The Promise of the New South

Ranging from the Georgia coast to the Tennessee mountains, from the power brokers to tenant farmers, Edward Ayers depicts a land of startling contrasts--a time of progress and repression, of new industries and old ways. Taking us from remote Southern towns, revolutionized by the spread of the railroads, to the statehouses where Democratic "Redeemers" swept away the legacy of Reconstruction, Ayers explores every aspect of society, politics, and the economy, detailing the importance of...
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Ranging from the Georgia coast to the Tennessee mountains, from the power brokers to tenant farmers, Edward Ayers depicts a land of startling contrasts--a time of progress and repression, of new industries and old ways. Taking us from remote Southern towns, revolutionized by the spread of the railroads, to the statehouses where Democratic "Redeemers" swept away the legacy of Reconstruction, Ayers explores every aspect of society, politics, and the economy, detailing the importance of each in the emerging New South. From the small farmers, trapped into growing nothing but cotton, to the new industries of Birmingham, from alliances and friendships between blacks and whites to the spread of Jim Crow laws and disenfranchisement, Ayers weaves all these details into the contradictory story of the New South, showing how the region developed the patterns it was to follow for the next fifty years. An invaluable resource for both historians and students alike, this is an unforgettable account of the New South--a land with one foot in the future and the other in the past.