On the Right Side of Radicalism: African American Farmers, Tuskegee Institute, and Agrarian Radicalism in the Alabama Black Belt, 1881–1940 Restricted; Files Only
Goldmon, Camille (Spring 2022)
Published
Abstract
Opening with the founding of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, this dissertation argues that as members of a primarily agrarian society, Black Americans in the South after emancipation correctly understood landownership as the basis of freedom. The social capital that private landownership granted included economic independence, upward mobility, and political influence—key components of the “American dream.” At every step, though, white supremacy, poverty, and political disenfranchisement combined to ensnare potential Black farmers in sharecropping and tenancy. Incorporating concepts such as food power, household sovereignty, financial independence, and protection from white gaze and hegemonic control, “On the Right Side of Radicalism” systematically uncovers how private landownership had the potential to influence nearly every facet of Black rural life.
This dissertation examines the history of African American farmers in the Black Belt of Alabama from 1881–1940 from a radical agrarian perspective. Approaching the topic from the perspectives of both organizations and individuals, it argues that Black row-crop farmers in Alabama who sought landownership mounted strategic challenges to the totalitarian nature of racial control the plantation agriculture system in the South helped create and sustain. Thus, the dissertation situatesthose farmers within histories of Black radical intellectualism and agrarian radicalism. It also interrogates the institutions and people those farmers trusted to represent their interests and further their progress, including many leaders who shaped the agricultural programs at Tuskegee Institute. Utilizing archival records of segregated extension work from Tuskegee University and Auburn University, records of grassroots as well as political and financial records from the State of Alabama, it establishes the realities of rural, Black life in the state and how landownership positively affected everything from education to nutrition. It also posits a reinterpretation of Tuskegee’s agricultural agenda as a surreptitious set of radical acts meant to usurp the southern plantation system. Operating on an interdisciplinary definition of radicalism, the dissertation reevaluates historical figures typically dismissed as conservative, unprogressive, or even apathetic and positions them instead as harbingers of change who exercised their agency on a constant basis.
Table of Contents
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………….…1
Chapter One:
The Black Agrarian Landscape in the Alabama Black Belt, Post-Reconstruction………………26
Chapter Two:
Shades of Radicalism: Agrarian Organizations in Alabama……………………………………..56
Chapter Three:
“The Man Farthest Down”: Tuskegee Institute’s Agricultural Outreach, 1881–1929…………..77
Chapter Four:
Tenuous Alliances: The Depression and New Deal, 1929–1940……………………...……….114
Epilogue……………………………………………………………………………………...…144
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………151
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File download under embargo until 26 May 2028 | 2022-04-22 01:56:59 -0400 | File download under embargo until 26 May 2028 |
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