James L. McCorkle Jr.

James L. "Jim" McCorkle Jr. (May 17, 1935 – December 29, 2015),^[1] was a professor of history at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana, who specialized in research on the American South, particularly agriculture. He was an NSU faculty member from 1966 until 2003.

In 1998, McCorkle became the editor of Southern Studies, an interdisciplinary journal published by NSU.^[2] In 1971, he was appointed book review editor for the journal.^[3]

Background

McCorkle was born to James McCorkle, Sr. (1896-1976) and the former Lois Wilson (1902-1944)^[4] in Jackson, Mississippi, and reared in Hazlehurst, the county seat of Copiah County, an agricultural area to the southwest of the capital city.^[1]

McCorkle recounted,

"I remember growing up in Copiah County, Mississippi, and watching the farmers and the buyers coming together at parking sheds to conduct business. The farmers would come in and sometimes this would go on until two or three in the morning. I'd watch them pack and load the refrigerated cars that would go to Chicago."^[5]

He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama and his Master of Arts and Ph.D. degree, completed in 1966, from the University of Mississippi at Oxford.^[2] He did his doctoral dissertation on truck farming.^[5]

In 1957, McCorkle graduated as an officer from Class 29 of the Pensacola Naval Air Training Station in Pensacola, Florida. He is pictured in the naval yearbook called Flight Jacket. He is a member of the United States Naval Institute.^[6] He served for three years in the Navy, based in Seattle, Washington, and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and for fifteen years was a member of the Navy Reserve.^[1]

McCorkle spent his academic career at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Colleagues included John Price; Marietta LeBreton, a specialist in the history of Louisiana and the U.S. West; Donald Rawson, a Mississippi native and later graduate school dean and an authority on 19th-century American history; and William A. Poe, a Southern Baptist minister and Alabama native whose research was primarily in European history.

McCorkle served as president of the Northwestern State University (NSU) chapter of Phi Kappa Phi and president of the Faculty Senate. In 2002, he was one of five NSU professors to receive the annual "Excellence in Teaching" award. He received the "Outstanding Educator of America" designation and the Willie D. Halsell Award given by the Mississippi Historical Society for the best article in the Journal of Mississippi History and named for Professor Halsell (1905–1974) of Mississippi State University at Starkville.^[2]

He was a member of the Southern Historical Association, Agricultural History Society, Louisiana Historical Association, Mississippi Historical Society, and the North Louisiana Historical Association, based in Shreveport.

As Southern Studies editor, McCorkle gained peer review for articles in the fields of history, politics, literature, and art. The journal also carries book reviews on southern culture. The publication began as Louisiana Studies under former editor and NSU historian John M. Price (born 1942).^[7]

Historian of truck farming

In 1996, McCorkle published "Southern Truck Growers Associations: Organizations for Profit" in Agricultural History, the journal of the Agricultural History Society published by the University of California Press.^[8] He researched the efforts of small southern truck farmers to form local associations to guard their interests, much as western cattlemen had accomplished with their stockgrowers' associations. The farmers grew fresh fruits or vegetables, such as strawberries, peaches, Irish potatoes, or celery. Different areas specialized in high-demand crops. For instance, the Hammond area east of Baton Rouge is known for strawberries, and the Ruston region of north Louisiana specializes in peaches. McCorkle said that the attempted associations sometimes worked but usually failed because the buyers could offer individual truck farmers higher prices than they obtained through the cooperatives.^[5]

McCorkle's research focused on the local associations established between the 1870s and the 1930s. He conducted his research in archives from Virginia to Texas, having examined local newspapers and county records in particular. "The markets for their products were very volatile; so the farmers and producers tried to band together to protect themselves. It was hard for an individual to survive on his own," McCorkle explained.^[5]

Works

• "Truck Farming in Arkansas: A Half-century of Feeding Urban America" in Arkansas Historical Quarterly.^[9]
• "Agricultural Experiment Stations and Southern Truck Farming," in Agricultural History.,^[10]
• "Moving Perishables to Market: Southern Railroads and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of Southern Truck Farming," in Southern Studies.^[11]
• "The Louisiana 'Buy-A-Bale' of Cotton Movement, 1914," in Agriculture and Economic Development in Louisiana, by Thomas A. Becnel.^[12]
• "Los Adaes: Outpost of New Spain," published in the Journal of the North Louisiana Historical Association (Vol. 12, 1981), since renamed North Louisiana History.^[13] This was adapted and used as a 1984 essay in The Handbook of Texas.^[14]

Retirement and death

After his retirement, McCorkle and his wife, the former DeAnn Obern Dawes (born 1941), a former NSU professor who survives him, relocated to Salem, Oregon.^[15] They had a son, James Wilson McCorkle (August 3, 1977 – May 24, 2002),^[16] who died while he was a university student. McCorkle was active in the Presbyterian Church.^[1]

McCorkle died at the age of eighty of brain cancer. He is interred along with his parents and his son at Hazelhurst Cemetery in Hazelhurst, Mississippi.^[1]

References