The cotton plantation South since the Civil War

by Charles S. Aiken

Charles Aiken traces the development of the Southern cotton plantation since the Civil War - from the emergence of tenancy after 1865, through its decline during the Depression, to the post-World War II development of the large industrial farm. Aiken also describes the evolving relationship of African Americans to the cotton plantation during the thirteen decades of economic, social, and political changes from Reconstruction through the War on Poverty - including the impact of alterations in plantation agriculture on the mass migration of Southern blacks to the urban North during the twentieth century.