Rednecks, Redeemers, and Race: Mississippi After Reconstruction, 1877-1917. By Stephen Cresswell. The Mississippi Historical Society and the University Press of Mississippi, 2006, hardback, part of the Heritage of Mississippi Series. ISBN number 1578068479. Includes photo; 293 pages. Signed copies available. New hardback book priced at $39.95, plus $2.49 shipping to U.S. street addresses.

Summary: A broad history of the state covering the four decades after the end of Reconstruction. This is the third volume to appear in the Heritage of Mississippi series, a fifteen-volume set being published by the Mississippi Historical Society.

During the years from 1877 to 1917, Mississippi’s population grew rapidly. Farmers diversified their output, while lumber challenged cotton as the state’s most important product. Factories appeared, some of them operating on an impressive scale. The state modernized, seeing the advent of a good rail system, and town boosters brought in electric plants, natural gas service, and telephone exchanges.

Yet even as the state modernized, the rest of the nation seemed to grow and modernize faster, leaving Mississippi still farther behind.

Rednecks, Redeemers, and Race examines the paradox of significant change alongside stubborn continuities. It explores the reasons Mississippi was not more successful in urbanizing, industrializing, and in reducing its reliance on cotton. It probes the state’s tumultuous race relations, which were consistently violent between 1877 and 1917. The volume closes by looking at future events that would move Mississippi closer to the national mainstream.

Critical comments: "Stephen Cresswell may be the most diligent researcher and lively writer among active historians of Mississippi. Without a doubt the present volume and his previous work establish him as the authority on late nineteenth and early twentieth century Mississippi. Readers interested in the transformation of Mississippi in the post-Reconstruction epoch will find the volume not only compelling but flawless in conception, argument, and execution." —Professor Bradley G. Bond, University of Southern Mississippi.

"Stephen Cresswell likely will be regarded for some time as the prevailing authority on the general history of Mississippi from Reconstruction through the Progressive era." Professor Martha H. Swain, Journal of Southern History.

"Cresswell's insightful study of race, class, and politics in post-Reconstruction and Progressive-era Mississippi significantly advances our understanding of that state's failure to achieve more widespread economic and political progress in the six decades following the Civil War." —Victoria E. Bynum, American Historical Review.

"In this very readable survey of post-Reconstruction Mississippi, Stephen Cresswell has crafted a nuanced study of change and continuity that effectively demonstrates the limits of both progress and tradition. Rednecks, Redeemers, and Race is a welcome addition to the Heritage of Mississippi series, and it will be a useful text for scholars and an informative and enjoyable book in the collections of general readers." —Dr. Connie Lester, Editor of the Florida Historical Quarterly.

Keywords for this book: cotton, blacks, whites, African Americans, race, agriculture, industrialization, factories, labor, prohibition, primaries, primary elections, election, Democrats, Republicans, Populists, Populist Party, People's Party, Greenback Party, Greenbackers, Bull Moose, Socialist Party, Constitution of 1890, poll tax, literacy test, Australian ballot, Robert Lowry, John M. Stone, Anselm J. McLaurin, James K. Vardaman, Edmund F. Noel, Theodore G. Bilbo, Progressivism, railroads, textiles, yellow fever, pellegra, hookworm, good roads, diversification, timber, lumber, timbering, lumbering, sawmills, Farmer's Alliance, Grange, Patrons of Husbandry, LeRoy Percy, William Alexander Percy, James Z. George, Frank Burkitt, L.Q.C. Lamar, Edward C. Walthall, Earl Brewer, Solomon S. Calhoon, John Sharp Williams, canneries, Mound Bayou, cottonseed oil press, Chinese, Italian, Exoduster, Exodusters, Fernwood, Wisner, Wesson, Farmers' Union, Belle Kearney, Republican, Democrat, woman suffrage, child labor, education, consolidated schools, livestock, dairy, dairies, peonage, Piney Woods School, Utica Institute, reconstruction, quarantines, reapportionment, nineteenth amendment, fourteenth, fifteenth, convict leasing, convicts, Parchman penitentiary farm, shrimp, oysters, Nellie Nugent Somerville, tenant farmers, tenants, farming, plantation stores, planters, whitecapping, whitecaps, violence, lynching, yellow pine, strike, strikes, striking, Illinois Central.

History Books by Stephen Cresswell