Synopses & Reviews
The dreams of abundance, choice, and novelty that have fueled the growth of consumer culture in the United States would seem to have little place in the history of Mississippia state long associated with poverty, inequality, and rural life. But as Ted Ownby demonstrates in this innovative study, consumer goods and shopping have played important roles in the development of class, race, and gender relations in Mississippi from the antebellum era to the present.
After examining the general and plantation stores of the nineteenth century, a period when shopping habits were stratified according to racial and class hierarchies, Ownby traces the development of new types of stores and buying patterns in the twentieth century, when women and African Americans began to wield new forms of economic power. Using sources as diverse as store ledgers, blues lyrics, and the writings of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, and Will Percy, he illuminates the changing relationships among race, rural life, and consumer goods and, in the process, offers a new way to understand the connection between power and culture in the American South.
Review
[Ownby] opens a new window on a distinctive southern state.
North Carolina Historical Review
Review
With this well-written and thoughtful book, Ownby adds an unexpected case study to the burgeoning literature on American consumerism.
Choice
Review
A valuable work of social history that could encourage a reevaluation of many premises about the Deep South.
Booklist
Review
A provocative social history that examines the consumer behavior around four powerful dreams.
Library Journal
Synopsis
Shows how consumer goods and shopping have played important roles in the development of class, race, and gender relations in Mississippi from the antebellum era to the presentor from the plantation store to Wal-Mart.
Synopsis
An important work that should serve as a model for similar studies.
Journal of American History [Ownby] opens a new window on a distinctive southern state.
North Carolina Historical Review With this well-written and thoughtful book, Ownby adds an unexpected case study to the burgeoning literature on American consumerism.
Choice A valuable work of social history that could encourage a reevaluation of many premises about the Deep South.
Booklist A provocative social history that examines the consumer behavior around four powerful dreams.
Library Journal
Table of Contents
ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One. Men Buying Cloth: The Limits of Shopping among Nineteenth-Century Farmers
Chapter Two. Wealthy Men, Wealthy Women, and Slaves as Antebellum Consumers
Chapter Three. You Don't Want Nothing: Goods, Plantation Labor, and the Meanings of Freedom, 1865-1920s
Chapter Four. New Stores and New Shoppers, 1880-1930
Chapter Five. Gladys Smith, Dorothy Dickins, and Consumer Ideals for Women, 1920s-1950s
Chapter Six. Goods, Migration, and the Blues, 1920s-1950s
Chapter Seven. Percy, Wright, Faulkner, and Welty: Montgomery Ward Snopes and the Intellectual Challenges of Consumption
Chapter Eight. White Christmas: Boycotts and the Meanings of Shopping, 1960-1990
Epilogue. A "Fine New Day"?
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Leigh's Chapel Store, Tipton County, Tennessee, early 1900s
Dry goods store in Bolivar, Tennessee, 1913
Joseph Perlinsky, Canton, Mississippi
Abroms New City Store, Rosedale, Mississippi, 1939
North Washington Street, Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1936
Good Hope Plantation, Mileston, Mississippi, 1939
Woman with a mail-order catalog, Washington County, Mississippi, 1937
Workers moving between Clarksdale and Greenville, 1938
The Hoffman 5 and 10 Cent Store, Greenville, Mississippi, 1905
Kew Mercantile, Wiggins, Mississippi
The Woolworth store in Laurel, Mississippi
Commerce Street, West Point, Mississippi, 1907
Quilters in a home near Pace, Mississippi, 1939
Woman in Hinds County, Mississippi, wearing clothing made from a fertilizer sack
Juke joint outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1939
Robinson Motor Company, Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1939
Elderly couple in Madison County, Tennessee, 1910
Downtown Port Gibson, Mississippi, 1940
Tables
1. Accounts at General Stores, by Gender
2. Customers at General Stores, by Gender
3. Purchases Made by Sixty-seven Customers at the F. H. Campbell Store, Lodi, Mississippi, 1889-1891
4. Most Expensive Individual Purchases at Stores, 1831-1894
5. Spinning Wheels, Looms, and Spinning Machines Owned by People of Different Levels of Wealth in Nineteenth-century Mississippi
6. Methods of Payment at Rogers and Hearn Store, Jackson, Tennessee, 1859-1860
7. Amounts Paid in Cash by Slaves at Rogers and Hearn Store, 1859-1860
8. Fabric Purchases Made by Slaves at Rogers and Hearn Store, 1859-1860
9. Value of Hats Purchased by Slaves at Rogers and Hearn Store, 1859-1860
10. Visits by Slaves to Rogers and Hearn Store, March 1859-February 1860
11. Nonmusical Work Performed by Blues Musicians, 1910-1949