Poor but Proud: Alabama's Poor Whites by Wayne FlyntReview by: Durwood DunnThe American Historical Review, Vol. 96, No. 1 (Feb., 1991), pp. 267-268Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2164221 .

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United States 267

first female social welfare agency for African-Ameri- cans in Atlanta, NU, with Hope's aid, provided medi- cal, recreational, educational, and civic services. All of Hope's early work pushed her to national levels of reform activities; she traveled to do presentations, served as a member of President Herbert Hoover's Colored Commission (for aid after the tragic Missis- sippi flooding in 1927), and was an assistant to Mary McLeod Bethune when Bethune directed the Negro Division of the National Youth Administration. She joined national organizations-the National Associa- tion for the Advancement of Colored People, the Young Women's Christian Association, the National Urban League, the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses-when regional work with the Com- mission on Interracial Cooperation and the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching seemed to fall short of Hope's and others' goals.

Unlike many of the white female reformers of her time, Hope married and raised a family. Her husband and children supported her sense of urgency for community activism, but sometimes they complained. And, although she had grave concern for family and any community in which she lived, Lugenia felt com- pelled, like other African Americans, to make the mission of "racial uplift" (p. 91) her foremost reform effort. For this reason Rouse rightly calls her a "race woman" (p. 3). Rouse is careful to clarify, however, that black women, too, were forced to confront sexism and were enthused for women's rights, but they reasoned that the fight against racism took priority over women's rights.

Rouse has written a balanced and thoroughly re- searched biography of Hope, being careful to show how she juggled her family life with her active role in social welfare issues. The author supplemented use of the John and Lugenia Burns Hope papers, the Neigh- borhood Union Collection, the Marion C. Hope pa- pers, the John Hope II papers, and papers of various other individuals and organizations with oral inter- views. Lugenia Burns Hope's life helps us understand that black women of her time had a tremendous impact on local and national iss'ues and that the tradition they upheld carried through to the national transformation observed in the 1950s and 1960s.

LINDA REED

University of Houston

WAYNE FLYNT. Poor but Proud: Alabama's Poor Whites. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. 1989. Pp. xiii, 469. $27.50.

Wayne Flynt's graphic description of the plight of Alabama's poor whites is often almost too painful to read, because for most of their history the lives of these people only grew steadily more desperate. Despite Alabama's abundant natural resources, the Civil War engulfed the state in unrelenting poverty that only

World War II began to mitigate. Flynt examines Ala- bama's poor both chronologically and topically, giving careful consideration to the state's major occupations: agriculture, textiles, coal mining, lumbering, and the iron industry. Generally his analysis of their lives and work is convincing, but a nagging confusion remains about who falls into the category of "poor white" and whether state, regional, or national standards are used to determine that category.

Flynt's central thesis is that rural poverty, particu- larly tenancy, was the most elemental and persistent problem throughout most of Alabama's history. So bad was rural poverty, he argues persuasively, that all other occupations-however exploitative or debilitating to mind and body-were seen by most Alabamians as far better by comparison. This conclusion is in striking contrast to Ronald D. Eller's thesis that most preindus- trial Appalachians fared better on their self-sufficient farms than in the coal mines, lumber camps, and textile mills of the New South.

Despite continuing hardships, Flynt argues, most poor whites managed to maintain strong family ties and enjoyed a distinctive and vital folk culture. Part of their folk culture, music and Pentecostal religion, was destined to enter the American mainstream in the twentieth century. Like other southerners, poor Ala- bamians were sustained by neighbors and kin through many difficult times. Family, pride in their work, and an amazing ability to cope with manifest adversity characterized these people, Flynt contends, contrary to stereotypes of their collective degeneracy promulgated by the middle class. He concedes that most poor whites remained bitterly racist, joining blacks in union orga- nizing only in coal mines. Flynt concludes that poor whites and blacks freely associated with each other only in brothels and in the infamous almshouses, those poorhouses of ultimate despair that represented the nadir of poverty throughout Alabama.

The Great Depression and World War II constituted a second great watershed after the Civil War in the lives of Alabama's poor. Flynt draws a balanced picture of the effect of New Deal programs on poor whites, arguing that, although falling far short of any major transformation of their lives, the New Deal neverthe- less provided hope and vital, if minimal, assistance to thousands of Alabamians in desperate straits. Ironi- cally, some degree of prosperity through new industry occurred in the 1960s and 1970s but fast receded in the postindustrial age of declining markets, foreign com- petition, and increasing unemployment in the 1980s.

The greatest strength of Flynt's study lies in the excellent oral histories of Alabama's poor whites, used frequently and with good effect throughout. The spirit, courage, and resilience reflected in these Alabamians' own words often speak far more eloquently than does any description or analysis of them. Flynt does not, however, specifically advance our knowledge of south- ern farm tenancy or poor white culture through use of the Alabama example. Particularly intriguing is the largely unanswered question of poor white mobility

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268 Reviews of Books

into and out of the middle class. And Flynt does not satisfactorily define Alabama's middle class or give the reader any badly needed comparative perspective on poverty in other southern states. Nevertheless, this book represents an important synthesis of poor white life and culture in a critical southern state. It is thus both a necessary stepping stone toward a broader understanding of poverty in the region and a compel- ling invitation to further research on poor whites in other parts of the South.

DURWOOD DUNN

Tennessee Wesleyan College

A. DUDLEY GARDNER and VERLA R. FLORES. Forgotten Frontier: A History of Wyoming Coal Mining. Boulder, Colo.: Westview. 1989. Pp. xii, 243. Cloth $34.95, paper $12.95.

To the north of Wyoming sits Montana, with its copper and gold; to the south lies Colorado, with its gold and silver. Wyoming has coal. Coal and the Union Pacific gave birth to the territory. Although the railroad is less important now, coal is still one of the major economic pillars of the state. In fact, Wyoming achieved a dis- tinction in 1989. "For the first time in American history, a state west of the Mississippi is the leading coal producer" (p. 218).

This aptly named book chronicles the history of this particular mining industry in a state that is better known for its ranching and for-Yellowstone National Park; it is a study long overdue. A. Dudley Gardner and Verla R. Flores make a major contribution to an understanding of Wyoming and an industry that had great significance in the development of the Rocky Mountain region.

The authors cover the entire history, from the early intertwining of the railroads and coal (small wagon mines) to the energy decade of the 1980s, with its huge strip mining operations. It is the story of repeated booms and busts, of various waves of immigrants, of coal camps born and abandoned, and of a dirty, dangerous, difficult industry. Using a chronological approach, the authors discuss the evolution of labor relations, mechanization in the mines, coal and politics, and, finally, in the 1960s, the growing awareness of environmental issues. There are skilled comparisons between the booms and busts of the 1870s and the 1970s and a fascinating look at the evolution of women in coal mining.

Wyoming's reserves are among the greatest in the world, so it is certain that the story will go on into the new century. Predicting that future "is problematical at best and falls under the category of predicting Wyo- ming's weather, something old-timers warn is best left to fools and newcomers" (p. 218). Through it all, the land remains. As Gardner and Flores observe, "though coal drew the miners to the area, they never quite conquered the land" (p. xii).

This book is a fast-paced, well-written narrative

about a subject that is only now receiving the national attention that it warrants. The authors have combined diligent research, which includes oral histories and a wealth of photographs, maps, and drawings, with a sensitivity to the industry and their state to produce an objective study. This volume will become a standard work for students of the Rocky Mountain coal industry and the history of Wyoming.

DUANE A. SMITH

Fort Lewis College

ALAN DERICKSON. Workers' Health, Workers' Democracy: The Western Miners' Struggle, 1891-1925. Ithaca: Cor- nell University Press. 1988. Pp. xiv, 251. $26.95.

With the recent publication of two important volumes on the general development of the American hospital system by Charles Rosenberg and Rosemary Stevens, much has been contributed to our understanding of the evolution of the form of this important element of health care delivery in the United States. It is to be hoped, however, that the deserved excitement over these books does not obscure the valuable addition of Alan Derickson's new work to the literature. He exam- ines in depth what has until now been a little known yet theoretically interesting segment of the hospital system in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: institutions established and administered by members of the working class for their own benefit.

The workers in question were hard rock miners of the Mountain and Pacific states and British Columbia. After 1850, the extraction of metal-bearing ores be- came a vital industry in these areas. Mining towns made up predominantly of men, many without families, were established as new finds were made. The great hazards of the work caused many accidents and debilities, and the single status of most of the men made home care unfeasible. The miners had organized unions, and many of their locals grappled with the issue of who controlled the provision of health care services to their members. The mine owners had sought to deduct a specified amount each month from all of their workers' paychecks that would go into contracts with local phy- sicians and hospitals to care for injured workers. The workers where this system was adopted often argued, however, that the quality of care that they or their associates received was less than adequate and that company-hired physicians not unexpectedly took the company line with regard to liability for injuries and responsibility for returning to work. The mine work- ers' unions were initially socialist in politics and prac- tice. They believed that it was the workers' right and responsibility to care for their own and placed pressure on the mine owners through strikes to retain the money from the checkoff system and to secure health care services for the locals' members.

In all, twenty-five miners' hospitals were established. Most were small institutions that, in Derickson's view,

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