Hillbilly Hellraisers: Federal Power and Populist Defiance in the Ozarks

Description

Long a bastion of antigovernment feeling, the Ozark region today is home to fervent strains of conservative-influenced sentiment. Does rural heritage play an exceptional role in the perpetuation of these attitudes? Have such outlooks been continuous? J. Blake Perkins searches for the roots of rural defiance in the Ozarks—and discovers how it changed over time. Eschewing generalities, Perkins focuses on the experiences and attitudes of rural people themselves as they interacted with government from the late nineteenth century through the twentieth century.He uncovers the reasons local disputes and uneven access to government power fostered markedly different reactions by hill people as time went by. Resistance in the earlier period sprang from upland small farmers' conflicts with capitalist elites who held the local levers of federal power. But as industry and agribusiness displaced family farms after World War II, a conservative cohort of town business elites, local political officials, and midwestern immigrants arose from the region's new low-wage, union-averse economy. As Perkins argues, this modern antigovernment conservatism bore little resemblance to the backcountry populism of an earlier age but had much in common with the movement elsewhere. | Cover Title Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: The Populist Ethic 1. The "One-Gallused" Crowd on Government Part II: Rural Resistance 2. First Tastes: Moonshiners and G-Men 3. "Silk-Hatted Fellers" and Their War 4. The Damn Government's Tick Trouble 5. Bring On the Dam Progress Part III: Toward a New Defiance 6. Growth Politics and Rural Disappointment 7. The War on Poverty and a New Right Resistance Conclusion: Populist Defiance—Then and Now Notes Bibliography Index| "Hillbilly Hellraisers challenges the seemingly uncontroversial claim that antigovernment sentiment has enjoyed exception continuity among rural working-class Americans." —Journal of Appalachian Studies "This is a very good book about the roots of resistance and rebellion in the Arkansas Ozarks in response to federal government attempts to effect social and economic change in the region from the late 19th to the early 21st century. . . . Highly recommended."—OzarksWatch "Hillbilly Hellraisers represents an important contribution to rural history and a valuable narrative of those who struggled to confront the changes that reshaped the region. It's strongest moments derive from the individual stories of those who sought to hold on to their farms and their traditional modes of living."—Arkansas Review |J. Blake Perkins, a native of the Arkansas Ozarks, is an assistant professor of history at Williams Baptist College.