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As the 20th century began, swamps with immense timber resources covered much of the Missouri Bootheel. After investors harvested the timber, the landscape became overgrown. The conversion of swampland to farmland began with small drainage projects but complete reclamation was made possible by a system of ditches dug by the Little River Drainage District--the largest in the U.S., excavating more earth than for the Panama Canal. Farming quickly took over. The devastation of Southern cotton fields by boll weevils in the early 1920s brought to the cooler Bootheel an influx of black and white sharecroppers and cotton became the principal crop. Conflict over New Deal subsidies to increase cotton prices by reducing production led to the 1939 Sharecropper Demonstration, foreshadowing civil rights protests three decades later.

Introduction to the culture, history, and folklife of the Atchafalaya with 150 new images.

Transcribed oral tales that display the lively art of storytelling in the Bayou State

The untold story of three New Deal cooperative farms in the most economically challenged places in the South

Based on his over forty years of research and teaching, John C. Wyngaard's textbook is an excellent up-to-date introduction to turbulence in the atmosphere and in engineering flows for advanced students, and a reference work for researchers in the atmospheric sciences. Part I introduces the concepts and equations of turbulence. It includes a rigorous introduction to the principal types of numerical modeling of turbulent flows. Part II describes turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer. Part III covers the foundations of the statistical representation of turbulence and includes illustrative examples of stochastic problems that can be solved analytically. The book treats atmospheric and engineering turbulence in a unified way, gives clear explanation of the fundamental concepts of modeling turbulence, and has an up-to-date treatment of turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer. Student exercises are included at the ends of chapters, and worked solutions are available online for use by course instructors.

"This is the story of the end of the Wells Fargo & Company Express and its two main [St. Louis] competitors ... And so I will attempt to set down a record of all I saw at the passing of the great Wells Fargo Company in the years 1918 and part of 1919, and I base the authenticity of this account on my connection with the company"--Page 9.

This study explores elements of expressive culture related to French (Creole) identity in the Mid-Mississippi Valley. Political, economic, and social stress has characterized the French struggle to maintain group identity since that group first settled in Le Pays des Illinois, beginning around the turn of the eighteenth century. Negative historical rhetoric and unkind stereotypes have not encouraged the construction of a healthy group identity among the French. During the twentieth century, mandatory English-only education, decline of traditional economies, and outmigration of unemployed workers from traditional French neighborhoods to urban and suburban contexts accelerated the move of ethnic Creoles into mainstream America. Cultural forms dependent upon French oral transmission have eroded and everyday use of the local Creole language is nearly obsolete. Nevertheless, French identity is still expressed in the Mid-Mississippi Valley today. This identity resides in the experiences of individuals who partake of it, and is shared through enactments of expressive culture. The role of individuals in the maintenance of group identity is paramount. Persistence of cultural heritage relies upon exemplary expressions of cultural identity enacted by individual artists, or leaders, and upon the acceptance of these expressions as symbolically significant by group members. Many salient expressions of group identity are older elements of culture passed down through many generations. However, traditional forms change over time, variations occur from place to place, and new traditions continue to emerge. This dynamic ethnogenic process is shaped by individuals consciously acting in ways which help secure their group's survival. This study consists of a collection of essays which explore traditional and emerging expressions of local French identity. Folkloric, ethnographic, and historic data are interwoven in an attempt to understand the persistence of French identity. Topics of investigation include features of material culture related to folk architecture and food customs; enduring associations between Catholic faith, family, and Frenchness; French storytelling as an important expression of identity; and La Guillonnée, the ancient French New Year's Eve custom which, though currently performed by monolingual English speakers, continues to support local French identity.