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From headlines to documentaries, urban schools are at the center of current education debates. But from these accounts, one would never know that 56 million Americans live in rural communities and depend on their rural public schools to meet their educational and, often, their economic and social needs. This book shares the untold narratives of rural education. Drawing upon extensive ethnographic research in two rural Southern towns, the book exposes the complicated ways in which schools shape the racial dynamics of their towns and nurture the communities that surround them. It argues that current education policies, both limiting the roles these schools play and threatening to close them, also endanger rural communities. The book issues a warning: the state's growing powers—and the current narrowing of a school's purpose to academic achievement alone—endanger rural America and undermine the potential of a school, whether rural or urban, to sustain a community. Demonstrating the effects of narrow definitions of public education in an era of economic turmoil and widening social inequality, the book calls for a more contextual approach to education policymaking, involving both state and community.

This book consolidates, refines, advances and grounds recent scholarship that challenges familiar platitudes about family farming and rural life in the United States. Its approach yields a depth of information about farming culture not usually found in the literature on rural America. The book takes the reader on a cultural tour of a cherished American institution and landscape: midwestern farm families and their farms. With attention to detail and knowledge borne of first-hand study over many years, the author reveals the pervasive imprint of ethnicity. The book represents one of those rare studies that enrich our social vision and understanding in extraordinary ways. It contributes to the study of agriculture and culture, and its cross-disciplinary approach will engage scholars in many areas. For historians, it is an illustration that different behaviors between American and immigrant farmers, planted over a century ago in the Middle West, have endured to the present.

This book originally appeared in the wake of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. Written for a general audience, it asks where these “angry, white, rural men” came from and how their movements and grievances both stayed the same and changed over time. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols acted in a long line of rural protesters on the left and the right—including the nineteenth century Populists--- who crusaded against big government, big business, and big banks. At the same time, and with little sense of contradiction, rural people also used violence to suppress the political voices of African Americans, Mormons, Chinese and many other marginalized people. In the new preface, Catherine McNicol Stock provides an update and overview of the increasingly conservative face of rural America. While populism in many historical eras meant hope and progress, for many today it means hate and a desire to turn back the clock on American history.

Although the death of the small town has been predicted for decades, during the 1990s the population of rural America actually increased by more than three million people. This book explores these rural newcomers and the impact they have on the social relationships, public spaces, and community resources of small town America. The author draws on richly detailed ethnographic studies of six small towns in central Illinois, including a town with upscale subdivisions that lured wealthy professionals as well as towns whose agribusinesses drew working-class Mexicano migrants and immigrants. She finds that regardless of the class or ethnicity of the newcomers, if their social status differs relative to that of oldtimers, their effect on a town has been the same: suburbanization that erodes the close-knit small town community, with especially severe consequences for small town youth. To successfully combat the homogenization of the heartland, the author argues, newcomers must work with oldtimers so that together they sustain the vital aspects of community life and identity what first drew them to small towns. An illustration of the recent revitalization of interest in the small town, this work provides a significant addition to the growing literature on the subject.

American agriculture employs some 2.5 million workers during a typical year, most for fewer than six months. Three fourths of these farm workers are immigrants, half are unauthorized, and most will leave seasonal farm work within a decade. What do these statistics mean for farmers, for labourers, for rural America? This book addresses the question by reviewing what is happening on farms and in the towns and cities where immigrant farm workers settle with their families. The book finds that the business-labor model that has evolved in rural America is neither desirable nor sustainable. It proposes regularizing U.S. farm workers and rationalizing the farm labor market, an approach that will help American farmers stay globally competitive while also improving conditions for farm workers.

This book consolidates, refines, advances and grounds recent scholarship that challenges familiar platitudes about family farming and rural life in the United States. Its approach yields a depth of information about farming culture not usually found in the literature on rural America. The book takes the reader on a cultural tour of a cherished American institution and landscape: midwestern farm families and their farms. With attention to detail and knowledge borne of first-hand study over many years, the author reveals the pervasive imprint of ethnicity. The book represents one of those rare studies that enrich our social vision and understanding in extraordinary ways. It contributes to the study of agriculture and culture, and its cross-disciplinary approach will engage scholars in many areas. For historians, it is an illustration that different behaviors between American and immigrant farmers, planted over a century ago in the Middle West, have endured to the present.

Frances Sage Bradley (1862-1949) was one of the first female graduates of Cornell University Medical College (1899). She spent the next half century advancing the causes of public health and medical care for neglected women, infants, and children. In 1915 she closed her private practice and became a medical field agent for the US Children’s Bureau in isolated rural areas of ten states, including Appalachia. Enactment of the federal Maternity and Infant Protection Act of 1921 [Sheppard-Towner Act] opened further healthcare reform opportunities. A prolific writer, the doctor generated voluminous official reports and dozens of freelance articles and stories. Those trying today to provide primary healthcare to underserved Americans face many of the same obstacles that challenged Dr. Bradley a century ago.

Any listener knows the power of music to define a place, but few can describe the how or why of this phenomenon. This book showcases how American jazz defined a culture particularly preoccupied with place. By analyzing both the performances and cultural context of leading jazz figures, including the many famous venues where they played, the author bridges two dominant scholarly approaches to the genre, offering a framework for musical analysis that examines how the geographical realities of daily life can be transformed into musical sound. Focusing on white bandleader Jan Garber, black bandleader Duke Ellington, white saxophonist Charlie Barnet, and black guitarist Charlie Christian, as well as traveling from Catalina Island to Manhattan to Oklahoma, the book depicts not only a geography of race but how this geography was disrupted, how these musicians crossed physical and racial boundaries—from black to white, South to North, and rural to urban—and how they found expression for these movements in the insistent music they were creating.

This book identifies a new family model geared for the post-industrial economy. Rooted in the urban middle class, the coasts and the “blue states” in the last three presidential elections, the Blue Family Paradigm emphasizes the importance of women's, as well as men's, workforce participation, egalitarian gender roles, and the delay of family formation until both parents are emotionally and financially ready. By contrast, the Red Family Paradigm—associated with the Bible Belt, the mountain west, and rural America—rejects these new family norms, viewing the change in moral and sexual values as a crisis. In this world, the prospect of teen childbirth is the necessary deterrent to premarital sex, marriage is a sacred undertaking between a man and a woman, and divorce is society's greatest moral challenge. Yet, the changing economy is rapidly eliminating the stable, blue collar jobs that have historically supported young families, and early marriage and childbearing derail the education needed to prosper. The result is that the areas of the country most committed to traditional values have the highest divorce and teen pregnancy rates, fueling greater calls to reinstill traditional values. The book show how the Red-Blue divide goes much deeper than this value system conflict—the Red States have increasingly said “no” to Blue State legal norms, and, as a result, family law has been rent in two. The book close with a consideration of where these different family systems still overlap, and suggest solutions that permit rebuilding support for both types of families in changing economic circumstances.