Overview

Ordinary southerners battle the horrors of economic collapse. In Georgia during the Great Depression, jobless workers united with the urban poor, sharecroppers, and tenant farmers. In a collective effort that cut across race and class boundaries, they confronted an unresponsive political and social system and helped shape government policies. James J. Lorence adds significantly to our understanding of this movement, which took place far from the northeastern and midwestern sites we commonly associate with Depression-era labor struggles.Drawing on extensive archival research, including newly accessible records of the Communist Party of the United States, Lorence details interactions between various institutional and grassroots players, including organized labor, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, liberal activists, and officials at every level of government. He shows, for example, how the Communist Party played a more central role than previously understood in the organization of the unemployed and the advancement of labor and working-class interests in Georgia. Communists gained respect among the jobless, especially African Americans, for their willingness to challenge officials, help negotiate the welfare bureaucracy, and gain access to New Deal social programs.Lorence enhances our understanding of the struggles of the poor and unemployed in a Depression-era southern state. At the same time, we are reminded of their movement's lasting legacy: the shift in popular consciousness that took place as Georgians, 'influenced by a new sense of entitlement fostered by the unemployed organizations,' began to conceive of new, more-equal relations with the state.

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Reviews

Lorence's method of working through the Depression is an impressive accomplishment. His work reveals years of research and careful examination of documents. . . . Lorence's work makes important contributions to our understanding of organizing labour in the Deep South in the early 1930s --Neal Adolph, Social History

<p> Beset by racial divisions and official hostility, Georgia's workers nonetheless effectively mobilized in a range of organizations on behalf of radical politics to achieve far more than most would have expected. Richly detailed with examples from former Soviet archives and convincingly argued, The Unemployed People's Movement makes readers rethink their ideas about southern workers and the possibilities for social change. -- Choice magazine

Well-researched, well-written, and makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of reform movements and social change in the twentieth-century South. -- Georgia Historical Quarterly <br>

Author Information

James J. Lorence is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin - Marathon County. From 2001 to 2005 he served as Eminent Scholar of History at Gainesville State College. His books include A Hard Journey, Screening America, and The Suppression of """"Salt of the Earth.

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