{"product_id":"good-cotton-people-9781965766736","title":"Good Cotton People","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWhere cotton and conscience collide, one good man bets his soul on the people the world tries to forget.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 1951, mechanization, chemicals, and federal policy are transforming American agriculture. Veteran Texas cotton farmer William Allen Littlejohn faces a wrenching choice: modernize or retire and thereby end the livelihoods and community his farm has long provided for his workers. His compassionate treatment of \u003ci\u003elos laguneros\u003c\/i\u003e--migrant cotton workers from La Comarca Lagunera in Mexico--sets him apart from neighboring growers who exploit migrants as disposable \"rented mules.\" William's secret inheritance, his rejection of his family's slave-owning legacy, and his quiet, idiosyncratic faith frame his farm as a rare humanitarian refuge whose days are numbered by history's advance.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMeanwhile, Don Tenorio Tovar and Don Francisco Montemayor, \u003ci\u003elagunero\u003c\/i\u003e migrants who flee revolutionary violence in Coahuila in 1910 and build new lives in Tecolote in South Texas. Drawing on generations of cotton expertise, Tenorio becomes a respected labor contractor and community leader, while Francisco parlays mechanical skill into a small trucking company that transports workers and cotton across West Texas. Both families endure exploitation, racist exclusion, company-store debt, immigration raids, and the profound wartime loss of sons who die serving the United States in World War II.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThese histories are intertwined on the Littlejohn farm, where cotton work becomes both a trap and a ladder: grueling seasonal labor that sustains deep poverty yet also finances education and eventual escape for the workers' children. Against a backdrop of boom-and-bust cotton markets, New Deal farm policy, and evolving technology, \u003ci\u003eGood Cotton People \u003c\/i\u003eraises questions about race, class, faith, nationalism, and moral responsibility. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Stoney Creek Publishing Group\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 11\/10\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781965766736\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 440","brand":"A. B. Cardenas","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53514309664949,"sku":"9781965766736","price":21.21,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/9781965766736.jpg?v=1791903535","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/good-cotton-people-9781965766736","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}