When Tobacco Was King: Families, Farm Labor, and Federal Policy in the Piedmont
Tobacco has left an indelible mark on the American South, shaping the land and culture throughout the twentieth century. In the last few decades, advances in technology and shifts in labor and farming policy have altered the way of life for tobacco farmers: family farms have largely been replaced by large-scale operations dependent on hired labor, much of it from other shores. However, the mechanical harvester and the H-2A guestworker did not put an end to tobacco culture but rather sent it in new directions and accelerated the change that has always been part of the farmer’s life.

In When Tobacco Was King, Evan Bennett examines the agriculture of the South’s original staple crop in the Old Bright Belt—a diverse region named after the unique bright, or flue-cured, tobacco variety it spawned. He traces the region’s history from Emancipation to the abandonment of federal crop controls in 2004 and highlights the transformations endured by blacks and whites, landowners and tenants, to show how tobacco farmers continued to find meaning and community in their work despite these drastic changes.
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When Tobacco Was King: Families, Farm Labor, and Federal Policy in the Piedmont
Tobacco has left an indelible mark on the American South, shaping the land and culture throughout the twentieth century. In the last few decades, advances in technology and shifts in labor and farming policy have altered the way of life for tobacco farmers: family farms have largely been replaced by large-scale operations dependent on hired labor, much of it from other shores. However, the mechanical harvester and the H-2A guestworker did not put an end to tobacco culture but rather sent it in new directions and accelerated the change that has always been part of the farmer’s life.

In When Tobacco Was King, Evan Bennett examines the agriculture of the South’s original staple crop in the Old Bright Belt—a diverse region named after the unique bright, or flue-cured, tobacco variety it spawned. He traces the region’s history from Emancipation to the abandonment of federal crop controls in 2004 and highlights the transformations endured by blacks and whites, landowners and tenants, to show how tobacco farmers continued to find meaning and community in their work despite these drastic changes.
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When Tobacco Was King: Families, Farm Labor, and Federal Policy in the Piedmont

When Tobacco Was King: Families, Farm Labor, and Federal Policy in the Piedmont

by Evan P. Bennett
When Tobacco Was King: Families, Farm Labor, and Federal Policy in the Piedmont

When Tobacco Was King: Families, Farm Labor, and Federal Policy in the Piedmont

by Evan P. Bennett

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Overview

Tobacco has left an indelible mark on the American South, shaping the land and culture throughout the twentieth century. In the last few decades, advances in technology and shifts in labor and farming policy have altered the way of life for tobacco farmers: family farms have largely been replaced by large-scale operations dependent on hired labor, much of it from other shores. However, the mechanical harvester and the H-2A guestworker did not put an end to tobacco culture but rather sent it in new directions and accelerated the change that has always been part of the farmer’s life.

In When Tobacco Was King, Evan Bennett examines the agriculture of the South’s original staple crop in the Old Bright Belt—a diverse region named after the unique bright, or flue-cured, tobacco variety it spawned. He traces the region’s history from Emancipation to the abandonment of federal crop controls in 2004 and highlights the transformations endured by blacks and whites, landowners and tenants, to show how tobacco farmers continued to find meaning and community in their work despite these drastic changes.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780813073354
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Publication date: 05/14/2024
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 162
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Evan P. Bennett is associate professor of history at Florida Atlantic University. He is the author of Tampa Bay: The Story of an Estuary and Its People and coeditor of Beyond Forty Acres and a Mule: African American Landowning Families since Reconstruction.

Table of Contents

List of Figures viii

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: A Hornworm's-Eye View of the Tobacco South 1

1 Family 8

2 Hands 22

3 Tobacco-Raising Fools 35

4 Cooperation 63

5 Stabilization 75

6 Untied 93

7 Buyout 100

Conclusion: A Dead End for Tobacco Road? 113

Notes 115

Bibliography 137

Index 149

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Bennett makes a provocative argument about the importance of family labor on the tobacco farm, the empowerment of women and children, and the development of a community culture."—Jeannie Whayne, author of Delta Empire: Lee Wilson and the Transformation of Agriculture in the New South

"When Tobacco Was King reconstructs the lives of farm families in the Tobacco South, as well as their work and their political struggles, in vivid, nuanced detail. This brilliant account joins a short list of indispensable histories dealing with bright leaf tobacco."—Adrienne Monteith Petty, author of Standing Their Ground: Small Farmers in North Carolina Since the Civil War

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