Looking South: Race, Gender, And The Transformation Of Labor From Reconstruction To Globalization (southern Dissent)

A fresh look at the South through the lens of larger global forces. Frederickson links the global and local in new ways that point to a model for future work in the field.--Richard Greenwald, Drew University. Cover 1 Contents 8 List of Figures 10 Foreword 12 Preface 16 Acknowledgments 20 Introduction: Labor Transformation and Networks of Resistance 26 Part I. Claiming Freedom 34 1. Labor, Race, and Homer Plessy’s Freedom Claim 36 2. Transformation and Resistance: A War of Images in the Post-Plessy South 60 Part II. Women and Dissent 104 3. “I Got So Mad, I Just Had to Get Something off My Chest”: The Contested Terrain of Women’s Organizations in the American South 106 4. Beyond Heroines and Girl Strikers: Gender and Organized Labor in the South 137 Part III. Labor Rights to Civil Rights 160 5. Labor Looks South: Theory and Practice in Southern Textile Organizing 162 6. “Living in Two Worlds”: Civil Rights and Southern Textiles 182 Part IV. From the New South to the Global South 206 7. Transformation and Resistance in the Nueva New South 208 8. Back to the Future: Mapping Workers across the Global South 239 Coda: Southern Workers on the World Stage 272 Notes 276 Bibliography 304 Index 322 A 322 B 322 C 322 D 323 E 323 F 323 G 324 H 324 I 324 J 324 K 324 L 324 M 325 N 325 O 325 P 325 R 326 S 326 T 326 U 326 V 327 W 327 Y 327 Z 327 In the United States, cheap products made by cheap labor are in especially high demand, purchased by men and women who have watched their own wages decline and jobs disappear. Looking South examines the effects of race, class, and gender in the development of the low-wage, anti-union, and state-supported industries that marked the creation of the New South and now the Global South. Workers in the contemporary Global South—those nations of Central and Latin America, most of Asia, and Africa—live and work within a model of industrial development that materialized in the red brick mills of the New South. As early as the 1950s, this labor model became the prototype used by U.S. companies as they expanded globally. This development has had increasingly powerful effects on workers and consumers at home and around the world. Mary E. Frederickson highlights the major economic and cultural changes brought about by deindustrialization and immigration. She also outlines the events, movements, and personalities involved in the race-, class-, and gender-based resistance to industry's relentless search for cheap labor. In the United States, cheap products made by cheap labour are in especially high demand, purchased by men and women who have watched their own wages decline and jobs disap-pear. This examines the effects of race, class, and gender in the development of the low-wage, anti-union, and state-supported industries that marked the creation of the New South and now the Global South.