Full Description
Kings of Mississippi examines how a twentieth-century black middle-class family navigated life in rural Mississippi. The book introduces seven generations of a farming family and provides an organic examination of how the family experienced life and economic challenges as one of few middle-class black families living and working alongside the many struggling black and white sharecroppers and farmers in Gallman, Mississippi. Family narratives and census data across time and a socio-ecological lens help assess how race, religion, education, and key employment options influenced economic and non-economic outcomes. Family voices explain how intangible beliefs fueled socioeconomic outcomes despite racial, gender, and economic stratification. The book also examines the effects of stratification changes across time, including: post-migration; inter- and intra-racial conflicts and compromises; and, strategic decisions and outcomes. The book provides an unexpected glimpse at how a family's ethos can foster upward mobility into the middle-class.
Contents
Introduction: a black family from Mississippi as a socio-ecological phenomenon; 1. 'My own land and a milk cow': race, space, class, and gender as embedded elements of a black southern terrain; 2. 'Bikes or lights': familial decisions in the context of inequality; 3. 'Getting to the school on time': formal education and beyond; 4. 'Jesus and the juke joint': blurred and bordered boundaries and boundary crossing; 5. 'Keeping God's favor': contemporary black families and systemic change; Conclusion: 'what would Big Mama do?' Activation and routinization of a black family's ethos.
