African Americans And The Mississippi River

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Black Life on the Mississippi

Author : Thomas C. Buchanan
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2006-03-08
Category : History
ISBN : 9780807876565

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Black Life on the Mississippi by Thomas C. Buchanan Pdf

All along the Mississippi--on country plantation landings, urban levees and quays, and the decks of steamboats--nineteenth-century African Americans worked and fought for their liberty amid the slave trade and the growth of the cotton South. Offering a counternarrative to Twain's well-known tale from the perspective of the pilothouse, Thomas C. Buchanan paints a more complete picture of the Mississippi, documenting the rich variety of experiences among slaves and free blacks who lived and worked on the lower decks and along the river during slavery, through the Civil War, and into emancipation. Buchanan explores the creative efforts of steamboat workers to link riverside African American communities in the North and South. The networks African Americans created allowed them to keep in touch with family members, help slaves escape, transfer stolen goods, and provide forms of income that were important to the survival of their communities. The author also details the struggles that took place within the steamboat work culture. Although the realities of white supremacy were still potent on the river, Buchanan shows how slaves, free blacks, and postemancipation freedpeople fought for better wages and treatment. By exploring the complex relationship between slavery and freedom, Buchanan sheds new light on the ways African Americans resisted slavery and developed a vibrant culture and economy up and down America's greatest river.

African Americans and the Mississippi River

Author : Dorothy Zeisler-Vralsted
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 194 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2022-09-30
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781317206859

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African Americans and the Mississippi River by Dorothy Zeisler-Vralsted Pdf

This book follows the historical trajectory of African Americans and their relationship with the Mississippi River dating back to the 1700s and ending with Hurricane Katrina and the still-contested Delta landscape. Long touted in literary and historical works, the Mississippi River remains an iconic presence in the American landscape. Whether referred to as "Old Man River" or the "Big Muddy," the Mississippi River represents imageries ranging from the pastoral and Acadian to turbulent and unpredictable. However, these imageries—revealed through the cultural production of artists, writers, poets, musicians, and even filmmakers—did not reflect the experiences of everyone living and working along the river. Missing is a broader discourse of the African American community and the Mississippi River. Through the experiences of African Americans with the Mississippi River, which included narratives of labor (free and enslaved), refuge, floods, and migration, a different history of the river and its environs emerges. The book brings multiple perspectives together to explore this rich history of the Mississippi River through the intersection of race and class with the environment. The text will be of great interest to students and researchers in environmental humanities, including environmental justice studies, ethnic studies, and US and African American history.

Backwater Blues

Author : Richard M. Mizelle Jr.
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2014-10-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781452943978

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Backwater Blues by Richard M. Mizelle Jr. Pdf

The Mississippi River flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in U.S. history, reshaping the social and cultural landscape as well as the physical environment. Often remembered as an event that altered flood control policy and elevated the stature of powerful politicians, Richard M. Mizelle Jr. examines the place of the flood within African American cultural memory and the profound ways it influenced migration patterns in the United States. In Backwater Blues, Mizelle analyzes the disaster through the lenses of race and charity, blues music, and mobility and labor. The book’s title comes from Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues,” perhaps the best-known song about the flood. Mizelle notes that the devastation produced the richest groundswell of blues recordings following any environmental catastrophe in U.S. history, with more than fifty songs by countless singers evoking the disruptive force of the flood and the precariousness of the levees originally constructed to protect citizens. Backwater Blues reveals larger relationships between social and environmental history. According to Mizelle, musicians, Harlem Renaissance artists, fraternal organizations, and Creole migrants all shared a sense of vulnerability in the face of both the Mississippi River and a white supremacist society. As a result, the Mississippi flood of 1927 was not just an environmental crisis but a racial event. Challenging long-standing ideas of African American environmental complacency, Mizelle offers insights into the broader dynamics of human interactions with nature as well as ways in which nature is mediated through the social and political dynamics of race.Includes discography.

River of Dark Dreams

Author : Walter Johnson
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 561 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2013-02-26
Category : History
ISBN : 9780674074880

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River of Dark Dreams by Walter Johnson Pdf

River of Dark Dreams places the Cotton Kingdom at the center of worldwide webs of exchange and exploitation that extended across oceans and drove an insatiable hunger for new lands. This bold reaccounting dramatically alters our understanding of American slavery and its role in U.S. expansionism, global capitalism, and the upcoming Civil War.

