Talk of the Town
Talk of the Town

Author: Fredrick Marcel Spletstoser

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 9780807129340

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As the sleepy courthouse town of Alexandria, Louisiana, began to recover from the devastation and trauma of the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Daily Town Talk appeared. Nicknamed Alexandria's postage stamp paper by a rival publication, the Town Talk aimed to be the best daily outside of New Orleans and became one of the most successful regional newspapers of its kind. Fredrick M. Spletstoser tells the story of the paper's first sixty years and of the town's triumphs and setbacks during that same time. An unpretentious country journal, the Town Talk would become in the second half of the twentieth century a pioneer in newspaper technology under the leadership of Joe D. Smith, one of the most respected names in American journalism. The Town Talk was inextricably bound up with - and often directly behind - transformations in Alexandria's urban landscape, the development of municipal services and education, efforts to attract industry and cultivate trade, and the stimulation of surrounding agribusiness. occurred across the turn of the century, the large and enduring military presence in central Louisiana, and the impact of Huey P. Long's political career. Along the way, he narrates colorful stories culled from the Town Talk's pages and describes the fascinating family members who published the paper during this entire period. Talk of the Town illustrates the role provincial journalism played in the planning and expansion of towns throughout the country as it relates the engrossing history of one southern place and the people who lived there.

White Metropolis
White Metropolis

Author: Michael Phillips

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2006-01-02

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 029271274X

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From the nineteenth century until today, the power brokers of Dallas have always portrayed their city as a progressive, pro-business, racially harmonious community that has avoided the racial, ethnic, and class strife that roiled other Southern cities. But does this image of Dallas match the historical reality? In this book, Michael Phillips delves deeply into Dallas's racial and religious past and uncovers a complicated history of resistance, collaboration, and assimilation between the city's African American, Mexican American, and Jewish communities and its white power elite. Exploring more than 150 years of Dallas history, Phillips reveals how white business leaders created both a white racial identity and a Southwestern regional identity that excluded African Americans from power and required Mexican Americans and Jews to adopt Anglo-Saxon norms to achieve what limited positions of power they held. He also demonstrates how the concept of whiteness kept these groups from allying with each other, and with working- and middle-class whites, to build a greater power base and end elite control of the city. Comparing the Dallas racial experience with that of Houston and Atlanta, Phillips identifies how Dallas fits into regional patterns of race relations and illuminates the unique forces that have kept its racial history hidden until the publication of this book.

City of Dust
City of Dust

Author: Gregg Andrews

Publisher: University of Missouri Press

Published: 2002-09-20

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 082621424X

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Mark Twain's boyhood home of Hannibal, Missouri, often brings to mind romanticized images of Twain's fictional characters Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer exploring caves and fishing from the banks of the Mississippi River. In City of Dust, Gregg Andrews tells another story of the Hannibal area, the very real story of the exploitation and eventual destruction of Ilasco, Missouri, an industrial town created to serve the purposes of the Atlas Portland Cement Company. In this new edition, Andrews provides an introduction detailing the impact of this book since its initial publication in 1996. He writes of a new twist in the Ilasco saga, one that concerns the Continental Cement Company’s attempt, not unlike Atlas’s one hundred years earlier, to manipulate the sale of a piece of land near its plant in the town. He explores the uneasy relationship between preservationists and the plant’s CEO and officials in St. Louis; the growing movement to preserve Ilasco’s heritage, including the building of a monument to commemorate the early residents of the town; and the grassroots petition drive and letter-writing campaign that stopped the Continental Cement Company’s machinations.

Stepping Forward
Stepping Forward

Author: Catherine Higgs

Publisher: Ohio University Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0821414550

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Annotation Presents the edited proceedings of a conference held at the University of Tennessee in September 1999 at which academics from South Africa, Jamaica, and the US compare the experiences of 19th- and 20th-century black women in Africa and African diaspora communities. The volume's 18 contributions range from the theme of witchcraft and taxes in the Transkei, South Africa to women and the Civil Rights Movement in Claiborne County, Mississippi. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).