Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

History

Committee Chair

Susan O'Donovan

Abstract

This project examines lumber and naval stores workers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. After the Civil War, lumbermen who had exhausted the timber supply in the North and Midwest looked to the South’s pine forests as the national demand for lumber and lumber products increased. The creation of the lumber and naval stores industries along the Gulf Coast pine belt, however, coincided with labor abuses, including the convict lease system and debt peonage. Moreover, company owners and management structured the industries in a way that perpetuated the abuse and exploitation of workers and suppressed labor organizing efforts by the Knights of Labor and the Brotherhood of Timber Workers. The focus of this dissertation is the barriers to labor organizing within the lumber and naval stores industries of the Gulf South. This work aims to expose the methods that lumber company owners and management employed to quell labor agitation among their predominantly black and white workforce. This project rejects the common notion that southern lumber and turpentine workers were docile and lacked class consciousness. Rather, lumber and turpentine workers in the pine forests of the Gulf South labored in an industry bolstered by monied management, forced labor, and race violence that ultimately stifled their attempts at labor organizing.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest.

Notes

Open Access

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