[Editor’s Note:  The following guest post comes to us from Mary Frederickson, who is Visiting Professor at Emory University and Professor of History Emeritus at Miami University of Ohio, where she a faculty member from 1988-2015. She is the author, most recently, of Looking South: Race, Gender, and the Transformation of Labor (University of Florida Press, 2011). This is the third in a series of four guest posts, curated by Sarah Gardner, collectively entitled “Michael O’Brien, Intellectual History, and the History of the American South,” which will be appearing each Friday through the end of March. You can read more Read more