Two revolutions roiled the rural South after the mid-1960s: the politicalrevolution wrought by the passage of civil rights legislation, and the ongoingeconomic revolution brought about by increasing agricultural mechanization.Political empowerment for black southerners coincided with thetransformation of southern agriculture and the displacement of thousandsof former sharecroppers from the land. Focusing on the plantation regionsof Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, Greta de Jong analyses how socialjustice activists responded to mass unemployment by lobbying political leaders,initiating antipoverty projects, and forming cooperative enterprises thatfostered economic and political autonomy, efforts that encountered strongopposition from free market proponents who opposed government action tosolve the crisis.

Making clear the relationship between the civil rights movement andthe War on Poverty, this history of rural organising shows how responses tolabor displacement in the South shaped the experiences of other Americanswho were affected by mass layoffs in the late twentieth century, sheddinglight on a debate that continues to reverberate today.