The Most They Ever Had

I don't know what someone who is not from the South will think of this book. I am from there, from the places Rick Bragg writes about. I am from those people. I come from the red clay and the black dirt. This story of the mill people resonates in my bones, in my genes. It hums and throbs like those......more

Bragg writes about Appalachian poverty so well that you can hear the southern drawl, see the rough, calloused hands, watch as the moonshine slides down the throat, observe the bare light bulb hanging by a thin cord from the ceiling of the tiny mill owned shacks that teeter on their foundations. Mainl......more

Continuing with my exploration of Alabama humorist/storyteller Rick Bragg, I considered his reflection of a mill village in Calhoun County, The Most they Ever Had. For nearly a century, the textile mill provided for the economic health of its people, even as it destroyed their physical health. It wa......more

This is the story of the cotton mill in the south during the early 1900s. America has been carried on the backs of many who paved the way for our nation today. Rather our forefathers, the pioneers who busted the land, the soldiers who fought for our freedom - or the American factory workers that bui......more