Professor

Office: 129 Mitchell
Telephone: 901.678.3382
Fax: 901.678.2720
E-mail: jfickle@memphis.edu
Education: Ph.D., History, Louisiana State University, 1970

Fields of Interest

My most recent book is Timber: A Photographic History of Mississippi Forestry (2004). It includes some two hundred historic photographs and a brief narrative. Many of the photographs are published for the first time or have been misidentified in earlier publications. Also appearing in 2004 was Arthur Temple College of Forestry: The Story of Forestry At SFA, which I co-authored with Archie P. MacDonald. It is a history of the forestry school at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas.

A book entitled Green Gold; The Rise, Decline, and Restoration of Alabama’s Forest Products Industries will be in bookstores in December of 2013. I have also completed a history of the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory for the U.S. Forest Service and the Forest History Society.

Courses taught

I teach courses in U.S. business and economic history, labor/working class history, and environmental history. My publications and research interests have centered around the forest products industries, with books and articles on labor in that industry, trade associations and organizational structure, and the historical development of the profession of forestry. In the labor area I am particularly interested in biracial unions and organizational efforts. I have a strong interest in conservation, land use, and land and resource management, which combines my recreational interests as a backpacker, camper, climber, and rafter with my academic specialties.

Representative publications

• Green Gold: The Rise, Decline, and Restoration of Alabama's Forest Products Industries (University of Alabama Press, 2013) (Forthcoming)
• Timber: A Photographic History of Mississippi Forestry (University Press of Mississippi, 2004)
• Mississippi Forests and Forestry (University Press of Mississippi, 2001)
• The New South and the “New Competition”: Trade Association Development in the Southern Pine Industry (University of Illinois Press, for the Forest History Society, 1980)