Synopses & Reviews
In 1921, freedom fighter William Pickens described the Mississippi River Valley as the "American Congo." Nan Woodruff argues that the African Congo under Belgium's King Leopold II is an apt metaphor for the Delta of the early twentieth century. Both wore the face of science, progressivism, and benevolence, yet were underwritten by brutal labor conditions, violence, and terror. As in the Congo, she argues, the Delta began with the promise of empire: U.S. capitalists on the lookout for new prospects cleared the vast Delta swamps. With the subsequent emergence of a wealthy planter class, the promise of untold riches, and a largely black labor force, America had its Congo.
Review
"Woodruff has vividly recreated the brutal local history of the Delta and persuasively situated that history in the context of national politics, global economics, and world wars. This book should be required reading for students of Southern, African American, and labor history."--David Montgomery, author of
Citizen Worker: The Experience of Workers in the United Stores with Democracy and the Free Market during the Nineteenth Century
Review
"In
American Congo Nan Woodruff very rightly places the Mississippi Delta and its racialized political economy in international context. No longer does this heavily black, white supremacist plantation region float in American (and southern) exceptionalism. Her Delta belongs to the colonized world of the twentieth century, rising and falling in rhythm with the colonies of Asia and Africa as a result of the same world wars. In the Delta as in other colonies, struggle proves long, but also fruitful."--Nell Irvin Painter, author of
Southern History Across the Color Line
Review
"Nan Woodruff has brilliantly validated the NAACP's eighty-year old evocation of the gothic horror of Leopold II's Congo in the lower Mississippi Valley's cotton plantation complex. Her book is one harrowing read, leavened by the stunning heroism of indomitable resistance."--Jack Temple Kirby, author of
Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920-1960
About the Author
Nan Elizabeth Woodruff is professor of modern United States history at Pennsylvania State University.