About the Author

Shelley Sallee teaches history and serves as department chair at St. Stephen's Episcopal School in Austin, Texas.

Reviews

A thorough and unflinching account of how Progressive child labor reformers, including giants like Jane Addams and Florence Kelley, took the low road and became accomplices of southern white supremacy. . . . Offers valuable lessons for the present.--Noel Ignatiev "author of How the Irish Became White"

The first historical treatment of child labor reform efforts in the American South. Shelley Sallee's book is an important contribution that highlights women reformers' relationship to evolving definitions of 'whiteness' during the Progressive Era.--Kriste Lindenmeyer "author of A Right to Childhood: The U.S. Children's Bureau and Child Welfare, 1912-46"

A welcome addition to the scholarship of public welfare, Progressivism, labor, and women reformers in the South . . . The arguments made in the book are provocative and have wide-ranging implications that show the way to some new areas of scholarship.--Florida Historical Quarterly

Sallee presents a compelling account of child labor reform in Alabama during the Progressive Era. 'Whiteness' drives the book.--Journal of American History

Sallee's book is a worthy work that fills an important gap in the intellectual and social history of Alabama.--Alabama Review

Sallee's book is as much cultural as social and labor history. The New South portrayed is a kaleidoscopic bricolage, a dangerous assemblage of mutual impossibilities. The Whiteness of Child Labor Reform in the New South offers both a thorough interpretation of the child reform movement and an energetic and original picture of the New South. Solidly researched, clearly presented, nicely paced, this is an important contribution to southern history.--North Carolina Historical Review

Shelly Sallee has made an important contribution to the now flourishing scholarship concerned with the lives of southern textile workers. Her book is particularly significant in putting race squarely into the story of a southern industry in which almost all of the workers were white.--Journal of Southern History

This book makes an intriguing and potentially important argument . . . Throughout the seven short chapters of this well-organized book, Sallee presents her findings and analysis in clear and concise prose, drawing upon a respectable array of primary and secondary sources to make her case.--Journal of Interdisciplinary History