Author: Wilber W. Caldwell Publisher: Mercer University Press ISBN: 9780865547483 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 634
Book Description
Their songs insist that the arrival of the railroad and the appearance of the tiny depot often created such hope that it inspired the construction of the architectural extravaganzas that were the courthouses of the era. In these buildings the distorted myth of the Old South collided head-on with the equally deformed myth of the New South."
Author: John D. Fair Publisher: Mercer University Press ISBN: 0881462187 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
This unique book addresses the under-analyzed subject of internal migration in American historiography by showing the impact of eight generations of a family from New England on the development of Southern Georgia from the eighteenth to the end of the twentieth centuries. Focusing on cross-regional influences, The Tifts of Georgia sheds new light on such traditional topics as paternalism, cultural assimilation, and race relations. Originally from Mystic, Connecticut, the Tifts migrated to Key West, Florida, where they profited from the wrecking trade, set up business operations at various points along the eastern coast of the United States, and eventually made a significant impact on some of the less-developed areas of Georgia. The most important member of the family was Nelson Tift, a pioneer businessman who founded the city of Albany, Georgia, in the 1830s and played a major role on behalf of his adopted state during the Civil War and Reconstruction. His enterprises were often coordinated with his brother Asa in Key West. Their nephew, Henry Harding Tift, founded Tifton and Tift County, and Tift College in Forsyth was named for Henry's wife, Bessie, a major benefactor. Later Tifts were not only involved in the continued development of Albany and Tifton but made significant contributions to the economy and civic life of Macon, Atlanta, and other communities. The most important theme embodied in this monograph is how the Tifts brought Connecticut Yankee values to the South but were in turn transformed into Southerners. The Tifts of Georgia is richly illustrated with charts, maps, and original photographs. This history of an important Georgia family should be of special interest to professional and amateur historians, sociologists, cultural anthropologists, and genealogists.
Author: Susan Eva O'Donovan Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674266315 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 380
Book Description
Becoming Free in the Cotton South challenges our most basic ideas about slavery and freedom in America. Instead of seeing emancipation as the beginning or the ending of the story, as most histories do, Susan Eva O’Donovan explores the perilous transition between these two conditions, offering a unique vision of both the enormous changes and the profound continuities in black life before and after the Civil War.This boldly argued work focuses on a small place—the southwest corner of Georgia—in order to explicate a big question: how did black men and black women’s experiences in slavery shape their lives in freedom? The reality of slavery’s demise is harsh: in this land where cotton was king, the promise of Reconstruction passed quickly, even as radicalism crested and swept the rest of the South. Ultimately, the lives former slaves made for themselves were conditioned and often constrained by what they had endured in bondage. O’Donovan’s significant scholarship does not diminish the heroic efforts of black Americans to make their world anew; rather, it offers troubling but necessary insight into the astounding challenges they faced.Becoming Free in the Cotton South is a moving and intimate narrative, drawing upon a multiplicity of sources and individual stories to provide new understanding of the forces that shaped both slavery and freedom, and of the generation of African Americans who tackled the passage that lay between.