Southern Enclosure: Settler Colonialism and the Postwar Transformation of Mississippi

Studies of the US South often focus on the treatment of African Americans under the slavery and Jim Crow systems, which were designed to exploit and control them as agricultural workers on land owned by white Southerners. Scholars have noted how agricultural modernization after World War II dramatically altered the relationships between white and Black people in the region and sparked renewed struggles over land, labor, and political power. Missing from most of these accounts are the Indigenous people who originally occupied the region before European colonization and persisted in making claims to the land throughout its history, including during the civil rights era of the mid-twentieth century. John H. Cable's book corrects this oversight and offers a fresh perspective on Southern agricultural history, blending attention to local and global developments to frame these developments in the context of settler colonialism.The book's geographical focus is on nine counties in east-central Mississippi (Attala, Kemper, Lauderdale, Leake, Neshoba, Newton, Noxubee, Scott, and Winston) where, in the twentieth century, some members of the Choctaw Nation remained despite efforts to remove them. Cable argues that, seen from their perspective, the postwar displacement of sharecroppers, tenants, and small farmers from the land was just the latest chapter in a long history of dispossession.European settler colonialists built their plantation empires on land stolen from the original inhabitants through violence and broken treaties. Most Choctaws were forced out of Mississippi under the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1830, but a small number opted to stay and be governed by the state. Although article 14 of the treaty set aside land for those who remained, mismanagement of the allotment system and violent attacks by white settlers pushed many of them into working on land owned by white people, sometimes under conditions that resembled slavery. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, Choctaw, African American, and poor white farmers suffered similar fates once political leaders enacted legislation designed to maintain the region's cheap labor force and enrich its planter class. This system was in turn disrupted by federal agricultural policies that encouraged a shift from labor-intensive to capital-intensive farming between the 1930s and 1950s. Officials in the United States Department of Agriculture viewed mechanization and the consolidation of land ownership into large enterprises as the way of the future, leaving no place for sharecroppers or small farmers. Government agencies such as the Extension Service and the Farmers Home Administration denied loans and technical assistance to Choctaw farmers, instead urging them to give up their land, move to urban areas, and assimilate into “mainstream” American culture.Cable views land theft, labor exploitation, and assimilation efforts as interlocking parts of the same process rather than discrete forms of oppression that can be analyzed separately from one another. Throughout the book, Cable compares settler colonialism in the United States with the forms it took in African nations such as Kenya, Rhodesia, and South Africa, noting similarities with the white supremacist regimes and extreme subjugation of Indigenous populations that took hold in those places. This framing logically leads to analyzing Choctaw and African American struggles for justice in Mississippi as decolonizing projects, though Cable notes that the two groups had different priorities. Whereas Black civil rights activists typically focused on restoring their political and legal rights, the central issue motivating Choctaw people was reclaiming their stolen lands. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians gained federal recognition and its tribal council petitioned the Indian Claims Commission for financial compensation, but the government opposed the claim and it was ultimately not successful. Mississippi's centuries-long history of settler colonialism generated fabulous wealth for a small elite but left the majority of its people poor and dependent, placing limits on what social justice activists could achieve in the 1960s and beyond.Cable's arguments are supported with evidence drawn from appropriate sources, including the records of federal agencies and white supremacist organizations, constituent files of political leaders, the minutes of tribal council meetings, and oral histories. The book is well organized and accessibly written, making it valuable for classroom use in courses on Southern and Native American history. Students and scholars alike will find much to value in Cable's analytical perspective and conclusions.