Mercer University Press Search Results

This study of church discipline cases describes a system of subjection with obligations for all--men, women, parents, children, masters, and servants. Although many historians have mistaken this for "oppression," most Southerners accepted the idea of "subjection," regarding it as a divinely ordained system for their mutual governance and benefit. Complete with a map and statistical tables, this book argues that church discipline bound everyone together in mutual subjection to a shared code of conduct rather than empowering white men exclusively with a position of authority over others.

For more than seventy years, beginning in 1939, when he penned his first play, Wharton Dance, Horton Foote was regarded as one of America’s most revered dramatists. With his probing and perceptive dramas, he succeeded in charting the landscape of small-town America while creating classics of modern theatre and film that have found devoted audiences around the world. Foote wrote more than a hundred plays and screenplays for cinema, theatre, and television, and was equally successful in all three mediums--a record of variety and productivity unmatched by any other writer. With a foreword by Hallie Foote, this biography is the most thorough and comprehensive to date of American dramatist Horton Foote. Drawing on the author's complete access to Foote's personal papers and extended conversations with the writer, his family, and his friends, Marion Castleberry discusses all the important aspects of Horton Foote's life and career--his Wharton, Texas childhood, his devotion to family, his deep Christian faith, his abiding passion for the theatre, and his successes as a screenwriter and independent filmmaker.

Sam Williams is one of the nation's leading experts in urban competitiveness. Over seventeen years at the helm of a top chamber of commerce and twenty-two years as a partner in a global architect-development company, Williams earned a national reputation for harnessing the power of CEOs to make cities thrive. With their long-term view and the ability to garner support from many sectors, CEOs can often successfully address urban challenges too big for political and bureaucratic leaders to solve alone. In The CEO as Urban Statesman, Williams uses case studies to argue that business leaders can and should contribute to their communities by using their business skills to solve public policy problems--and he tells them how to do it. These projects are all different, but they share common themes. Williams explores each case in detail, distilling best practices as well as cautionary tales for business leaders who want to help their cities thrive.

This book begins with an introductory overview of the socio-political climate of the state of Mississippi during the 1850s and ends with a treatment of its post-war environment. In between, the work covers the pivotal events, issues, and personalities of the period. Wynne emphasizes the experiences of Mississippians--male and female, black and white--as they struggled to deal with the crisis. The political events leading to secession, Mississippians' initial enthusiasm for war, voices of dissent, the disbursement of troops in and out of the state, the home front, freedom for the slave community, waning enthusiasm (both in the military and on the home front) as the war dragged on, defeat, and the ultimate struggle to turn defeat into a moral victory through Lost Cause mythology are also discussed.

Published jointly with the Historic Chattahoochee Commission. Triumph of the Eccunna Nuxulgee is the first book to chronicle the tragic saga of Indian Removal with a specific focus on the Chattahoochee Valley of Georgia and Alabama. With candor and objectivity, William W. Winn chronicles the duplicity, political maneuvering, and military force through which the native Creeks ultimately lost their lands, illuminating latent issues of morality, sovereignty, cultural identity, and national destiny the affair brought to the surface. 

This unique book, originally published in a limited edition in 1982 and out of print for many years, is the most comprehensive collection of Civil War letters written by residents of Southeastern Alabama and Southwestern Georgia to be published. Poignant in emotion, informative in detail, and broad in scope, the correspondence contained here provides us with a unique opportunity to understand the Civil War and its effect on individuals and families from an intensely personal perspective. The writers, the great majority of them unlettered and expressing themselves in a disarmingly honest manner in their heartfelt missives, collectively paint a compelling portrait of a watershed moment in national history from a regional viewpoint. They make well-known events tangible and lesser-known sidebars illuminating.

To the Gates of Atlanta covers the period from the Confederate victory at Kennesaw Mountain, 27 June 1864, leading up to the Battle of Peach Tree Creek, 20 July 1864, and the first of four major battles for Atlanta that culminated in the Battle of Jonesboro, 31 August and 1 September 1864.

In the Beginning highlights the history of the world’s largest religious memorial to the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Inspired essays on education, social justice, nonviolence, peace, ecumenism, and civil and human rights are offered in honor of Lawrence Edward Carter, Sr., founding dean of the Martin Luther King, Jr. International Chapel.

This book is a lasting tribute and valuable contribution to the history and educational mission of Morehouse College.

Contributors include Lewis V. Baldwin, Thomas O. Buford, Delman L. Coates, Jason R. Curry, Norm Faramelli, Peter Goodwin Heltzel, Barbara Lewis King, Douglas E. Krantz, Bill J. Leonard, Otis A. Maxfield, Echol Nix, Jr., Harold Oliver, Peter Paris, Samuel K. Roberts, Prince El Hassan bin Talal, Harold Dean Trulear, Edward P. Wimberly, Vincent L. Wimbush, and Virgil Wood.

Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas was an intelligent, spirited woman born in 1834 to one of the wealthiest families in Georgia. At the age of fourteen she began and kept a diary for forty-one years, documenting her life before, during, and after the Civil War. In 1851 she graduated from Wesleyan Female College in Macon, Georgia. Her life is an amazing story of survival and transformation that speaks to women in our own time.

When it opened in October 1864, Camp Lawton was called “the world’s largest prison.” Operational only six weeks, this stockade near Millen, Georgia, was evacuated in the face of advancing Federal troops under General Sherman. In that brief span of time, the prison served as headquarters for the Confederate military prison system, witnessed hundreds of deaths, held a mock election for president, was involved in a sick exchange, hosted attempts to recruit Union POWs for Confederate service, and experienced escape attempts.

This narrative provides a comprehensive history of America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The book concludes that race, the Civil Rights movements, and black and white philanthropy had much affect on the development of these minority institutions. Northern white philanthropy had much to do with the start and maintenance of the nation’s HBCUs from 1837 into the 1940s. Even from 1950 to 1970, HBCUs depended upon financial support of philanthropic groups, benevolent societies, and federal and state government agencies, but the survival of HBCUs became dependent mostly on their own creative responses to the changing environment of higher education and have helped to shape our culture and society.

 

Houston Hartsfield Holloway (1844–1917) was born enslaved in upcountry Georgia, taught himself to read and write, learned the blacksmith trade, was emancipated by Union victory in 1865, and served as an ordained traveling preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church from 1870 to 1883. He devoted the remainder of his life to his family, his blacksmith trade, and his local church. Holloway’s 24,000-word autobiography offers a rare working-class perspective on life during some of the most transformative years of US history. Footnotes provide supplementary biographical information for nearly two hundred relatives, neighbors, friends, and coworkers named in Holloway’s narrative. An appendix includes nineteen extended biographical sketches. The book is illustrated with photographs and three detailed maps of Holloway’s home neighborhoods and preaching assignments.