Trouble in Goshen: Plain Folk, Roosevelt, Jesus, and Marx in the Great Depression South
Trouble in Goshen: Plain Folk, Roosevelt, Jesus, and Marx in the Great Depression South
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Abstract
The poor have always been with us. In the rural American South, the “bottom half” languished on the edge of survival since Reconstruction. When the Great Depression hit, their plight worsened. The New Deal – and the nation – responded with a radical and innovative solution. Model communities were created to help the rural poor, if not to attain full middle-class status, at least to escape peasantry. These communities, which I have dubbed “American Goshens,” would provide adequate nourishment, shelter, and financing plans for the working poor Remarkably, these 200-plus “Goshens,” such as the Tupelo Homesteads and Dyess Colony in Arkansas, were not just forged by New Deal policy-makers. A coalition of liberal Christians – led by Reinhold Niebuhr, and the Socialist Party of America built a bi-racial cooperative farm in the Mississippi Delta, the Delta Cooperative Farm at Hillhouse, Miss. The appeal of new and clean cottages, a parcel of land, and a liberal financing arrangement must have seemed to plain folk much like biblical Goshen seemed to the children of Israel. Indeed the announcement of the imminent creation of “Goshen” caused heretofore reluctant-to-write plain folk to inquire further of the conditions, of the requirements for admittance, and for information on how to apply. Ultimately, all the Goshens, designed to redeem and rescue the plain folk of the rural South, failed. This book examines why they were created, the economic theories that justified them, how they were built and managed, and why plain folk refused to live in Goshen.
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