Dr. John Cable has recently published his first book, “Southern Enclosure: Settler Colonialism and the Postwar Transformation of Mississippi,” with the University Press of Kansas.
The book focuses on the Southern Enclosure Movement, in which many small-scale southern farmers were displaced and had less access to larger land areas for grazing.
“I look at the mid-20th century in the South and how a lot of farmers disappeared from the land,” Cable said. “Especially farmers that were more vulnerable—non-land-owning farmers… people like sharecroppers and tenants, and I look at why they disappeared.”
Cable had a one-of-a-kind focus for the book by looking at the Southern Enclosure Movement through the lens of Southern colonialism.
“Where you have Indian removal or the dispossession of Indigenous peoples, the failure to afford ex-slaves a piece of the land after the Civil War… in the long span of Southern history, through the lens of southern colonialism which focuses on land, it isn’t unusual for people to get scooped off the land and deposited somewhere else,” Cable said.
The book examines Mississippi, the home of the Choctaw Indians, and the history surrounding dispossession. Cable’s research was conducted by traveling to the reservation and other locations and seeing things for himself.
Cable conducted off-the-book interviews with accounting agents and older farmers to get background information.
Although published recently, Cable’s book has been in the works for years. He received a fellowship from Florida State University in the fall of 2019 to complete his dissertation.
Analyzed through the lens of settler colonialism and transnationalism, his dissertation centered around the American South and Mississippi in the mid-20th century. He defended the dissertation before the COVID-19 pandemic in the fall of 2020.
An obstacle Cable and many other scholars face is the process of having others read your work prior to publishing.
“I learned a lot, and I think I became a better writer through that process,” Cable said, “I learned how to take feedback constructively.”
The author already has an idea of how he wants his next research endeavor to look.
“I would like to have the next project be something that’s a little more rooted in hope and something a little more [bright]…more optimistic,” Cable said.
For those interested in learning more about Cable and his book, the author will give a lecture titled “Throwing People Away: The Enclosure Movement in Mississippi” as a part of the Jess Usher Lecture Series on Feb. 27 in Howard Auditorium.
A hard copy of “Southern Enclosure: Settler Colonialism and the Postwar Transformation of Mississippi” can be purchased through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, and several other manufacturers.