| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Lynette Boney Wrenn. Crisis and Commission Government in Memphis: Elite Rule in a Gilded Age City. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. 1998. Pp. xxiii, 231. $38.00.

Lynette Boney Wrenn's study of Memphis politics during the Gilded Age is a welcome addition to the historiography on the urban South. Memphis is one of several cities in the region whose histories have not yet received adequate attention from scholars. There are an old-fashioned biography of Memphis by Gerald M. Capers, an analysis of the city's politics during the Progressive era by William D. Miller, and not much else. Wrenn has thus filled a noticeable gap. 1

Wrenn's book focuses on Memphis politics from 1879, when the city surrendered its charter to the state legislature, to 1893 when "home rule" was restored. Drawing on historical studies of community power, Wrenn raises questions about the role that elites played in governing Memphis during that period. Her methodological approach most closely resembles that of Carl V. Harris's Political Power in Birmingham (1977). Wrenn is also interested in the evolution of the city commission form of municipal government. Most American historians know that Galveston, Texas, adopted a commission government in 1901 after a devastating hurricane, but they probably are not aware that Memphis, Mobile, Shreveport, New Orleans, and several other southern cities did the same thing much earlier. Wrenn explores thoroughly the causes and impact of the transition from mayor-city council to commission government in Memphis. . . .

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