Abstract
In Looking South, author Mary Frederickson presents eight essays whose subjects span the late nineteenth century to modern times, focusing on the post-Reconstruction rise of segregation, women as workers and union organizers, the struggle for labor and civil rights, and the adoption of a southern model of industrial development by the less developed nations composing the Global South.
The book begins with the richly told story of the 1892 U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, which declared “separate but equal” the law of the land, precipitating and validating an avalanche of Jim Crow laws. Frederickson puts a face on the politically active, twenty-nine-year-old New Orleans Creole Homer Plessy and places the case in the context of the multiracial, multiethnic, heavily unionized city. In the process she explores the dichotomizing of a multiethnic nation into one of simply black and white. The snapshot she provides of a New Orleans labor movement that was integrated and strong (50 percent of the workforce was organized), with the ability to stage a general strike, is fascinating and leaves the reader wanting more.
These essays look at the role of southern churches, both black and white, in the development of public education in the South and women’s suffrage and in support for workers and industrial councils. A wonderful picture emerges of women members of the Colored Methodist Episcopal church “feeding” a social mission agenda to the white women members of the Methodist Episcopal South. Frederickson also traces the rise and waning of the Industrial Councils of the YWCA and the Southern School for Women Workers in Industry.
There are interesting sociological observations about the impact of southern culture on the role of women and race in southern unions and organizing efforts, and the reasons why blacks were more willing to organize than were whites. The author relates the importance of interracial coalitions in organizing drives in textile, garment, and tobacco factories and shows that there was a direct positive correlation between the number of black women in those workplaces and union win rates.
The book ends with a pair of essays on the Global South, in which the author declares, “The mantra of New South industrial development—state incentives for business, no unions, and low wages—has been exported to the ‘Global South,’ that vast expanse of nations stretching from Mexico to Nicaragua, from India to Central Asia, China to Vietnam” (p. 213). These essays explore the parallels of the working lives and the social, political, geographic, and economic forces of the twentieth century affecting southern women in the United States to those in the Global South.
This book brings a valuable perspective to labor educators and students in the field. The South has often been viewed through the lens of the northern observers. Indeed, much of the concerted organizing efforts in the South were orchestrated by labor organizations in the North, with the impetus and primary goal of protecting northern workers from competitive disadvantage if the southern workers remained unorganized.
This book leaves you eager to know more about the Southern labor movement. The Great Uprising of 1934, which swept across the South and was joined by two-thirds of southern textile workers, is given only one paragraph. The AFL’s Southern Strategy and Operation Dixie are raised, but the focus is primarily on the textile industry, and the discussion is centered on how gender and race discrimination played out in occupational distribution and earnings.
I would recommend this book for those looking for insights into the South, its race relations, and the sociological and economic factors that created the model that now dominates the Global South.