born. Over the years, she would express her creativity in many forms, resulting in thousands of paintings, sculptures, songs, poems, and newspaper columns and along the way a variety of artful cakes, as she ran a celebrated twenty-five-year cake business. Her art appeared in all shapes, sizes, materials, and “eatability.” For most of her early career, Gertrude dabbled with a variety of styles—with subjects mostly centered around life in rural Mississippi and her spiritual life. But in 1980 at the age of fifty-seven, she attended her first Mississippi Art Colony at Camp Jacob in Utica, Mississippi. Over the next fifteen years, she would make her pilgrimage twice a year to be inspired by celebrated guest instructors from around the nation and connect with fellow artists. The Colony was a major catalyst, exposing her to new styles, giving her encouragement and freedom to experiment. Gertrude said of the Colony, “I never knew anything about abstract art, but it fascinated me to no end. Abstract art to me is like a beautiful melody without words. In mixed media, I am in another world and often am surprised at the piece that evolves from the torn watercolor papers. The effect is a kaleidoscope of colors that makes the retinas dance.” This book features more than 150 images; a dozen poems; insightful essays from New York art dealer Stephen Rosenberg, acclaimed southern cultural scholar and curator Pat Pinson, and artist, curator, and instructor Rick Wilemon; along with a foreword by Tommy King, president of William Carey University; and a chronicle of her life’s journey by her son-in-law, Thomas R. Brooks. As Rosenberg has said, “Gertrude Smith is a remarkable and authentic American woman who teaches us that talent and creativity combined with a humanistic spirit is both a state of mind and a state of grace—at any age.” Book proceeds will benefit the Gertrude McCarty Smith Foundation for the Arts to bring access and passion for literature, performance, and visual arts to children in underserved communities throughout Mississippi.
This book documents stories of the Depression and presents historical images from the Chicago Public LIbrary, the LIbrary of Congress, the FBI, the National Archives, the collections of John Chuckman, original press photographs, and many private collections.