Library Guides: Radical South: Economic Justice

Economic Justice

Kate O’Neill: Southern Hospitality Workers Rising & Unite Here!

Jennifer Stollman: Creating Radical Change Using Non-Radical Methods

Thomas Ward: A Mississippi Health Center and its War on Poverty

Jodi Skipper: Behind the Big House

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Wesley Hogan

Recovering the Radical Oral History Tradition within Southern Freedom Movements

Doug Smith and Sandy Leigh participate in voter registration canvassing,
Herbert Randall, 1964, McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern Mississippi

Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC and the Dream for a New America by Wesley Hogan
Call Number: E185.61 .H693 2007
How did the SNCC break open the caste system in the American South between 1960 and 1965? Hogan explores what SNCC accomplished and how it fostered significant social change in such a short time. She offers new insights into the internal dynamics of SNCC as well as the workings of the larger civil rights and Black Power movement of which it was a part.
Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement by Barbara Ransby
Call Number: E185.97.B214 R36 2003
One of the most important African American leaders of the 20th century and perhaps the most influential woman in the civil rights movement, Ella Baker (1903-1986) was an activist whose remarkable career spanned 50 years and touched thousands of lives.

More Radical Oral Histories

From oral histories to visual narratives: re-presenting the post-September 11 experiences of the Muslim women in the USA

Carryin' on in the Lesbian and Gay South by John Howard, ed.
Call Number: HQ76.3.U52 S273 1997
To date, lesbian and gay history has focused largely on the East and West coasts, and on urban settings such as New York and San Francisco. The American South, on the other hand, identified with religion, traditional gender roles, and cultural conservatism, has escaped attention. Southerners celebrate their past; lesbians and gays celebrate their new-found visibility.
Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives by Peter Orner
Call Number: JV6475 .U524 2008
Underground America tells the stories of men and women who have come to the United States seeking a better life for their families, only to be subjected to dehumanizing working conditions. Supporting myriad industries, these workers form an essential part of our economy, often by working the least desirable jobs without the most basic legal protections.

Jodi Skipper

Behind the Big House

Anthropology student Stephanie Orsini, left, works with Carolyn Freiwald
beside the former slave quarters at the Hugh Craft House in Holly Springs.

Behind the Big House Project
Behind the Big House Tour
April 20th- 23rd, 2017
The Behind the Big House program was started by Jenifer Eggleston and Chelius Carter, two residents of Holly Springs, Mississippi. The program, now in its sixth year, interprets the lives of enslaved communities through their former home-sites. This year’s program includes interpretations by Slave Dwelling Project Founder, Joseph McGill, and cooking demonstrations by Afro-culinary historian, Michael Twitty. The Behind the Big House tours are free and open to the public.
Community development through reconciliation tourism: The behind the Big House Program in Holly Springs, Mississippi
Saving St. Paul: Race, Development, and Heritage Politics in Dallas, Texas
Conjuring in the Big House Kitchen: An Interpretation of African American Belief Systems Based on the Uses of Archaeology and Folklore Sources

Interpreting Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites by Kristin Gallas & James Perry, ed.
Call Number: AM7 .I59 2015
This book features best practices for: Interpreting slavery across the country and for many people. The history of slavery, while traditionally interpreted primarily on southern plantations, is increasingly recognized as relevant at historic sites across the nation.
Speaking for the Enslaved: Heritage interpretation at antebellum plantation sites by Antoniette Jackson
Call Number: F210 .J33 2012
Jackson uses both ethnographic and ethnohistorical data to show the various ways African Americans actively created and maintained their own heritage and cultural formations. A fascinating, critical view of the ways culture, history, social policy, and identity influence heritage sites and the business of heritage research management in public spaces.
Slavery, Contested Heritage and Thanatourism by Graham Dann & A. V. Seaton, eds.
Call Number: HT871 .S54 2001
lavery tourism is finally contextualized within a framework of thanatourism, dark tourism and dissonant heritage, a field which in turn poses several questions for further research into this new and exciting phenomenon.
Marketing Heritage: Archaeology and the consumption of the past by Sally Campbell & Yorke Rowan, eds.
Call Number: CC135 .M325 2004
Case studies from well-known sites in Cambodia, Israel, England, Mexico, and North America are presented to address the complex interaction between archaeology and nationalist, political, and commercial policies.
Back of the Big House: The architecture of plantation slavery by John Vlach
Call Number: E443 .V58 1993
This important and pioneering study explores the scene behind the plantation houses of the antebellum South where slaves lived and worked. Taking advantage of the extensive collection of drawings and photographs from the Historic American Buildings Survey, Vlach vividly depicts the architectural settings of plantation slavery: the yards, smokehouses, slave cabins, barns, stables, kitchens, and other outbuildings that defined the cultural landscape. Oral histories from former slaves recorded during the 1930s and 1940s, as well as period accounts, provide powerful depictions of how African Americans transformed those settings to serve their particular needs.

Jennifer Stollman

The Winter Institute: Creating Radical Change Using Non-Radical Methods

Talking about Race: Community dialogues and the politics of difference by Katherine Walsh
It is a perennial question: how should Americans deal with racial and ethnic diversity? More than 400 communities across the country have attempted to answer it by organizing discussions among diverse volunteers in an attempt to improve race relations.

