Shantyboats and Roustabouts - by Gregg Andrews (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Shantyboat dwellers and steamboat roustabouts formed an organic part of the cultural landscape of the Mississippi River bottoms during the rise of industrial America and the twilight of steamboat packets from 1875 to 1930. Nevertheless, both groups remain understudied by scholars of the era. Most of what we know about these laborers on the river comes not from the work of historians but from travel accounts, novelists, songwriters, and early film producers. As a result, images of these men and women are laden with nostalgia and minstrelsy. Gregg Andrews's Shantyboats and Roustabouts uses the waterfront squatter settlements and Black entertainment district near the levee in St. Louis as a window into the world of the river poor in the Mississippi Valley, exploring their daily struggles and experiences and vividly describing people heretofore obscured by classist and racist caricatures"--

Book Synopsis

Winner of the James V. Swift Medal for Excellence in Maritime Literature
Winner of the Missouri History Book Award
Winner of the John Lyman Book Award
Winner of the Hamlin Garland Prize in Popular History

Shantyboat dwellers and steamboat roustabouts formed an organic part of the cultural landscape of the Mississippi River bottoms during the rise of industrial America and the twilight of steamboat packets from 1875 to 1930. Nevertheless, both groups remain understudied by scholars of the era. Most of what we know about these laborers on the river comes not from the work of historians but from travel accounts, novelists, songwriters, and early film producers. As a result, images of these men and women are laden with nostalgia and minstrelsy. Gregg Andrews's Shantyboats and Roustabouts uses the waterfront squatter settlements and Black entertainment district near the levee in St. Louis as a window into the world of the river poor in the Mississippi Valley, exploring their daily struggles and experiences and vividly describing people heretofore obscured by classist and racist caricatures.

Review Quotes

"Gregg Andrews has written 'a 'history from the river bottom up' of the people who lived and worked on the Mississippi River. . . . At times these stories read as a flood of information, but the core chapters could be assigned for teaching students about life on the Mississippi River. Vivid images tell their own compelling story alongside the text. Andrews also includes a comprehensive bibliography that would be useful for anyone interested in the history of rivers in the South. . . . Andrews's book serves as a useful antidote for anyone interested in understanding the history of life and death on the Mississippi River."--Journal of Southern History

". . . a fascinating study of life, labor, and culture on the river in St. Louis. Andrews reveals that the river poor were not simply marginal--they nurtured and clung to a vibrant, defiant culture increasingly at odds with American society. Written in an accessible, almost rollicking style that matches its free-wheeling subjects, this book opens vistas on urbanization, poverty, race, and music. It will especially interest labor historians for its work on roustabouts--the longshoremen of the river. It could also be a centerpiece in interdisciplinary undergraduate classes dealing with regional music and literature."--CHOICE

"Andrews continues his remarkable stream of intimate writings about poor and working-class people. His empathetic, colorful, and masterful account opens a new genre of 'history from the river bottoms up.'"--Michael K. Honey, author of To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice

"Andrews knows and understands the hard-working people of the Mississippi River bottoms. Shantyboats and Roustabouts, with admirable research and lucid prose, affirms their place in America's urban waterfront landscape."--Bonnie Stepenoff, author of Working the Mississippi: Two Centuries of Life on the River

"Andrews sensitively tells of the toil, racism, pain, joy, music, and preaching on the river. The reader benefits from a seamless narrative filled with unforgettable people. The river poor will enter your soul and you will not be able to lose them."--Noralee Frankel, author of Freedom's Women: Black Women and Families in Civil War Era Mississippi

"In Shantyboats and Roustabouts, Gregg Andrews reveals what Hank Williams called 'a picture from life's other side.' The human stories he brings to light from the silty banks of the Mississippi are both heartbreaking and heroic, salvaged from the American nexus of poverty and freedom."--T. R. C. Hutton, author of Bloody Breathitt: Politics and Violence in the Appalachian South

About the Author

Gregg Andrews is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Texas State University and the author of several books, including Thyra J. Edwards: Black Activist in the Global Freedom Struggle.