TY - BOOK ID - 78711951 TI - Remaking the rural South PY - 2018 SN - 9780820351780 0820351784 9780820351797 0820351792 0820358800 PB - Athens DB - UniCat KW - E-books KW - Christian socialism KW - Rural development KW - Sharecropping KW - Collective farms KW - Agriculture, Cooperative KW - Agricultural cooperation KW - Agricultural cooperatives KW - Cooperative agriculture KW - Cooperative societies, Agricultural KW - Farmers' cooperatives KW - Agricultural contracts KW - Cooperation KW - Collective settlements KW - Collectivization of agriculture KW - Communism and agriculture KW - State farms KW - Farming on shares KW - Métayer system KW - Share-cropping KW - Farm tenancy KW - Community development, Rural KW - Development, Rural KW - Integrated rural development KW - Regional development KW - Rehabilitation, Rural KW - Rural community development KW - Rural economic development KW - Agriculture and state KW - Community development KW - Economic development KW - Regional planning KW - Socialism, Christian KW - Church and social problems KW - Socialism KW - Citizen participation KW - Social aspects KW - Mississippi KW - Providence Plantation (Miss.) KW - Delta Cooperative Farm (Miss.) KW - State of Mississippi KW - Missisipi KW - Місісіпі KW - Misisipi KW - Штат Місісіпі KW - Shtat Misisipi KW - Мисисипи KW - Щат Мисисипи KW - Mísísípii Hahoodzo KW - Mississippi osariik KW - Μισισιπι KW - Πολιτεία του Μισισίπι KW - Politeia tou Misisipi KW - Estado de Misisipi KW - Misisipio KW - État du Mississippi KW - Mississippy KW - 미시시피 주 KW - Misisipʻi-ju KW - 미시시피 KW - Mikikipi KW - מיסיסיפי KW - מדינת מיסיסיפי KW - Medinat Misisipi KW - US-MS KW - MS (State : Mississippi) KW - MI (State : Mississippi) KW - Miss. KW - Providence Cooperative Farm (Miss.) KW - Economic conditions KW - Race relations. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:78711951 AB - This is the first book-length study of Delta Cooperative Farm (1936-42) and its descendant, Providence Farm (1938-56). The two intentional communities drew on internationalist practices of cooperative communalism and pragmatically challenged Jim Crow segregation and plantation labor. In the winter of 1936, two dozen black and white ex-sharecropping families settled on some two thousand acres in the rural Mississippi Delta, one of the most insular and oppressive regions in the nation. Thus began a twenty-year experiment-across two communities-in interracialism, Christian socialism, cooperative farming, and civil and economic activism. Robert Hunt Ferguson recalls the genesis of Delta and Providence: how they were modeled after cooperative farms in Japan and Soviet Russia and how they rose in reaction to the exploitation of small- scale, dispossessed farmers. Although the staff, volunteers, and residents were very much everyday people-a mix of Christian socialists, political leftists, union organizers, and sharecroppers-the farms had the backing of such leading figures as philanthropist Sherwood Eddy, who purchased the land, and educator Charles Spurgeon Johnson and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who served as trustees. On these farms, residents developed a cooperative economy, operated a desegregated health clinic, held interracial church services and labor union meetings, and managed a credit union. Ferguson tells how a variety of factors related to World War II forced the closing of Delta, while Providence finally succumbed to economic boycotts and outside threats from white racists. Remaking the Rural South shows how a small group of committed people challenged hegemonic social and economic structures by going about their daily routines. Far from living in a closed society, activists at Delta and Providence engaged in a local movement with national and international roots and consequences. ER -