Remembering the Great Depression in the Rural South - Hardcover

Bindas, Kenneth J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081303048X ISBN 13: 9780813030487

Verlag: University Press of Florida, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

With this collection of more than 600 oral histories recalling the Great Depression, Bindas provides a detailed, personal chronicle of the 1930s from a rural Southern perspective and captures a historical era and its meaning. The Depression altered the basic structure of American society and changed the way government, business, and the American people interacted. Bindas finds his narrators saw the federal government as an agent of positive change. Though their stories reflect the general despair of the era, they also reveal the hope they found through the New Deal and their determination, after the Depression, to “create a country where security . . . was paramount.”

Collected over a period of four years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, these reminiscences from people in rural Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee are primarily concerned with lessons learned. Looking back on their youth, the narrators explore how the Depression defined their lives and their experiences, from subsistence and government assistance, to food and home life, fear and privation. Revealing a common consciousness among people who witnessed profound change and endured, these stories underscore the meaning of collective memory. Their simple tales form the larger story of how the American people continued to rely on the individualistic ethos even as they adopted and accepted the new ideology of social cooperation. Illustrated with Farm Security Administration (FSA) black and white photographs, this book is a vital testament to survivors of the Depression. Students and scholars of both the 1930s and oral history methodology will welcome this volume.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kenneth J. Bindas is professor of history at Kent State University, author of Swing, That Modern Sound, and All of This Music Belongs to the Nation, and editor of America’s Musical Pulse.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University Press of Florida
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2007
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 081303048X
• ISBN 13: 9780813030487
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 184
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar