Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies) [Paperback]

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall (Author), Robert Korstad (Author), and Christopher B. Daly Lu Ann Jones (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0807848794 | ISBN-13: 978-0807848791 | Publication Date: July 26, 2000

Since its original publication in 1987, Like a Family has become a classic in the study of American labor history. Basing their research on a series of extraordinary interviews, letters, and articles from the trade press, the authors uncover the voices and experiences of workers in the Southern cotton mill industry during the 1920s and 1930s. Now with a new afterword, this edition stands as an invaluable contribution to American social history.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Drawing on oral interviews and workers' letters, the authors re-create the village world of the cotton mills of the Carolina Piedmont region from its beginnings in the 1880s until this distinctive cultural fabric began to unravel in the 1930s. The emphasis is on showing how kinship and a common culture gave these mill hands, mostly of rural origin, a shared identity and a hedge against poverty and management. While these rich materials have not been woven into a fully integrated account, they provide a new and significant dimension to the story of these Southern cotton workers. Recommended for subject collections.Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

This eloquent reconstruction of the cotton mill world allows us to understand and to pay homage to those who fought and lost.

Ira Berlin, New York Times Book Review

A work of scholarship that is both authoritative and most refreshingly undogmatic.

Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World

Diligent research and fine writing has produced a landmark work.

Journal of Southern History

Like a Family is that rare compelling book, a delight for the academic and the public, with much to say to both.

Journal of American History

Like a Family is the most important study of southern cotton mill workers we have ever had.

Reviews in American History

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Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (July 26, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807848794
• ISBN-13: 978-0807848791
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #161,732 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captures a lost era, September 22, 2002

By 

Jennifer Sugg "jennknowsbooks" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies) (Paperback)

Like a Family interestingly and accurately portrays life in southern cotton mills and mill towns in the central southeast, primarily North Carolina. The book examines family, work and community life; it is a social, cultural and political history. Working in the mills was harsh, dangerous and monotonous. Most employees left farms and a rural way of life to toil in the mills; for these people living under the constant eye of mill management was humiliating at times. The mills controlled not only the worker's jobs, but their housing, churches, schools, entertainment and shopping through company stores. It is important to note that this book does not leave out women's perspectives, as many mill workers were young women and working mothers.

A great deal of the content of this book was provided by interviews done in the 1980's of people who worked in the mills and lived in mill communities. This oral history is both fascinating and priceless. Most of the mills have closed and the memory and history of them is becoming scarcer to find as most of the mill workers who lived during the era portrayed in this book have died.

While most of the mills have closed, central North Carolina is dotted with the communities that are remains of old mill towns. I am from this region and my mother lives in Bynum, NC, a mill town dating from the mid-19th century. Several of her neighbors were interviewed for and written about in Like a Family. The old company store still serves as a post office and the mill community's church has regular worshipers. Unfortunately the rest of the community from the mill days, including the mill itself (which closed in the early 1980's and has burned down recently), have succumbed to time and aging from the elements.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Oral History at Its Best, April 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (Paperback)

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall and the other writers of _Like a Family_ created a tour-de-force study of cotton mill towns in the American South. It is a very rare book that captures such a clear, complex sense of history; Hall balances a careful sense of detail with a sweeping picture of life in the cotton-mill South by using a combination of oral and written sources. This book is perfect for scholars and non-scholars alike, and richly conjures a full picture of this period in American history.

5.0 out of 5 stars I can relate, January 15, 2012

By 

James Kris Carmichael (Jackson, Mississippi United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies) (Paperback)

I grew up in the community of Stonewall, Mississippi, where the main industry was the local cotton mill located in the center of town. There are many parallels which much of the same could be said about the activity of mill work between Stonewall and some of the other mill towns throughout the southeast. Like others, while it is sad that much of the oral tradition has been lost to time and death, to us which remain and remember, the influence of those which bore the hard work and the harsh conditions of earlier days, are still at work in our lives. I have lately created a FB page entitled Cottontops whereby we could possibly connect with those days, and I'm sure any reader of this book will recognize how far we have come, because of the others which have went before.