The Transformation of Plantation Politics

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The Transformation of Plantation Politics
Black Politics, Concentrated Poverty, and Social Capital in the Mississippi Delta

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Sharon D. Wright Austin - Author

SUNY series in African American Studies

Price: $65.00
Hardcover - 266 pages

Release Date: July 2006

ISBN10: 0-7914-6801-1
ISBN13: 978-0-7914-6801-2

Price: $23.95
Paperback - 266 pages

Release Date: June 2007

ISBN10: N/A
ISBN13: 978-0-7914-6802-9

Summary

Examines the political and economic changes of recent decades in the Mississippi Delta.

The Transformation of Plantation Politics explores the effects of black political exclusion, the sharecropping system, and white resistance on the Mississippi Delta’s current economic and political situation. Sharon D. Wright Austin’s extensive interviews with residents of the region shed light on the transformations and legacies of the Delta’s political and economic institutions. While African Americans now hold most of the major political offices in the region and are no longer formally excluded from political participation, educational opportunities, or lucrative jobs, Wright Austin shows that white wealth and black poverty continue to be the norm partly because of the deeply entrenched legacies of the Delta’s history. Contributing to a greater theoretical understanding of black political efforts, this book demonstrates a need for a strong level of black social capital, intergroup capital, financial capital, political capital, and a human capital of educated and skilled workers.

“This book not only addresses the social and economic disparities in one of America’s poorest regions, but also explains why traditional methods of overcoming these disparities are not necessarily tied to redistributing money. On the contrary, the author points out vividly that the system will only begin to change when non-elites are empowered and hundreds of years of oppression and institutional racism are removed through education and reordering the political structure. This book will be the impetus for additional research and may in fact help the residents and other interested parties facilitate change in the region.” — Charles E. Menifield, coeditor of Politics in the New South: Representation of African Americans in Southern State Legislatures

Sharon D. Wright Austin is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida and the author of Race, Power, and Political Emergence in Memphis.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations

Part One: The Theoretical Framework

1. The Influence of Local Elites in the Mississippi Delta

Part Two: The Plantation Political and Economic Culture

2. The “Cotton-Obsessed, Negro-Obsessed” Delta Plantation Economy

3. Black Mobilization and Elite Resistance during the Height of Traditionalistic Plantation Political Rule

Part Three: The Transformation and Legacies of the Plantation Culture

4. The Transformation of the Delta’s Economy?: Legalized Gaming, Economic Change, and the Persistence of Black Concentrated Poverty

5. The Transformation of Delta Plantation Politics

6. Building Black and Intergroup Social Capital Ties in the Delta

Part Four: Lessons Learned

7. The Challenges of Using Social Capital to Combat Community Ills in the Mississippi Delta

Notes
Appendixes
Bibliography
Index

Related Subjects

African American Studies
American History
Political Science

45035/45036(MR/DG/MC)