Slavery in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1787Ð1865

Author : Christopher P. Lehman
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2011-03-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9780786485895

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Slavery in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1787Ð1865 by Christopher P. Lehman Pdf

Although the passing of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 banned African American slavery in the Upper Mississippi River Valley, making the new territory officially “free,” slavery in fact persisted in the region through the end of the Civil War. Slaves accompanied presidential appointees serving as soldiers or federal officials in the Upper Mississippi, worked in federally supported mines, and openly accompanied southern travelers. Entrepreneurs from the East Coast started pro-slavery riverfront communities in Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota to woo vacationing slaveholders. Midwestern slaves joined their southern counterparts in suffering family separations, beatings, auctions, and other indignities that accompanied status as chattel. This revealing work explores all facets of the “peculiar institution” in this peculiar location and its impact on the social and political development of the United States.

Mississippi Solo

Author : Eddy Harris
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 1998-09-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0805059032

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Mississippi Solo by Eddy Harris Pdf

The true story of a young black man's quest: to canoe the length of the Mississippi River from Minnesota to New Orleans.

Rising Tide

Author : John M. Barry
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 554 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 1997
Category : Flood control
ISBN : UVA:X004092027

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Rising Tide by John M. Barry Pdf

The great Mississippi flood of 1927 and how it changed America.

Mississippi

Author : David Shirley,Patricia K. Kummer
Publisher : Marshall Cavendish
Page : 148 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : History
ISBN : 0761427171

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Mississippi by David Shirley,Patricia K. Kummer Pdf

Discusses the geographic features, history, government, people, achievements, and attractions of the state whose name means big river.

Daily Life along the Mississippi

Author : George Pabis
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 253 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2007-10-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780313054006

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Daily Life along the Mississippi by George Pabis Pdf

The Mississippi River has influenced the economy, domestic life, culture, politics, and rhythms of American daily life. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the victory at the Battle of New Orleans in 1813 gave the river a central part in the evolution of the United States. Events such as the birth of jazz and technological advances such as the steamboat solidified its place in American lore. Pabis's rich thematic chapters detail the daily lives of those living along the Mississippi and the culture that surrounded it, from the Native Americans at Cahokia to the rise of major port cities such as New Orleans, St. Louis, and St. Paul. Readers will learn how the river's transportation economy fed America's agricultural heartland, how ethnic ties and technological advances affected home and family life, and how the region's current residents still cope with living in a flood culture. An ideal resource for students of American history. Pabis's rich thematic chapters explore many aspects of daily life, including the influence of the Trans-Atlantic fur trade on the lives of Native tribes; how the river's transportation economy fed America's agricultural heartland; the effects of ethnic ties and Jim Crow laws on the river communities, the development of food production and cuisine; and how present-day residents cope with life in a flood culture, including the effects of Hurricane Katrina. Mark Twain once called the Mississippi the Body of the Nation. Readers will learn how this influential region lived and breathed from day to day, from pre-Columbian times to the present. An ideal reference source for any student of American history and culture.

American Congo

Author : Nan Elizabeth Woodruff
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2009-07-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780674045330

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American Congo by Nan Elizabeth Woodruff Pdf

This is the story of how rural Black people struggled against the oppressive sharecropping system of the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta during the first half of the twentieth century. Here, white planters forged a world of terror and poverty for Black workers, one that resembled the horrific deprivations of the African Congo under Belgium’s King Leopold II. Delta planters did not cut off the heads and hands of their African American workers but, aided by local law enforcement, they engaged in peonage, murder, theft, and disfranchisement. As individuals and through collective struggle, in conjunction with national organizations like the NAACP and local groups like the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, Black men and women fought back, demanding a just return for their crops and laying claim to a democratic vision of citizenship. Their efforts were amplified by the two world wars and the depression, which expanded the mobility and economic opportunities of Black people and provoked federal involvement in the region. Nan Woodruff shows how the freedom fighters of the 1960s would draw on this half-century tradition of protest, thus expanding our standard notions of the civil rights movement and illuminating a neglected but significant slice of the American Black experience.

