"A social scientist and public intellectual, Arthur Raper (1899-1979) advocated unpopular solutions to combat the shortcomings of race relations and economic stagnation in the South. Originally published in 1936, Preface to Peasantry confirmed Raper's place in the Chapel Hill Southern Regionalist movement of the 1930s and 1940s and elaborated his belief that New Deal federal planning could create progressive social policies.".

"The result of a seven-year investigation into social and economic stress in Georgia marked by African American emigration from the rural South to northern and New South cities, Raper's work focuses on the agricultural depression of Greene County, Georgia, bereft of farmable soil and with a rapidly declining black population, and the contrasting economic stability of Macon County, Georgia, where the land remained fertile and the population had not suffered significant upheaval.

Arguing that the plantation system had taught African Americans only dependence and irresponsibility, Raper warned that, without social programs that materially altered the South's racial and economic policies, the course of events in Greene County and similar communities would drive African American tenant farmers and sharecroppers into a permanently subjugated peasant class."--BOOK JACKET.