Shantyboats and Roustabouts

The River Poor of St. Louis, 1875–1930

Gregg Andrews

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2022
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780807179062
• Subtopic: African American History
• Index: History

Winner of the James V. Swift Medal for Excellence in Maritime Literature
Winner of the Missouri History Book Award
Winner of the John Lyman Book Award
Winner of the Hamlin Garland Prize in Popular History

Shantyboat dwellers and steamboat roustabouts formed an organic part of the cultural landscape of the Mississippi River bottoms during the rise of industrial America and the twilight of steamboat packets from 1875 to 1930. Nevertheless, both groups remain understudied by scholars of the era. Most of what we know about these laborers on the river comes not from the work of historians but from travel accounts, novelists, songwriters, and early film producers. As a result, images of these men and women are laden with nostalgia and minstrelsy. Gregg Andrews's Shantyboats and Roustabouts uses the waterfront squatter settlements and Black entertainment district near the levee in St. Louis as a window into the world of the river poor in the Mississippi Valley, exploring their daily struggles and experiences and vividly describing people heretofore obscured by classist and racist caricatures.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• PREFACE
• Introduction: A PECULIAR PHASE OF AMERICAN CHARACTER
• 1 A Tranquil and Unhurried Life: THE RIVER PEOPLE
• 2 Wealth Is Not His God: ORIGINS OF ST. LOUIS’S WHARF SETTLEMENTS
• 3 The Roughest Life There Is: ROUSTABOUTS ON THE LEVEE
• 4 The River Gives Up Its Dead Slowly: SEASONS, CYCLES, AND THE RIVER’S FURY
• 5 The Pride of St. Louis: KING OF LITTLE OKLAHOMA
• 6 Ain’t Got No Place to Lay My Haid: RIVER FIDDLERS, RAGGERS, AND ROUSTABOUTS IN RAGGED TIME
• 7 The American Fondness for Humbug: MEDICINE BOATS, SWAMP HEALERS, AND SHOWBOATS
• 8 In the High Waters of Sin: MISSION BOATS AND RIVER PREACHERS
• 9 Neither Pumpkin nor Paw-paw: LITTLE OKLAHOMA’S SCULLING CHAMPION OF THE WORLD
• 10 The Ruthless Advance of Civilization: WATERFRONT EVICTIONS
• 11 Gone Are the Old River Days: FLOATING PALACES, STEEL BARGES, AND VANISHING ROUSTABOUTS
• Epilogue: IN SOME FAR-OFF VALHALLA
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX
• Illustrations