Places Greenville's experience during World War I within the context of the progressive era to better understand the rise of this New South city Greenville, South Carolina has become an attractive destination, frequently included in lists of the "Best Small Cities" in America. While Greenville's twenty-first-century Renaissance has been impressive, in "Our Country First, Then Greenville," Courtney L. Tollison Hartness explores an earlier period, revealing how Greenville's experience during World War I served to generate massive development in the city and the region. It was this moment that catalyzed Greenville's development into a modern city, setting the stage for the continued growth that persists into the present-day. "Our Country First, Then Greenville" explores Greenville's home-front experience of race relations, dramatic population growth (the number of Greenville residents nearly tripled between 1900 and 1930s), the women's suffrage movement, and the contributions of African Americans and women to Greenville's history. This important work features photos of Greenville, found in archival collections throughout the country and dating back over one hundred years.

The history of South Carolina's thriving upstate Since the Cherokee Nation hunted the verdant hills in what is now known as Greenville County, South Carolina, the search for economic prosperity has defined the history of this thriving Upstate region and its expanding urban center. In a sweeping chronicle of the city and county, A. V. Huff traces Greenville's business tradition as well as its political, religious, and cultural evolution. Huff describes the area's Revolutionary War skirmishes, early settlement, and mix of diversified agriculture, small manufacturing operations, and summer resorts. Calling Greenville atypical of much of the antebellum South, the author tells of the strong Unionist sentiment, relative unimportance of slavery, and lack of staple agriculture in the region. He recounts Greenville's years of Reconstruction, textile leadership, depression, and postwar industrial diversification. In addition fo tracing Greenville's economic growth, Huff identifies the region's other hallmarks, including the fierce independence of its residents. He assesses Greenville's peaceful end to segregation, strong evangelical Protestant tradition, conservative arts programs, and influential role in South Carolina politics.

This history of the origin, evolution, and demise of the Greenville Women's College (1854-1961), a small, underfunded Baptist institution in upstate South Carolina, traces its beginnings from a female academy through its organization by the South Carolina Baptist Convention, its struggle for survival and improvement during the years after the Civil War, to its rising aspirations and drive for accreditation in the 1920s. Unendowed and unable to withstand the financial turmoil of the Great Depression, it was forced to merge with nearby Furman University in the 1930s, but it endured as a coordinate college until 1961 when its students joined the men at Furman at a new coeducational campus. This book, the first history of the college, provides the missing half of Furman University's history. A social and institutional history, it focuses on Southern women's changing collegiate experience and the college's relationship to the South Carolina Baptist Convention. It emphasizes the changing nature of student life, examines the role of South Carolina Baptists in the college, and examines the impact of the accreditation movement.

Habits of Industry provides a richly descriptive social, historical, and cultural account of the Carolina Piedmont -- the area between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Coastal Plain -- over the course of 150 years. By examining the social and religious culture of the region, Allen Tullos illuminates the lives of the working men and women whose "habits of industry" shaped their world. Tullos combines archival research with an extensive collection of oral histories to shed new light on the essentially all-white textile industry in the era before World War II. He examines such topics as workers' transition from an agrarian folk culture to an industrial working class, the changing patterns of employers' paternalistic relations, and the contrasting and complimentary meanings of "industry." Using biographies and autobiographies of both mill owners and mill workers, Tullos juxtaposes the entrepreneurial narratives of the Belks, Hammetts, Tompkinses, Dukes, and Loves with the equally remarkable stories of such workers as Ethel Hillard, Alice and Grover Hardin, and Nigel League.