Dialogue Across Difference: Practice, theory, and research on intergroup dialogue by Patricia Gurin
Ambitious and timely, Dialogue Across Difference presents a persuasive practical, theoretical and empirical account of the benefits of intergroup dialogue. The data and research presented in this volume offer a useful model for improving relations among different groups not just in the college setting but in the United States as well.

More Than Just Talk: The Use of Racial Dialogues to Combat Racism

Kate O’Neill

Southern Hospitality Workers Rising
A panel discussion with...

http://unitehere.org/

Articles

Books

Covering for the Bosses: Labor and the Southern press by Joseph Atkins
Call Number: PN2888.L27 A85 2008
Covering for the Bosses: Labor and the Southern Press probes the difficult relationship between the press and organized labor in the South from the past to the present day. Written by a veteran journalist and first-hand observer of the labor movement and its treatment in the region's newspapers and other media, the text focuses on the modern South that has evolved since World War II.
Behind the Kitchen Door by Saru Jayaraman
How do restaurant workers live on some of the lowest wages in America? And how do poor working conditions―discriminatory labor practices, exploitation, and unsanitary kitchens―affect the meals that arrive at our restaurant tables? Jayaraman answers these questions by following the lives of restaurant workers in NYC, D.C., Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Miami, Detroit, and New Orleans.
Class Acts: Service and inequality in luxury hotels by Rachel Sherman
Call Number: TX911.3.C8 S54 2007
Drawing on in-depth interviews and extended ethnographic research in a range of hotel jobs, including concierge, bellperson, and housekeeper, Sherman gives an insightful analysis of what exactly luxury service consists of and how workers and guests negotiate the inequality between them.
Life and Labor in the New New South by Robert Zieger, ed.
This collection of essays explores the dynamic new face of Southern labour since 1950, examining such topics as southern deindustrialisation, union activism in the healthcare industry, labour-community coalitions, the politics of southern anti-unionism, and immigrant labour in southern agriculture.
Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression by Robin Kelley
Call Number: HX91.A2 K45 1990
Between 1929 and 1941, the Communist Party organized and led a radical, militantly antiracist movement in Alabama -- the center of Party activity in the Depression South. Hammer and Hoe documents the efforts of the Alabama Communist Party and its allies to secure racial, economic, and political reforms.

Thomas Ward

Out in the Rural: A Mississippi Health Center and its War on Poverty

Out in the Rural: A Health Center in Mississippi by Lauren Gurley

Out in the Rural: A Mississippi health center and its war on poverty by Thomas Ward
Call Number: RA395.M627 W37 2017
The unlikely story of the Tufts-Delta Health Center, which in 1966 opened in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, to become the first rural community health center in the United States. Its goal was simple: to provide health care and outreach to the region's thousands of rural poor, most of them black sharecroppers who had lived without any medical resources for generations.

Delta Health Center nurses sit in the health center office

Leading the Way: Interventions into the lives of other peoples by Mary Trigg
Call Number: HQ1155 .L43 2010
Leading the Way is a collection of personal essays written by twenty-one young, hopeful American women who describe their work, activism, leadership, and efforts to change the world. It responds to critical portrayals of this generation of "twenty-somethings" as being disengaged and apathetic about politics, social problems, and civic causes.
Deluxe Jim Crow: Civil rights and American health policy, 1935-1954 by Karen Kruse Thomas
Call Number: RA563.M56 T46 2011
Thomas details how NAACP lawsuits pushed southern states to equalize public services and facilities for blacks just as wartime shortages of health personnel and high rates of draft rejections generated broad support for health reform.

Oral History

Oral History How-To Books & Articles

Doing Oral History: A practical guide by Donald Ritchie
Call Number: D16.14 .R57 2003
Doing Oral History has become one of the premier resources in oral history. It explores all aspects of the field, from starting an oral history project, including funding, staffing, and equipment to conducting interviews; publishing; videotaping; preserving materials; teaching oral history; and using oral history in museums and on the radio.
Curating Oral Histories: From interview to archive by Nancy MacKay
Call Number: Z688.O52 M33 2007
Nancy MacKay, archivist and oral historian, addresses the crucial issue often overlooked by researchers: How do you ensure that the interview you so carefully recorded will be preserved and available in the future? Written in a practical, instructive style, MacKay guides readers, step by step, to make the oral history "archive ready".
Handbook of Oral History by Thomas L. Charlton
Call Number: D16.14 .H36 2008
This work facilitates sharpening the methodologies and theoretical approaches for designing, implementing, and applying oral history. Contributors from a variety of academic disciplines advocate different oral history methodologies and possess practical experience in the academic, activist, and artistic applications of the information generated through oral history interviews.
Recording Oral History: A guide for the humanities and social sciences by Valerie Raleigh Yow
Call Number: D16.14 .Y68 2005
Yow includes using the internet, an examination of the interactions between oral history and memory processes, and analysis of testimony and the interpretation of meanings in different contexts. Written in a clear, accessible style, this volume offers researchers a scholarly and practical guide to the methods of oral history.
The Oral History Manual: by Luke Lassiter
Call Number: D16.14 .S69 2002
missing updated edition

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