The Transformation of Rural Life

The Transformation of Rural Life
Author: Jane H. Adams
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 1994
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780807844793

Jane Adams focuses on the transformation of rural life in Union County, Illinois, as she explores the ways in which American farming has been experienced and understood in the twentieth century. Reconstructing the histories of seven farms, she places the

Why Rural Schools Matter

Why Rural Schools Matter
Author: Mara Casey Tieken
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2014
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1469618486

Why Rural Schools Matter

Rural Life in the Piedmont of South Carolina

Rural Life in the Piedmont of South Carolina
Author: Dennis S. Taylor
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 132
Release: 1999
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780738501987

Agriculture, the backbone of South Carolina's economy since the time of the first settlers in the late 1600s, has truly shaped the identity of the Piedmont region, serving as a common touchstone for the people of the Upstate. As the Palmetto State moves away from small, independent farms into a landscape dominated by big corporations and franchised companies, it is important to pay tribute to the industry that has enabled this state to proceed so successfully into the twenty-first century, both financially and culturally. Farming is much more than "cattle and crops," as some may think, and Rural Life in the Piedmont of South Carolina deals with the subject in over 180 striking photographs, displaying the grace, hard work ethic, and inventiveness of these men and women who have toiled under the South Carolina sun. As you thumb through these pages, you will venture into an era not so far in the past, but which seems exceedingly distant and foreign with each passing year. Exploring the rural landscapes between the years 1918 and 1968, this volume will allow you to experience firsthand the people who worked the land, their machinery and homes, the county agents who demonstrated new techniques for farming improvements, and many scenes of different areas in the Upstate with its many different annual harvests, from pigs, chickens, and cows to sorghum, cotton, alfalfa, hay, corn, tobacco, and peaches.

Going Over Home

Going Over Home
Author: Charles Thompson, Jr.
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2019-10-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1603589139

Booklist Editors’ Choice “Best Books of 2019” An intimate portrait of the joys and hardships of rural life, as one man searches for community, equality, and tradition in Appalachia Charles D. Thompson, Jr. was born in southwestern Virginia into an extended family of small farmers. Yet as he came of age he witnessed the demise of every farm in his family. Over the course of his own life of farming, rural education, organizing, and activism, the stories of his home place have been his constant inspiration, helping him identify with the losses of others and to fight against injustices. In Going Over Home, Thompson shares revelations and reflections, from cattle auctions with his grandfather to community gardens in the coal camps of eastern Kentucky, racial disparities of white and Black landownership in the South to recent work with migrant farm workers from Latin America. In this heartfelt first-person narrative, Thompson unpacks our country’s agricultural myths and addresses the history of racism and wealth inequality and how they have come to bear on our nation’s rural places and their people.

Black Towns, Black Futures

Black Towns, Black Futures
Author: Karla Slocum
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2019-09-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469653982

Some know Oklahoma's Black towns as historic communities that thrived during the Jim Crow era—this is only part of the story. In this book, Karla Slocum shows that the appeal of these towns is more than their past. Drawing on interviews and observations of town life spanning several years, Slocum reveals that people from diverse backgrounds are still attracted to the communities because of the towns' remarkable history as well as their racial identity and rurality. But that attraction cuts both ways. Tourists visit to see living examples of Black success in America, while informal predatory lenders flock to exploit the rural Black economies. In Black towns, there are developers, return migrants, rodeo spectators, and gentrifiers, too. Giving us a complex window into Black town and rural life, Slocum ultimately makes the case that these communities are places for affirming, building, and dreaming of Black community success even as they contend with the sometimes marginality of Black and rural America.

Cyberstorm

Cyberstorm
Author: Matthew Mather
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2013-10-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 144343227X

In this prescient thriller about an all-too-possible scenario, a man fights to keep his family alive when a cyberworld meltdown and fierce storms cut New York City off from the world. Mike Mitchell is an average New Yorker living in an apartment in Chelsea, struggling to keep his family together. When the Internet goes down, he suddenly finds himself fighting just to keep them alive. The electricity and power supplies fade in and out, and the explanations offered by the authorities are vague and untrustworthy. A string of increasingly bizarre disasters starts appearing on the world’s news networks, and a monster snowstorm hits New York City before Christmas. Mike and his close friends and family hunker down in their apartment building for safety, organizing and rationing food and water. Outside, the boundaries between lawful and criminal behaviour break down as resources become scarce. With the threat to their safety growing, Mike and his family pin their hopes on fleeing the city for the countryside. But as the world and cyberworld come crashing down, New York is suddenly cut off, turning the city into a wintry tomb where nothing is what it seems, and where no one can be trusted . . .

