Spirit of Rebellion: Labor and Religion in the New Cotton South (The Working Class in American History)

Synopsis

Winner of the Herbert G. Gutman Prize from the Labor and Working-Class History Association In Spirit of Rebellion, Jarod Roll documents an alternative tradition of American protest by linking working-class political movements to grassroots religious revivals. He reveals how ordinary rural citizens in the south used available resources and their shared faith to defend their agrarian livelihoods amid the political and economic upheaval of the first half of the twentieth century. On the frontier of the New Cotton South in Missouri's Bootheel, the relationships between black and white farmers were complicated by racial tensions and bitter competition. Despite these divisions, workers found common ground as dissidents fighting for economic security, decent housing, and basic health, ultimately drawing on the democratic potential of evangelical religion to wage working-class revolts against commodity agriculture and the political forces that buoyed it. Roll convincingly shows how the moral clarity and spiritual vigor these working people found in the burgeoning Pentecostal revivals gave them the courage and fortitude to develop an expansive agenda of workers' rights by tapping into the powers of existing organizations such as the Socialist Party, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the NAACP, and the interracial Southern Tenant Farmers' Union.

Copyright:

2010

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

288 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780252099267

Related ISBNs:

9780252035197, 9780252077036

Publisher:

University of Illinois Press

Date of Addition:

02/28/18

Copyrighted By:

the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Religion and Spirituality, Business and Finance, Politics and Government

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.