''They Live on the Land: Life in an Open Country Southern Community'' is a social study of an Alabama rural community written by social scientists Paul W. Terry and Verner M. Sims and published in 1940. The book was based on research undertaken by Terry and Sims under the auspices of the

Tennessee Valley Authority The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolin ...

during the period 1934–1936. Terry and Sims were academic researchers in educational psychology based at the

University of Alabama The University of Alabama (informally known as Alabama, UA, or Bama) is a public research university in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Established in 1820 and opened to students in 1831, the University of Alabama is the oldest and largest of the publi ...

at the time.

Summary

The book covers the origins, civic and economic activities, health and welfare, and religious, recreational, and educational lives of the people of a rural Alabama community that the authors called "Upland Bend". "Upland Bend" was a pseudonym for the Alabama community of Gorgas in

Tuscaloosa County Tuscaloosa County is a county in the northwest-central portion of the U.S. state of Alabama and is the center of commerce, education, industry, health care, and entertainment for the region. The county's population was 227,036 as of the 2020 ...

. The book is based on interviews with 196 of the 209 families in Gorgas. The work highlighted racial discrimination in the community, as well as economic deprivation and social and political disaffection. The period in which the study took place overlapped with the Great Depression.

Reception

Contemporary reviews were generally positive. A review in '' The High School Journal'' described it as a "socially valuable document" and stated that "you can feel the pulse of their .e., the people of Gorgaslives after reading this report". A review in '' The Elementary School Journal'' described the book as "thorough and comprehensive throughout...no aspect of community life has been left neglected". Writing in '' The Ohio Valley Sociologist'', Lloyd Allen Cook gave the book a mixed review, praising the depth of detail of the book but criticizing it for lacking a sense of the "unity of place". Retrospective reviews of the book were also positive. Writing in 2004, Professor Wayne Flynt of Auburn University described the book as "a revealing snapshot of rural Alabama during the 1930s". A 1993 review of the Alabama Classics reprint of the book in ''

The Anniston Star ''The Anniston Star'' is the daily newspaper serving Anniston, Alabama, and the surrounding six-county region. Average Sunday circulation in September 2004 was 26,747. However, by 2020 it was approximately half of this. The newspaper is locally ow ...

'' described the book as "a valuable case study that will serve as a permanent record" and as a "well-researched work". Writing the foreword to the 1993 re-print, Clarence L. Mohr compared the book to the seminal depression-era sociological work ''

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men ''Let Us Now Praise Famous Men'' is a book with text by American writer James Agee and photographs by American photographer Walker Evans, first published in 1941 in the United States. The work documents the lives of impoverished tenant farmers ...

''.

References

{{reflist 1940 non-fiction books English-language books English non-fiction books Alabama culture Non-fiction books about the Great Depression New Deal in Alabama Books about social history Books of interviews