Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight: Race, Class, and Power in the Rural South during the First World War

by Jeanette Keith

During World War I, thousands of rural southern men, black and white, refused to serve in the military. Some failed to register for the draft, while others deserted after being inducted. In the countryside, armed bands of deserters defied local authorities; capturing them required the dispatch of federal troops into three southern states.

Jeanette Keith traces southern draft resistance to several sources, including whites' long-term political opposition to militarism, southern blacks' reluctance to serve a nation that refused to respect their rights, the peace witness of southern churches, and, above all, anger at class bias in federal conscription policies. Keith shows how draft dodgers' success in avoiding service resulted from the failure of southern states to create effective mechanisms for identifying and classifying individuals. Lacking local-level data on draft evaders, the federal government used agencies of surveillance both to find reluctant conscripts and to squelch antiwar dissent in rural areas.

Drawing upon rarely used local draft board reports, Selective Service archives, Bureau of Investigation reports, and southern political leaders' constituent files, Keith offers new insights into rural southern politics and society as well as the growing power of the nation-state in early twentieth-century America.

Genres: History, War, Politics

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Jeanette Keith grew up in rural Tennessee, obtained a PhD from Vanderbilt University, and is currently a history professor at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania. Her scholarly work has won awards from the Organization of American Historians and the Southern Association for Women Historians. Her most recent book, Fever Season, is written for a general audience, and reflects her interest in the impact of disease on human history.

Reviews

[Laura LeAnn · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent look at the political decisions made by the American government and how those decisions and laws were carried out by the local jurisdictions, especially the draft laws of World War I. The book focuses on the large gap between those that make the decisions and those that are forced to fulfill the laws. Using a wealth of historical resources, some used by historians previously and some not, Keith draws some very significant conclusions about this period of US history. Again, this was another of the books I relied upon heavily for my own research for my Master's thesis. My writing about a poor, white soldier from rural Mississippi was helped significantly through Keith's research and conclusions in this book.