Branches Without Roots: Genesis of the Black Working Class in the American South, 1862-1882-Fast Shipping

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Title: Branches Without Roots: Genesis of the Black Working Class in the American South, 1862-1882

Author: Gerald David Jaynes

ISBN: 9780195055757

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1989

Binding: Paperback

Language: English

Edition: Reprint

Condition Note: Clean, unmarked copy with some edge wear. Good binding. Dust jacket included if issued with one. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.

Publisher : The first comprehensive history of the transition from slavery to sharecropping, this major study draws on thousands of previously untapped sources and statistics to reconstruct the socioeconomic history of the antebellum plantation and the birth of the free black worker. Jaynes thoroughly reexamines the symbiotic nature of the sharecropping system for both planters and workers–how it offered planters a stable work force and offered workers relative freedom, a unified family, and payment for their labor–and analyzes the social and economic effects of sharecropping on the larger social structure. At the same time, he argues that the collective organization and self-help activities of the freedpeople, the democratic fever incited by black leaders and local agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the failure of federal policy were also key factors in the reorganization of the southern plantation and the entry of blacks into the post war economy.