Books by Theda Perdue

The Cotton States Exposition of 1895 was a world's fair in Atlanta held to stimulate foreign and domestic trade for a region in an economic depression. This uses the exposition to examine the competing agendas of white supremacist organizers and the peoples of colour who participated.

The five largest southeastern Indian groups - the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles - were forced to emigrate west to the Indian territory (now Oklahoma) in the 1830s. Here, from WPA interviews, are those Indians' own stories of the troubled years between the Civil War and Oklahoma statehood - a period of extraordinary turmoil. During this period, Oklahoma Indians functioned autonomously, holding their own elections, enforcing their own laws, and creating their own society from a mixture of old Indian customs and the new ways of the whites. The WPA informants describe the economic realities of the era: a few wealthy Indians, the rest scraping a living out of subsistence farming, hunting, and fishing. They talk about education and religion - Native American and Christian - as well as diversions of the time: horse races, fairs, ball games, cornstalk shooting, and traditional ceremonies such as the Green Corn Dance.

Examines the roles and responsibilities of Cherokee women during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a time of intense cultural change. This book develops a complex view of the effects of contact on Native gender relations, arguing that Cherokee conceptions of gender persisted long after contact.