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Choice Review
Though a scion of the Old South who could count Robert E. Lee, John Marshall, and George Mason among her distinguished ancestors, Lucy Randolph Mason dedicated her life to the unlikely pursuits of social reformer and labor activist. Salmond's study shows that this career, seemingly at enmity with her heritage, was a natural outgrowth of both her piety and her concern for the South. Always a Christian reformer and a southerner, Mason saw her efforts as a mission "to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth" and to improve the lots of all people of her native region. Toward these ends, she held positions with the YWCA, the League of Women Voters, the National Consumer League, and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), among others. The opportunity for reform through progressive legislation and the expansion of traditional American values attracted Mason to FDR and the New Deal, and Salmond provides an excellent description and assessment of the subsequent relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt. Mason was not a pivotal figure in American labor history, and those particularly interested in Mason herself may find that she occupies only a peripheral place in much of Salmond's narrative. Still, Miss Lucy should prove to be a good companion to such standard works as George B. Tindall's The Emergence of the New South (1967). Undergraduate libraries. -R. F. Zeidel, College of St. Thomas
Library Journal Review
A proud descendent of leading families of the South, Mason was a feminist, social activist, and spokesperson for the CIO. Salmond ( Southern Rebel ) examines her career, surprisingly liberal beliefs, and ability to use other people's stereotypes of an elite Southern lady for the benefit of working people's causes. Still, Mason played a relatively minor role in the dramas of labor and the South, and Salmond has not managed to make her life exciting nor found sources that probe the drama of her contradictory roles and values. (In contrast, see Elizabeth Anne Payne's Reform, Labor, and Feminism: Margaret Dreier Robins and the Women's Trade Union League , LJ 5/15/88.) Carefully researched; of interest to women's, Southern, and labor studies, but to few general readers.Frieda Shoenberg Rozen, Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.