Crisis and Commission Government in Memphis

Crisis and Commission Government in Memphis
Author: Lynette Boney Wrenn
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780870499975

This centralization of political power in a small commission aided the efficient transaction of municipal business, but the public policies that resulted from it tended to benefit upper-class Memphians while neglecting the less affluent residents and neighborhoods.

Savannah's Midnight Hour

Savannah's Midnight Hour
Author: Lisa L. Denmark
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2019-12-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0820356336

Savannah’s Midnight Hour argues that Savannah’s development is best understood within the larger history of municipal finance, public policy, and judicial readjustment in an urbanizing nation. In providing such context, Lisa Denmark adds constructive complexity to the conventional Old South/New South dichotomous narrative, in which the politics of slavery, secession, Civil War, and Reconstruction dominate the analysis of economic development. Denmark shows us that Savannah’s fiscal experience in the antebellum and postbellum years, while exhibiting some distinctively southern characteristics, also echoes a larger national experience. Her broad account of municipal decision making about improvement investment throughout the nineteenth century offers a more nuanced look at the continuity and change of policies in this pivotal urban setting. Beginning in the 1820s and continuing into the 1870s, Savannah’s resourceful government leaders acted enthusiastically and aggressively to establish transportation links and to construct a modern infrastructure. Taking the long view of financial risk, the city/municipal government invested in an ever-widening array of projects—canals, railroads, harbor improvement, drainage— because of their potential to stimulate the city’s economy. Denmark examines how this ideology of over-optimistic risk-taking, rooted firmly in the antebellum period, persisted after the Civil War and eventually brought the city to the brink of bankruptcy. The struggle to strike the right balance between using public policy and public money to promote economic development while, at the same time, trying to maintain a sound fiscal footing is a question governments still struggle with today.

Delta Empire

Delta Empire
Author: Jeannie Whayne
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 568
Release: 2011-12-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807138576

In Delta Empire: Lee Wilson and the Transformation of Agriculture in the New South Jeannie Whayne employs the fascinating history of a powerful plantation owner in the Arkansas delta to recount the evolution of southern agriculture from the late nineteenth century through World War II. After his father's death in 1870, Robert E. "Lee" Wilson inherited 400 acres of land in Mississippi County, Arkansas. Over his lifetime, he transformed that inheritance into a 50,000-acre lumber operation and cotton plantation. Early on, Wilson saw an opportunity in the swampy local terrain, which sold for as little as fifty cents an acre, to satisfy an expanding national market for Arkansas forest reserves. He also led the fundamental transformation of the landscape, involving the drainage of tens of thousands of acres of land, in order to create the vast agricultural empire he envisioned. A consummate manager, Wilson employed the tenancy and sharecropping system to his advantage while earning a reputation for fair treatment of laborers, a reputation -- Whayne suggests -- not entirely deserved. He cultivated a cadre of relatives and employees from whom he expected absolute devotion. Leveraging every asset during his life and often deeply in debt, Wilson saved his company from bankruptcy several times, leaving it to the next generation to successfully steer the business through the challenges of the 1930s and World War II. Delta Empire traces the transition from the labor-intensive sharecropping and tenancy system to the capital-intensive neo-plantations of the post--World War II era to the portfolio plantation model. Through Wilson's story Whayne provides a compelling case study of strategic innovation and the changing economy of the South in the late nineteenth century.

Comparing Apples, Oranges, and Cotton

Comparing Apples, Oranges, and Cotton
Author: Frank Uekötter
Publisher: Campus Verlag
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2014-04-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 3593500280

Plantations are a key institution of the modern era. From an environmental perspective, they are also one of the most consequential modes of production. This volume assembles articles on commodities as diverse ase coffee, cotton, rubber and apples, providing overviews on plantation systems from Latin America to New Zealand while at the same time exploring the multitude of dimensions that the environmental history of plantations incorporates. The global history of plantation systems highlights the enormous resilience of modern monocultures but also the price that humans and environments were paying. "

Reckoning with the Devil

Reckoning with the Devil
Author: Court Carney
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2024-09-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807183091

