Growing out of the most radical fringes of the abolitionist movement, the Society for Universal Inquiry and Reform set out to inaugurate a new social order based on the principles of nonresistance. The Society founded eight utopian communities which, though short-lived, were the setting for the most radical questioning of antebellum American society. The members of the Society renounced all forms of coercive relationships. They attempted to live without government or private property and to model new visions of work, education, religion, economics, women's rights and roles, and community. This book tells the story of their impassioned attempt to transform the world and begin the "Government of God."

In 1864 Alida and Calvin Clark, two abolitionist members of the Religious Society of Friends from Indiana, went on a mission trip to Helena, Arkansas. The Clarks had come to render temporary relief to displaced war orphans but instead found a lifelong calling. During their time in Arkansas, they started the school that became Southland College, which was the first institution of higher education for blacks west of the Mississippi, and they set up the first predominately black monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in North America. Their progressive racial vision was continued by a succession of midwestern Quakers willing to endure the primitive conditions and social isolation of their work and to overcome the persistent challenges of economic adversity, social strife, and natural disaster. Southland’s survival through six difficult and sometimes dangerous decades reflects both the continuing missionary zeal of the Clarks and their successors as well as the dedication of the black Arkansans who sought dignity and hope at a time when these were rare commodities for African Americans in Arkansas.