"Hiram F. Hover's Attempts to Perfect the New South, 1885-1889"

This paper builds on research originally published as "The 'Hoover Scare' in South Carolina, 1887: An Attempt to Organize Black Farm Labor" Labor History, 40:3 (August 1999): 261-82. Shortly after that article was published, Mr. John Seawright, of Athens, Georgia, sent me newspaper clippings documenting Hover's visit to Atlanta in 1889. These led me to discover further primary sources, most importantly the indictments mentioned below (pp.16ff). I presented a much shorter version of this paper at the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association in Atlanta, Georgia, on 4 October 2005. A somewhat longer version will be published under the title “'The First Anarchist That Ever Came to Atlanta’: Hiram F. Hover from New York to the New South” in Rachel Rubin, Christopher Green, and James Smethurst, eds., Radicalism in the South Since Reconstruction (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, forthcoming 2006/2007)