Ted Ownby

Ownby examines the changes in Mississippi consumer culture from the antebellum era to the 1990s by looking at how various social groups, namely wealthy white citizens, lower income white farmers, and African-Americans, negotiated their relationship with consumption and how those relationships were perceived both inside and outside these social groups. The meaning of products, money, shopping, credit, and stores to southerners elucidates certain historical moments and helps to explain and illustrate how these elements served to shape and redefine class and racial relationships. American Dreams in Mississippi shows that Mississippi, and by extension the South, did not necessarily lose its essential characteristics by “succumbing” to consumerism; instead, Ownby shows that consumerism has historically been an integral part of Southern identity.

While the meaning of consumer goods in Mississippi has changed through time, consumerism was essential in establishing racial, class, and regional identity. Wealthy white antebellum men sought to show their abundance by paternalistically providing for women and slaves, itinerant black musicians in the 1920s used goods to impress and attract the opposite sex, and civil rights era whites saw shopping as a way to assert segregationist ideals in the face of black boycotts—all of which are examples of the use of consumerism as a means to express social habits.

One common thread from the antebellum period to the present time is the belief that African-American consumers are frivolous and tasteless in their consumption of goods, thereby making them untrustworthy with abundance and requiring paternalistic white assistance in financial management. Citing city and store ledgers, census bureau statistics, tax records, diaries, letters, farm records, novels, blues songs, WPA oral histories, newspapers, state and county agricultural bulletins, legal records, and state laws, Ownby disproves this stereotype in each historical period, explaining that fiscal conservatism, fear of debt, financial caution, and smart consumerism have all along been a part of black consumption in the South.

Ownby illustrates that understanding consumerism in the South is essential to understanding culture in the South. All southerners were consumers in some capacity, shattering the idea that the South became less southern as consumerism took a more prominent role in social interactions. In fact, “questions about the meanings of consumer goods continue” as southerners use goods to redefine, and occasionally purchase, their identity.… (more)