Greenbackers, Knights of Labor, and Populists: Farmer-Labor Insurgency in the Late-Nineteenth-Century South. By Matthew Hild. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007. xvi, 327 pp. $42.95, ISBN 978-0-8203-2897-3.)

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Matthew Hild's excellent book on the farmer-labor insurgency in the late nineteenth-century American South convincingly argues that southern Populism was more than just a movement of farmers; it was a farmer-labor movement. Hild expertly weaves together examples of labor and farmer insurgencies across the South from 1872 to 1896, to support his contention for continuity in the farmer-labor revolt. Although Hild analyzes the entire South, his central focus is on Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas. Those states exhibited organized labor's strength, particularly the Knights of Labor and the Greenback Labor Party, and also farming organizations such as the Grange, Agricultural Wheel, and Farmers' Alliance.

Through extensive use of secondary sources and primary documents, particularly journals and newspapers, Hild delineates local, state, and national organizing. In perhaps what is Hild's most innovative argument, he makes it clear that laborers and farmers often worked together to bring about social and political change in the South. For example, the Knights of Labor and the Farmers' Alliance worked together in the Southwest Strike of 1885 and used that collaboration as a springboard for political activism in Texas. Hild highlights how worried Democrats used legal and illegal methods, including killing opponents, to stifle and ultimately end dissent.