Poor but Proud: Alabama's Poor Whites. - book review

Baptist History and Heritage, Wntr, 2003 by C. Delane Tew

By J. Wayne Flynt, Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1989 (paperback 2001). 469 pp.

The hardest task for a historian is to give a voice to those who created few, if any, documents--the poor. Wayne Flynt accepted this challenge, and in Poor but Proud: Alabama's Poor Whites he helps them to sing. Conducting the voices by skillfully blending melodic oral histories with the pounding bass of government documents, Flynt offers the most extensive study to date on the subject.

Early Alabama settlers found abundant land available for fields and open woods for livestock foraging, allowing these farmers the possibility of upward mobility. Land became scarcer as statehood developed, farms were divided into smaller lots, the price of cotton dropped and generating enough income to support a family proved increasingly difficult. The Civil War and its aftermath plunged thousands of Alabama yeomen into poverty. With the destruction of farm animals, crops, and homes, added to the great loss of life among working age men, many families were unable to retain their property and turned to tenancy and its downward spiral of yearly increasing debt. The percentage of Alabama farmers caught in this system grew from 45.8 percent in 1880 to 64.7 percent in 1930.

Hopelessness forced waves of poor from rural areas into the developing urban centers of the state. These took with them a way of life that included the family wage system; children worked on the factory floor along with their mothers and fathers as they had in the fields. In the textile industry, 25 percent of the workers were under the age of sixteen in 1900.

Workers in all the main occupations--farmers, textile workers, coal miners, timber workers, and ironworkers--faced economic difficulties. Attempts to unionize had little effect. Threats of firings kept union activities to a minimum. Poor whites, bombarded with white supremacy rhetoric, rarely joined with blacks, who suffered the same economic depression, to protest conditions. The Populist Party had the most success organizing the workers in the late 1800s, but ultimately they too failed to reform the economic system.

In learning to cope with the indignities and agonies brought on by poverty, many turned to the church for solace. They believed in a fundamental Christianity that "proclaimed all persons equal in the sight of God" (p. 233). Bivocational pastors who had little or no educational training for the ministry often served the Baptist and Methodist churches the poor attended. In church, the poor found a sense of community; often the socials and Sacred Harp singings organized by the church were their only opportunities for entertainment.

Poor but Proud, which received the Lillian Smith Award, is masterfully written. The arguments, data, and personal stories flow seamlessly together creating a voice for a segment of society often unheard. For many, including this reader, whose families were at one time tenant farmers, coal miners, or textile workers, Poor but Proud provides a greater understanding of the difficulties faced by generations of Alabamians.--Reviewed by C. Delane Tew, assistant professor of History, Judson College, Marion, Alabama