Oil Cities

Book excerpt: "In this manuscript, Henry Alexander Wiencek takes a local approach to early twentieth-century domestic American energy production, what he calls "a gathering historical force" that was dramatically altering the economic, political, and social fabric of the United States. At this time, firms like Standard Oil were becoming some of the most influential actors on earth, wielding enormous power over the American economy and government--and leading some historians to tell the story of oil as a simple one of triumph and transformation. But, as Wiencek argues, a close look at the industry's venture into North Louisiana reveals a more varied and contested story of interaction, one in which global forces of industrial capitalism collided with--and often had to accommodate--local economic, social, political, and ecological dynamics. Despite its well-documented financial and technological prowess, the oil industry had to adapt its labor, tools, and investments to those circumstances--an international engine of economic power assuming a local form. Wiencek's chapters cover a lot of territory, from the history of oil boomtowns and "illicit" behavior to environmental impacts and political legacies. Not surprisingly, a key part of the story has to do with race. The new oil economy, he shows, collided with long-standing racial ideologies, which delineated sharp economic, social, and legal boundaries within the new industry. Prior to the boom, nearly three-quarters of the area's population was Black, with many rural tenant farmers working the same areas as their enslaved ancestors. But as oil created a lucrative new source of wages, racial violence became a way of ensuring the oil rigs--and the jobs they generated--would remain all white. On the other hand, oil did not naturally adhere to racial boundaries and at times was discovered under Black-owned lands, with complicated legal and social consequences that Wiencek explores via compelling case studies"--