ABSTRACT
For most of its history, America has been mostly arural society. Indeed, from the early seventeenth century to the early twentieth century, the majority of Americans lived and worked in the countryside. Many of the nation’s most significant rural social movements developed in these years. The essays in this section tell the stories of fifteen such social movements from the late colonial era to the late twentieth century and from the completely local to those nationwide in scope. The following writings, though not a definitive accounting of America’s rural social movements, include the most important ones. All bear on fundamental themes of political and economic power, class and race, and, at least in one case, gender roles in the countryside.
