| The Social Origins of the Urban South: Race, Gender, and Migration in Nashville and Middle Tennessee, 1890-1930 Contributor(s): Kyriakoudes, Louis M. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0807854840 ISBN-13: 9780807854846 Publisher: University of North Carolina Press OUR PRICE: $40.38 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: October 2003 Annotation: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, thousands of black and white southerners left farms and rural towns to try their fate in the region's cities. This transition brought about significant economic, social, and cultural changes in both urban centers and the countryside. Focusing on Nashville and its Middle Tennessee hinterland, Louis Kyriakoudes explores the impetus for this migration and illuminates its effects on regional development. Kyriakoudes argues that increased rural-to-urban migration in the late nineteenth century grew out of older seasonal and circular migration patterns long employed by southern farm families. These mobility patterns grew more urban-oriented and more permanent as rural blacks and whites turned increasingly to urban migration in order to cope with rapid economic and social change. The urban economy was particularly welcoming to women, offering freedom from the male authority that dominated rural life. African Americans did not find the same freedoms, however, as whites found ways to harness the forces of modernization to deny them access to economic and social opportunity. By linking urbanization, economic and social change, and popular cultural institutions, Kyriakoudes lends insight into the development of an urban, white, working-class identity that reinforced racial divisions and laid the demographic and social foundations for today's modern, urban South. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Sociology - Urban - History | United States - State & Local - General - Social Science | Human Geography |
| Dewey: 307.240 |
| LCCN: 2003001893 |
| Lexile Measure: 1530 |
| Physical Information: 0.6" H x 5.9" W x 9.38" (0.79 lbs) 248 pages |
| Themes: - Geographic Orientation - Tennessee - Cultural Region - Mid-South - Cultural Region - Southeast U.S. - Cultural Region - South - Demographic Orientation - Urban |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, millions of black and white southerners left farms and rural towns to try their fate in the region's cities. This transition brought about significant economic, social, and cultural changes in both urban centers and the countryside. Focusing on Nashville and its Middle Tennessee hinterland, Louis Kyriakoudes explores the impetus for this migration and illuminates its effects on regional development. Kyriakoudes argues that increased rural-to-urban migration in the late nineteenth century grew out of older seasonal and circular migration patterns long employed by southern farm families. These mobility patterns grew more urban-oriented and more permanent as rural blacks and whites turned increasingly to urban migration in order to cope with rapid economic and social change. The urban economy was particularly welcoming to women, offering freedom from the male authority that dominated rural life. African Americans did not find the same freedoms, however, as whites found ways to harness the forces of modernization to deny them access to economic and social opportunity. By linking urbanization, economic and social change, and popular cultural institutions, Kyriakoudes lends insight into the development of an urban, white, working-class identity that reinforced racial divisions and laid the demographic and social foundations for today's modern, urban South. |
Contributor Bio(s): Kyriakoudes, Louis M.: - Louis M. Kyriakoudes is associate professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. |