Coal, Class, and Color Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915-32

From the rear cover of this 290 page book: "How were southern blacks transformed from rural agricultural workers into members of the industrial working class? Joe Williams Trotter, Jr., examines the unique experiences of black coal miners in southern West Virginia between World War I and the Great Depression, showing how the subtle interplay of race, class, and region altered black people's personal and collective existence. Proletarianization, according to Trotter, is the key to crystallization of black life in cornfields. The process involved not only the impact of white capital, labor, and the state, but also important changes in the material conditions of Afro-American life, the activities of black culture, consciousness, and community. This new industrial experience was reflected in the rise of the black middle class, the expansion of black institutions, the proliferation of Republican clubs, and the rise of new political initiatives like the Garvey movement and the rapidly growin