Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont, and Sea Island Society in the Age of Segregation

by J. William Harris

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in HistoryCo-winner of the James A. Rawley Prize from the Organization of American HistoriansWinner of the Theodore Saloutos Memorial Book Prize from the Agricultural History Society Deep Souths tells the stories of three southern regions from Reconstruction to World War the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta, the eastern Piedmont of Georgia, and the Georgia Sea Islands and Atlantic coast. Though these regions initially shared the histories and populations we associate with the idea of a "Deep South"―all had economies based on slave plantation labor in 1860―their histories diverged sharply during the three generations after Reconstruction. With research gathered from oral histories, census reports, and a wide variety of other sources, Harris traces these regional changes in cumulative stories of individuals across the social spectrum. Deep Souths presents a comparative and ground-level view of history that challenges the idea that the lower South was either uniform or static in the era of segregation. By the end of the New Deal era, changes in these regions had prepared the way for the civil rights movement and the end of segregation.

Genres: History

496 pages, Paperback

First published May 7, 2001

Reviews

[James Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent history of three different regions of the southern US (hence the plural in the title), from 1876 to 1939: The Delta, the Piedmont, and the Sea Islands. As a typical ignorant Northerner, I unthinkingly imagined that in the era of segregation post Civil War, "the South" was one thing. How naïve. Geography and climate varies tremendously, even in a smallish sector of the South. With the end of the plantation era, regions split into different economic structures, harvesting different crops, with different degrees of autonomy and standards of race relations. Turns out, sharecropping wasn't the only game in town.