Description
Book SynopsisDocuments an alternative tradition of American protest by linking working-class political movements to grassroots religious revivals. This book reveals how ordinary rural citizens in the south used the resources and their shared faith to defend their agrarian livelihoods amid the political and economic upheaval of the first half of 20th century.
Trade ReviewAwarded the Missouri History Book Award, presented by the State Historical Society of Missouri, 2011. Received the Working Class Studies Association's C.L.R. James Award, 2011. Winner of the Herbert G. Gutman Prize from the Labor and Working-Class History Association.
"Spirit of Rebellion offers a compelling interpretation to explain sharecroppers' bold protests in the late 1930s and early 1940s. . . . [A] meticulously researched book."--Arkansas Historical Quarterly
"Roll illuminates the socialist traditions of the region as well as the impact of Pentecostal religious movements of the farmers' worldview. Recommended."--
Choice"An important contribution to religious studies. . . . Roll has uncovered a story worth telling."--
The Journal of Southern Religion "Roll's work is highly ambitious. . . . This is a skillful book."--
The Journal of American History
"Roll successfully convinces that understanding agrarian protests in the Missouri Bootheel, and the rural South more broadly, is essential to comprehending twentieth-century American protest traditions."--
Arkansas Review"An important book. . . . The willingness of sharecroppers and tenants in the 1930s to confront a powerful elite in order to remain on the land suggests an intense commitment to an agricultural way of life, despite the odds against securing landownership. Roll has given us a way to understand the ideology behind their struggle.-- Labor: Studies in Working-Class History
"Roll successfully knits together labor and religious history to create a compelling account of labor organizing. His is a story little heard: black and whites joining forces and overcoming their differences by dint of shared struggle and faith."--
Register of the Kentucky Historical Society"A terrific book. Roll's emphasis on agrarian protest as a labor struggle is refreshing and informative, and his reading of the religious terrain of this important social movement is pathbreaking. The engaging topic and intriguing characters make
Spirit of Rebellion a must read for historians of labor, civil rights, social change, and rural societies."--Ken Fones-Wolf, author of
Glass Towns: Industry, Labor, and Political Economy in Appalachia, 1890-1930s"Roll rightly insists that work, labor, economy, and community are and have been deeply religious issues. His interesting, strong book sets up future historians of religion and labor to explore more fully the
work of religious practice in producing, maintaining, and transforming such beliefs in their relationship to emerging material conditions."--
The Journal of Southern History