Revolution in the Countryside

Revolution in the Countryside
Author: Jim Handy
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2000-11-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807861898

Although most discussions of the Guatemalan "revolution" of 1944-54 focus on international and national politics, Revolution in the Countryside presents a more complex and integrated picture of this decade. Jim Handy examines the rural poor, both Maya and Ladino, as key players who had a decisive impact on the nature of change in Guatemala. He looks at the ways in which ethnic and class relations affected government policy and identifies the conflict generated in the countryside by new economic and social policies. Handy provides the most detailed discussion yet of the Guatemalan agrarian reform, and he shows how peasant organizations extended its impact by using it to lay claim to land, despite attempts by agrarian officials and the president to apply the law strictly. By focusing on changes in rural communities, and by detailing the coercive measures used to reverse the "revolution in the countryside" following the overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, Handy provides a framework for interpreting more recent events in Guatemala, especially the continuing struggle for land and democracy.

Breaking Loose Together

Breaking Loose Together
Author: Marjoleine Kars
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2003-04-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807860379

Ten years before the start of the American Revolution, backcountry settlers in the North Carolina Piedmont launched their own defiant bid for economic independence and political liberty. The Regulator Rebellion of 1766-71 pitted thousands of farmers, many of them religious radicals inspired by the Great Awakening, against political and economic elites who opposed the Regulators' proposed reforms. The conflict culminated on May 16, 1771, when a colonial militia defeated more than 2,000 armed farmers in a pitched battle near Hillsborough. At least 6,000 Regulators and sympathizers were forced to swear their allegiance to the government as the victorious troops undertook a punitive march through Regulator settlements. Seven farmers were hanged. Using sources that include diaries, church minutes, legal papers, and the richly detailed accounts of the Regulators themselves, Marjoleine Kars delves deeply into the world and ideology of free rural colonists. She examines the rebellion's economic, religious, and political roots and explores its legacy in North Carolina and beyond. The compelling story of the Regulator Rebellion reveals just how sharply elite and popular notions of independence differed on the eve of the Revolution.

Mama Learned Us to Work

Mama Learned Us to Work
Author: Lu Ann Jones
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2003-10-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 080786207X

Farm women of the twentieth-century South have been portrayed as oppressed, worn out, and isolated. Lu Ann Jones tells quite a different story in Mama Learned Us to Work. Building upon evocative oral histories, she encourages us to understand these women as consumers, producers, and agents of economic and cultural change. As consumers, farm women bargained with peddlers at their backdoors. A key business for many farm women was the "butter and egg trade--small-scale dairying and raising chickens. Their earnings provided a crucial margin of economic safety for many families during the 1920s and 1930s and offered women some independence from their men folks. These innovative women showed that poultry production paid off and laid the foundation for the agribusiness poultry industry that emerged after World War II. Jones also examines the relationships between farm women and home demonstration agents and the effect of government-sponsored rural reform. She discusses the professional culture that developed among white agents as they reconciled new and old ideas about women's roles and shows that black agents, despite prejudice, linked their clients to valuable government resources and gave new meanings to traditions of self-help, mutual aid, and racial uplift.

Hollowing Out the Middle

Hollowing Out the Middle
Author: Patrick J. Carr
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2009-10-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807042390

Two sociologists reveal how small towns in Middle America are exporting their most precious resource—young people—and share what can be done to save these dwindling communities In 2001, with funding from the MacArthur Foundation, sociologists Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas moved to Iowa to understand the rural brain drain and the exodus of young people from America’s countryside. They met and followed working-class “stayers”; ambitious and college-bound “achievers”; “seekers,” who head off to war to see what the world beyond offers; and “returners,” who eventually circle back to their hometowns. What surprised them most was that adults in the community were playing a pivotal part in the town’s decline by pushing the best and brightest young people to leave. In a timely, new afterword, Carr and Kefalas address the question “so what can be done to save our communities?” They profile the efforts of dedicated community leaders actively resisting the hollowing out of Middle America. These individuals have creatively engaged small town youth—stayers and returners, seekers and achievers—and have implemented a variety of programs to combat the rural brain drain. These stories of civic engagement will certainly inspire and encourage readers struggling to defend their communities.