The Second Great Emancipation
Subtitle: The Mechanical Cotton Picker, Black Migration, and How They Shaped the Modern South
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Published: July 2000
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 284
ISBN-13: 9781557286062
Subjects: Agricultural engineering & machinery; Agriculture & related industries; Multicultural studies; United States - State & Local - General; Second World War, 1939-1945; c 1960 to c 1970; Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - Histor; Agricultural Occupations; Migrant Workers; History - General History; History: World; Arkansas; Louisiana; Mississippi; Farm mechanization; Industries - General; African American agricultural laborers; Labor; Social aspects; Agriculture - General; Southern States; 20th century; African American agricultural; Cotton farmers; History
Description: "Donald Holley marshals statistical and narrative evidence to show that mechanization occurred in the Delta region of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi only after the region's oversupply of small farmers was reduced. He thereby corrects a long-standing belief that mechanization "pushed" labor off the land.".

"Development of the mechanical cotton picker not only made possible the continuation of cotton cultivation in the post-plantation era, it helped free the region of Jim Crow laws as political power was relocated from farms to cities and thereby opened the door for the civil rights movement of the 1950s.

Just as President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed African Americans from chattel slavery, the mechanical cotton picker freed laborers from the drudgery of the cotton harvest and brought the agricultural South into a period of prosperity."--BOOK JACKET.