Mississippi River Tragedies

Author : Christine A Klein,Sandra B Zellmer
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2017-08-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9781479856169

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Mississippi River Tragedies by Christine A Klein,Sandra B Zellmer Pdf

Read a free excerpt here! American engineers have done astounding things to bend the Mississippi River to their will: forcing one of its tributaries to flow uphill, transforming over a thousand miles of roiling currents into a placid staircase of water, and wresting the lower half of the river apart from its floodplain. American law has aided and abetted these feats. But despite our best efforts, so-called “natural disasters” continue to strike the Mississippi basin, as raging floodwaters decimate waterfront communities and abandoned towns literally crumble into the Gulf of Mexico. In some places, only the tombstones remain, leaning at odd angles as the underlying soil erodes away. Mississippi River Tragedies reveals that it is seductively deceptive—but horribly misleading—to call such catastrophes “natural.” Authors Christine A. Klein and Sandra B. Zellmer present a sympathetic account of the human dreams, pride, and foibles that got us to this point, weaving together engaging historical narratives and accessible law stories drawn from actual courtroom dramas. The authors deftly uncover the larger story of how the law reflects and even amplifies our ambivalent attitude toward nature—simultaneously revering wild rivers and places for what they are, while working feverishly to change them into something else. Despite their sobering revelations, the authors’ final message is one of hope. Although the acknowledgement of human responsibility for unnatural disasters can lead to blame, guilt, and liability, it can also prod us to confront the consequences of our actions, leading to a liberating sense of possibility and to the knowledge necessary to avoid future disasters.

Forgotten Time

Author : John C. Willis
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : History
ISBN : 0813919711

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Forgotten Time by John C. Willis Pdf

Examining the lives of individuals - freedmen, planters, and merchants - Willis explores the reciprocal interests of former slaves and former slaveholders. He shows how, in a cruel irony replicated in other areas of the South, the backbreaking work that African Americans did to clear, settle, and farm the land away from the river made the land ultimately too valuable for them to retain.

Divided Mastery

Author : Jonathan D. Martin
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2009-07-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780674040700

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Divided Mastery by Jonathan D. Martin Pdf

Divided Mastery explores a curiously neglected aspect of the history of American slavery: the rental of slaves. Though few slaves escaped being rented out at some point in their lives, this is the first book to describe the practice, and its effects on both slaves and the peculiar institution. Martin reveals how the unique triangularity of slave hiring created slaves with two masters, thus transforming the customary polarity of master-slave relationships. Drawing upon slaveholders' letters, slave narratives, interviews with former slaves, legislative petitions, and court records, Divided Mastery ultimately reveals that slave hiring's significance was paradoxical. The practice bolstered the system of slavery by facilitating its spread into the western territories, by democratizing access to slave labor, and by promoting both production and speculation with slave capital. But at the same time, slaves used hiring to their advantage, finding in it crucial opportunities to shape their work and family lives, to bring owners and hirers into conflict with each other, and to destabilize the system of bondage. Martin illuminates the importance of the capitalist market as a tool for analyzing slavery and its extended relationships. Through its fresh and complex perspective, Divided Mastery demonstrates that slave hiring is critical to understanding the fundamental nature of American slavery, and its social, political, and economic place in the Old South.

Development Arrested

Author : Clyde Woods
Publisher : Verso Books
Page : 385 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2017-05-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781844675616

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Development Arrested by Clyde Woods Pdf

A new edition of a classic history of the Mississippi River Delta Development Arrested is a major reinterpretation of the 200-year-old conflict between African American workers and the planters of the Mississippi Delta. The book measures the impact of the plantation system on those who suffered its depredations firsthand, while tracing the decline and resurrection of plantation ideology in national public policy debate. Despite countless defeats under the planter regime, African Americans in the Delta continued to push forward their agenda for social and economic justice. Throughout this remarkably interdisciplinary book, ranging across fields as diverse as rural studies, musicology, development studies, and anthropology, Woods demonstrates the role of music—including jazz, rock and roll, soul, rap and, above all, the blues—in sustaining a radical vision of social change.

Gods of the Mississippi

Author : Michael Pasquier
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2013-02-27
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780253008039

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Gods of the Mississippi by Michael Pasquier Pdf

From the colonial period to the present, the Mississippi River has impacted religious communities from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. Exploring the religious landscape along the 2,530 miles of the largest river system in North America, the essays in Gods of the Mississippi make a compelling case for American religion in motion—not just from east to west, but also from north to south. With discussion of topics such as the religions of the Black Atlantic, religion and empire, antebellum religious movements, the Mormons at Nauvoo, black religion in the delta, Catholicism in the Deep South, and Johnny Cash and religion, this volume contributes to a richer understanding of this diverse, dynamic, and fluid religious world.