American Congo

“Woodruff argues that the economic development of the Mississippi Delta lands in the early 20th century resembled the exploitation of African colonies by European capitalism. This involved the subjugation of a largely nonwhite labor force through the near total control of both the economic and local political systems and reflected the application of modern capital, management, and corporate organizational systems to previously underdeveloped agricultural and extractive economies. The author presents a convincing argument that the economic transformation of the Delta lands combined an enlightened and sophisticated capitalism with an oppressive and exploitive labor system.” — C.D. Wintz, CHOICE

“Woodruff’s book stands out for its attempt to situate the white supremacist regime of the Mississippi Delta within a national and international context. . . . Woodruff does offer compelling evidence. . .for her point that racial terrorism characterized labor relations in both the African and American Congo, and her effort to connect African American resistance in the Delta to colonized peoples' resistance in other locations is welcome. With its pointed argument and solid base in a range of manuscript sources and oral histories, American Congo speaks to a wide audience. It has broad appeal for readers interested in twentieth-century American history and is particularly important for students of the modern African American struggle for freedom. . . . She also explicates the significant ways in which it changed over time, noting that the struggle persisted across the decades, but in a constantly evolving form. This point, combined with the comparative aspects of Woodruff’s study, makes it a crucial addition to the literature.” — North Carolina Historical Review#

“A masterful account of life in the Mississippi Delta in the era of Jim Crow. Based on exhaustive research and cogently argued, American Congo stands as an important addition to the literature on the twentieth-century South.” — Journal of Southern History

“[A] powerful volume. The issues in this book were clear: politics and labor were inseparable, the people with power wanted to get as much labor as possible as cheaply as possible from workers, and workers found various ways, some more successful than others, to fight back.” — American Historical Review

“A welcome survey of the Arkansas Delta between two world wars and the role that black activists played in shaping it. In doing so, [Woodruff] helps to redress the balance of existing studies that overwhelmingly focus on the neighboring Mississippi Delta.” — Journal of American History

“In this important and accomplished book, Nan Woodruff describes the battles African Americans waged against the planter regime from the Delta’s commercial expansion until the end of World War II. This passionate book will be of tremendous value to students and scholars seeking to understand a key area of the struggle for black freedom.” — Journal of African American History

“A compelling story of African-American freedom struggles that deserves a place on the shelf of any student of black life or southern culture.” — Arkansas Historical Quarterly

enhances our understanding of the long civil rights movement. It should occupy a place on the shelves of all who are interested in southern, African American, and civil rights history." — Louisiana History

“Woodruff has vividly recreated the brutal local history of the Delta and persuasively situated that history in the context of national politics, global economics, and world wars. This book should be required reading for students of Southern, African American, and labor history.” — David Montgomery, author of Citizen Worker: The Experience of Workers in the United Stores with Democracy and the Free Market during the Nineteenth Century

“In American Congo Nan Woodruff very rightly places the Mississippi Delta and its racialized political economy in international context. No longer does this heavily black, white supremacist plantation region float in American (and southern) exceptionalism. Her Delta belongs to the colonized world of the twentieth century, rising and falling in rhythm with the colonies of Asia and Africa as a result of the same world wars. In the Delta as in other colonies, struggle proves long, but also fruitful.” — Nell Irvin Painter, author of Southern History Across the Color Line