Louisiana During World War II: Politics and Society, 1939-1945.

Louisiana During World War II: Politics and Society, 1939-1945. By Jerry Purvis Sanson. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, c. 1999. Pp. xvi, 323. $60.00, ISBN 0-8071-2308-0.)

Jerry Purvis Sanson draws on a diverse array of primary sources to explain what happened in Louisiana during World War II. He concludes that the experiences of the war left the state's politics, society, and economy "recognizably different in 1945 from what they had been in 1939," even though such changes "occurred amid the continuity that remained" (p. 7). Louisiana moved from the corrupt Long political machine of the 1930s to the anti-Long reformist administrations of Governors Sam Jones and Jimmie Davis. The reformers proved that they could administer the state efficiently. The anti-Long reformers' short-lived tenure produced an "effective bifactionalism" that increasingly defined state and national politics. Sanson describes both a society disrupted by rural labor shortages, agricultural mechanization, and unprecedented expansion and diversification of industry, and an economy changed by increased incomes and tax revenue. The war years ended "the economic doldrums of the Great Depression" (p. 239).

New residents flooded into the state during the war, and job opportunities diversified for both African Americans and women. Political activities by both groups helped to elect the reform administrations. However, Louisiana's black citizens remained "trapped in a segregated society" (p. 269) while economic achievements for women diminished with the war's end. Both groups nonetheless remembered "their wartime forays into prosperity and equality" (p. 273). Patriotism permeated even mundane activities, sometimes in ironic or disturbing ways. "Give Scrap to Kill a Jap" trumpeted one Christmas toy drive, "and Bring Joy to a Girl or Boy" (p. 260).

Sanson tells a richly detailed but largely disconnected story of wartime change. The social and economic changes he identifies appear detached from the reform campaigns and bifactionalism he regards as so important. He argues that "state politics were affected most ... not by America's involvement in the war, but by the venality of Longite politicians" (p. 1). In most southern states, however, and in New Orleans as well, the political turmoil of these years derived from the social, economic, and racial impact of war mobilization. Gauging the real impact of the war necessitates examining the immediate postwar years. The turmoil of reconversion, the return of thousands of overseas veterans, the creation of the G.I. Bill, and the developing anti-Communist hysteria all point to the complex and often contradictory political impact the war had. Yet the author ends his primary analysis with V-J day and misses the opportunity to determine how the changes and continuities he describes ultimately played out in the state's wartime and postwar politics. Sanson nonetheless offers a fascinating look at how Louisiana experienced the greatest war of the twentieth century. The story he tells for Louisiana complements the stories many historians currently are investigating for the South as a whole.

JENNIFER E. BROOKS

Tusculum College