The Kings of Mississippi: Race, Religious Education, and the Making of a Middle-Class Black Family in the Segregated South (Cambridge Studies in ... ... Economics: Economics and Social Identity)
Cambridge University Press, 3/21/2019
EAN 9781108424066, ISBN10: 1108424066
Hardcover, 254 pages, 23.4 x 15.5 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
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.
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.