From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938-1980.

Abstract

This is a study of the effect of federal economic policy on the American South from the time of the New Deal to the present. Decrying the South's economic backwardness and political conservatism, the Roosevelt administration launched a series of aggressive programmes to reorder the Southern economy. A generation of young liberal Southerners entered the national government to participate in these policies from the 1930s until the 1950s. Further chapters analyse the political implications for the South of this federal policy.