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Night Riders: Defending Community in the Black Patch, 1890-1915
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In the late nineteenth century, industrialization was making its way into rural America. In an agricultural region of Kentucky and Tennessee called the Black Patch for the dark tobacco grown there, big business arrived with a vengeance, eliminating competition, manipulating prices, and undermining local control. The farmers fought back. Night Riders tells the story of the struggle that followed, and reveals the ambiguities and complexities of a drama that convulsed this community for over two decades.
Christopher Waldrep shows that, contrary to many accounts, these wealthy tobacco planters did not resist these new forces simply because of a nostalgia for a bygone time. Instead, many sought to become modern capitalists themselves--but on their own terms. The South's rural elite found their ability to hire and control black labor--the established racial practice of the community--threatened by the low prices offered by big companies for their raw materials. In response, farmers organized and demanded better prices for their tobacco. The tobacco companies then attempted to divide the farmers by offering higher prices to those willing to break with the others. When some cultivators succumbed, their betrayal awakened a deeply rooted vigilante tradition that called for the protection of community at all costs. Waldrep analyzes the spasm of violence that ensued in which horsemen, riding at night, destroyed tobacco barns and the warehouses where the companies stored their tobacco. But despite this fierce upheaval, the Black Patch community endured.
The most thorough treatment ever given to the Black Patch war, Night Riders illuminates a moment in history in which the traditional and the modern, the rural and the industrial, fought for the future--and past--of a community.
Christopher Waldrep shows that, contrary to many accounts, these wealthy tobacco planters did not resist these new forces simply because of a nostalgia for a bygone time. Instead, many sought to become modern capitalists themselves--but on their own terms. The South's rural elite found their ability to hire and control black labor--the established racial practice of the community--threatened by the low prices offered by big companies for their raw materials. In response, farmers organized and demanded better prices for their tobacco. The tobacco companies then attempted to divide the farmers by offering higher prices to those willing to break with the others. When some cultivators succumbed, their betrayal awakened a deeply rooted vigilante tradition that called for the protection of community at all costs. Waldrep analyzes the spasm of violence that ensued in which horsemen, riding at night, destroyed tobacco barns and the warehouses where the companies stored their tobacco. But despite this fierce upheaval, the Black Patch community endured.
The most thorough treatment ever given to the Black Patch war, Night Riders illuminates a moment in history in which the traditional and the modern, the rural and the industrial, fought for the future--and past--of a community.
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Genres
278 pages, Paperback
First published September 27,1993
This edition
- Format
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278 pages, Paperback
- Published
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September 23, 1993 by Duke University Press
- ISBN
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9780822313939
- ASIN
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0822313936
- Language
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English
About the author
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Prof. Waldrep became the Jamie and Phyllis Pasker Professor of History at SFSU in August, 2000. Previously professor of history at Eastern Illinois University, he is the author of Night Riders: Defending Community in the Black Patch (1993); Roots of Disorder: Race and Criminal Justice in the American South, 1817-80 (1998); Racial Violence on Trial: A Handbook with Cases, Laws, and Documents (2001); The Many Faces of Judge Lynch (2002); Vicksburg's Long Shadow: The Civil War Legacy of Race and Remembrance (2005); African Americans Confront Lynching: Strategies of Resistance from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Era (2009). His most recent book is Jury Discrimination: The Supreme Court, Public Opinion, and a Grassroots Fight for Racial Equality in Mississippi (2010). The Supreme Court Historical Society announced on June 7, 2010, that its Hughes-Gossett Award for the best journal article went to Professor Christopher Waldrep for his article entitled "Joseph P. Bradley's Journey: The Meaning of Privileges and Immunities." He is also founding and senior editor of H-Law.
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