Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class

by Allison Davis, Burleigh B. Gardner, Mary R. Gardner, Isabel Wilkerson (Foreword by)

Overview

A classic examination of the lived realities of American racism, now with a new foreword from Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson.
 
First published in 1941, Deep South is a landmark work of anthropology, documenting in startling and nuanced detail the everyday realities of American racism. Living undercover in Depression-era Mississippi—not revealing their scholarly project or even their association with one another—groundbreaking Black scholar Allison Davis and his White co-authors, Burleigh and Mary Gardner, delivered an unprecedented examination of how race shaped nearly every aspect of twentieth-century life in the United States. Their analysis notably revealed the importance of caste and class to Black and White worldviews, and they anatomized the many ways those views are constructed, solidified, and reinforced.
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This reissue of the 1965 abridged edition, with a new foreword from Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson—who acknowledges the book’s profound importance to her own work—proves that Deep South remains as relevant as ever, a crucial work on the concept of caste and how it continues to inform the myriad varieties of American inequality.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226817989
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	08/03/2022
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	328
Sales rank:	20,259
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Allison Davis (1902-1983) was a pioneering anthropologist and longtime professor at the University of Chicago, where, in 1942, he became the first Black American to hold a full faculty position at a major white university.


Burleigh B. Gardner (1902-1988) was a Harvard-trained social scientist.


Mary R. Gardner (1909-1983) was a Harvard-trained social scientist.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

List of Tables xi

Foreword Isabel Wilkerson xiii

Preface xxv

Part I

1 Introduction: Deep South-A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class W. Lloyd Warner 3

2 The System of Color-Castes 12

3 The Class System of the White Caste 46

4 The White Upper-Class Family 65

5 The White Middle-Class Family 75

6 The White Lower-Class Family 84

7 Social Cliques in the White Society 99

8 Social Mobility within the White Caste 124

9 The Class System of the Colored Caste 151

Part II

10 Intimidation of Labor 171

11 The Plantation in Its Social Setting 178

12 Relation between the Caste System and the Economic System 195

13 Caste, Class, and Local Government: White Power 217

14 Retrospect, 1965: Power and Caste 259

Afterword, 1986 Burleigh B. Gardner 271

Index 279

Editorial Reviews

"Deep South still has important things for race and racism in the United States—for those who are willing to listen."

Southeastern Librarian