J. William Harris, Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont, and Sea Island Society in the Age of Segregation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. xii + 454 pp. $49.95 (hardcover), ISBN: 0-8018-6563-8.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Nancy Virts, Department of Economics, California State University, Northridge.

In Deep Souths, J. William Harris writes a ground-level history of three southern regions, the Mississippi Delta, the Georgia Piedmont and the Sea Island Region of the Georgia coast, from reconstruction to World War II. The book is divided into three sections, each of which covers a twenty-year period. Each section has a chapter each on economic development, culture and politics. There are many similarities among these regions. The economies of all three were dependent on plantation agriculture and had a majority black population before the Civil War. After the Civil War each struggled to revive the plantation economy in a capitalist system with free labor and to deal with the rise of African American political power. In all three regions the result was a new era of segregation and consolidation of white power. One of the most important points made is that this consolidation was never complete because of the resistance of African Americans. In spite of the similarities among these regions, however, Harris's careful research into plantation records, county records and the personal histories of diverse groups of individual citizens shows that the economic, political and cultural development of these regions also differed in important ways.

In the Sea Island region, initial attempts to grow rice on large plantations were unsuccessful. Former slaves became landowning peasants who continued many traditional practices that died out elsewhere. Harris does a good job of describing both this unique culture and attempts to preserve it by African American middle-class reformers. The rates of black land ownership were higher in this region than elsewhere, and as a result blacks were more likely to hold public office and mob violence against blacks was less common than in the other two regions. However, as the old plantations either receded into the swamps or became vacation destinations for wealthy northerners, opportunity for black economic advancement stagnated.

The plantations of the Piedmont region, worked with black and white tenant labor, survived after the Civil War but were in decline by the 1930s. Harris shows that even in this region the number of black landowners increased, although the number of black tenants increased faster. The presence of a large number of small farmers, both white and black, made this area the center of the Populist movement. Harris shows how the Populists initially attempted to unite both white and black farmers on the grounds of economic interests, but were ultimately unsuccessful.

In the Delta region, this was an era of expansion. Huge public work projects along the Mississippi brought a large amount of new land into cultivation. The scale of these new plantations was much larger than most slave plantations, even though they were worked with tenant labor. Labor migrated to the region from all over the South. These large plantations were well financed and well managed. Although many were able to withstand natural disasters such a floods and drought, the boll weevil and the variable price of cotton, there were also those that did not. Harris makes clear that the planter elite was firmly committed to the idea of white supremacy. The number of lynchings in the Delta was higher than in any other region. Even here African Americans actively pushed the color line. The need for a stable plantation labor force caused some whites to protest the most shocking examples of racial violence. It was also a place of African American creativity, which gave rise to a new musical form, the blues.

One of the strengths of the book is the use Harris makes of the personal stories of individuals of these regions. The individuals described are a diverse lot including white planters, African American sharecroppers, and middle class African American reformers, as well as Charley Patton the "king" of the Delta Blues and Arthur Raper, a white sociologist who was prosecuted in Georgia for referring to his African American co-workers as "Mrs." and "Mr.". Their stories illustrate the varied reactions of both whites and black to segregation.

The government played an important role in this story in all three regions. American entry into World War I challenged the racial code of the South in important ways. The increased demand for labor resulted in increased migration of African Americans to the North. African American soldiers in uniform were a direct challenge to existing social norms. The New Deal also brought change to the South, but African Americans continued to struggle against the color line.

The book makes an important contribution to our understanding of both the origins and the evolution of segregation in the South. Harris is able to see the broad similarities in economic, political and cultural developments in these three regions. However, his effective use of primary source material also allows him to highlight the differences as well. Although plantation agriculture dominated all three regions before the Civil War, by the 1940s it remained important only in the Delta region. Traditional African American practices were preserved in the Sea Island region, while the Delta gave birth to a new musical form, the blues. The stories of the many different people Harris describes make the book compelling reading.

Nancy Virts' publications include "The Efficiency of Southern Tenant Plantations, 1900-1945," Journal of Economic History, June 1991 and (with Kenneth Ng) "The Black-White Income Gap in 1880," Agricultural History, Winter 1993.