Court Carney’s Reckoning with the Devil grapples with the troubled, complex legacy of Nathan Bedford Forrest—a slave trader, Confederate general, and prominent Klansman. More than a century after his death, Forrest’s image continues to resonate with certain groups and bear varied interpretations, reflecting the intricate interplay of history, memory, and a contested past. Carney explores how historical omissions and erasures continually reshape perceptions of Forrest as well as the Civil War. Central to Forrest’s narrative is his involvement in the slave trade, a key to his ascent in the southern social hierarchy. Carney traces Forrest’s trajectory from a prosperous slave trader in Memphis to a politician and eventual military leader in the Confederacy during the Civil War. Forrest’s postwar years reveal his struggle to rebuild his life, leading him to engage in various economic ventures and eventually join the Ku Klux Klan. Carney argues that the slave trade, the Fort Pillow massacre, and his Klan affiliation were the fundamental elements shaping Forrest’s image. Those elements, although steeped in racism and white supremacy, were marked by an ambiguity and malleability that allowed Forrest to attract admirers as well as detractors as his image was memorialized in postwar white southern culture. Carney covers distinct phases of Forrest’s memorialization, from the unveiling of statues in Memphis in 1905 to his representation in literature and media and the controversies surrounding his monuments in the 2010s. That history culminates with the removal of the Memphis statue in 2017, reflecting the evolving societal perspectives on symbols tied to racism. Forrest’s significance lies in his capacity to encompass conflicting narratives—hero and villain, rebel and patriot. Carney contends that understanding Forrest’s legacy is essential for comprehending the intricacies of the southern past and its enduring impact on American society. By exploring the fluidity of Forrest’s image, Carney’s work illuminates the nuanced interplay of history, memory, and the ongoing struggle to reckon with a tumultuous past.

Fever Season

Fever Season
Author: Jeanette Keith
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2012-10-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1608193810

While the American South had grown to expect a yellow fever breakout almost annually, the 1878 epidemic was without question the worst ever. Moving up the Mississippi River in the late summer, in the span of just a few months the fever killed more than eighteen thousand people. The city of Memphis, Tennessee, was particularly hard hit: Of the approximately twenty thousand who didn't flee the city, seventeen thousand contracted the fever, and more than five thousand died-the equivalent of a million New Yorkers dying in an epidemic today. Fever Season chronicles the drama in Memphis from the outbreak in August until the disease ran its course in late October. The story that Jeanette Keith uncovered is a profound-and never more relevant-account of how a catastrophe inspired reactions both heroic and cowardly. Some ministers, politicians, and police fled their constituents, while prostitutes and the poor risked their lives to nurse the sick. Using the vivid, anguished accounts and diaries of those who chose to stay and those who were left behind, Fever Season depicts the events of that summer and fall. In its pages we meet people of great courage and compassion, many of whom died for having those virtues. We also learn how a disaster can shape the future of a city.

Memphis and the Paradox of Place

Memphis and the Paradox of Place
Author: Wanda Rushing
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2009
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807832995

Celebrated as the home of the blues and the birthplace of rock and roll, Memphis, Tennessee, is where Elvis Presley, B. B. King, Johnny Cash, and other musical legends got their starts. It is also a place of conflict and tragedy--the site of Martin Luther

An Example for All the Land

An Example for All the Land
Author: Kate Masur
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2010
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807834149

"An Example for all the Land, clearly argued and deeply researched, represents a significant breakthrough in the crowded field of Reconstruction scholarship. Showing how Washington, D.C. became a laboratory for political experimentation, Masur reveals imp

A Brief History of Memphis

A Brief History of Memphis
Author: G. Wayne Dowdy
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2011-10-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1625842023

The story of Memphis, Tennessee—from raucous river town to major Southern metropolis—with photos included. No other southern city has a history quite like Memphis. First purchased in the early 1800s from natives to serve as a vital port for the emerging American river trade, the city flourished until the tumultuous years of the Civil War brought chaos and uncertainty. Yet the city survived. Through the triumphs and tragedies of the civil rights movement and beyond, Memphis endured it all. Despite its compelling story, no concise history of this home of soulful music and unmistakable flavor is available to modern readers. Thankfully, local historian and Memphis archivist G. Wayne Dowdy has filled this gap with a history of Memphis that is as vibrant and welcoming as the city itself.