Historical Myth In The Region Of The Delta

A historical myth, as described in class, is the story, that creates a narrative to make a group identity or to mark a geographic location. With this definition in mind, it is easy to place the region of Appalachia in a category as one with multiple historical myths surrounding its politics, technology, economic systems, population, and much more. After learning some of the rich history of the region, it is apparent some of the myths have failed to capture how the region and its complex history and has changed over time. One of the five most recognized myths, which fails to capture the complexity of Appalachian history as discussed in class is “Appalachia is all white and the whitest place in the Unites States.” This myth has failed to capture

As defined in class a social inflection point is an event that disrupts or otherwise causes significant changes to a society’s rules or social structures. Through out the region’s history, there have been three major social inflection points to take place up to the 1950’s. As a result of these three events and disruptions going on in the Delta during this time period before, during, and after the Civil War, there was a lot of change taking place in the region for people of color and the wealthy whites. One way the Delta region has changed since frontier years to the 1950’s is how goods were being produced. Pre Civil War, through out the Civil War, and all the way up until the new deal, industry of agriculture production relied heavily on manual labor production, but that quickly changed to capitol intensive production. The social inflection point responsible for this in how things were produced was The New Deal. Before The New Deal agricultural production was carried out by tenant farmers and sharecroppers who were owned by the wealthy white planters but due to The New Deal opening up the door for the mechanization of agriculture, it eventually led to the capitol intensive production with increased use of machinery and newly concocted pesticides. Another big change in the region of the Delta during this time period was their economy. In 1861 the Delta was one of the wealthiest regions in the world but soon after the war ended in 1865 disaster struck and it disrupted the economic structure. The social inflection point which caused such an uproar in the wealthy Delta region economy was The Great Flood in 1927. This affected the economy so drastically, largely because the majority of the economy during this time was based on