The second great emancipation : the mechanical cotton picker, Black migration, and how they shaped the modern South

Holley, Donald 1940- (Author).

Summary: "Development of the mechanical cotton picker not only made possible the continuation of cotton cultivation in the post-plantation era, it helped free the region of Jim Crow laws as political power was relocated from farms to cities and thereby opened the door for the civil rights movement of the 1950s. Just as President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed African Americans from chattel slavery, the mechanical cotton picker freed laborers from the drudgery of the cotton harvest and brought the agricultural South into a period of prosperity."--Jacket

Record details

OCLC: on1101966573
ISBN: 9781557286062
ISBN: 155728606X
ISBN: 1610753674
ISBN: 9781610753678
Physical Description: 1 online resource (xvi, 284 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations
remote
Published: Fayetteville :University of Arkansas,2000.
Publisher: Fayetteville : University of Arkansas, 2000.

Content descriptions

Bibliography:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-274) and index.

Contents:

Ch. 1. Mules and Tenants: Hand Labor in the Cotton South -- Ch. 2. "Too Much Land, Too Many Mules, and Too Much Ignorant Labor" -- Ch. 3. Inventions and Inventors: The Challenge of Mechanical Cotton Picking -- Ch. 4. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration and Structural Change in the Cotton South -- Ch. 5. Impending Revolution: John Rust and Reactions to His Machine -- Ch. 6. Cotton Harvester Sweepstakes: The Race for the Cotton Picker Market in the 1940s -- Ch. 7. The Cotton South's Gradual Revolution, 1950-1970 -- Ch. 8. Mechanization, Black Migration, and the Labor Supply in the Cotton South -- Ch. 9. The Great Migration and the Mechanical Cotton Picker: Cause or Effect? -- Ch. 10. The Consequences of Cotton Mechanization.