BOOKS
W.B. Andrews, Cotton Production, Marketing and Utilization (State College, Miss.: W.B. Andrews, 1950)
Sharon D. Wright Austin, The Transformation of Plantation Politics: Black Politics, Concentrated Poverty, and Social Capital in the Mississippi Delta (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2006)
Floyd Barnhart, Cotton, 4th ed. (Caruthersville, Mo.: Floyd Barnhart, 1951)
John M. Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1997)
William Bearden, Cotton: From Southern Fields to the Memphis Market (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2005)
Harry Bates Brown, Cotton: History, Species, Varieties, Morphology, Breeding, Culture, Diseases, Marketing, and Uses (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company Inc., 1927)
James C. Cobb, The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)
Stephen H. Crawford, J. Tom Cothren; Donna E. Sohan, and James R. Supak, “A History of Cotton Harvest Aids,” Cotton Harvest Management: Use and Influence of Harvest Aids, James R. Supak and Charles E. Snipes, eds. (Memphis, Tenn.: The Cotton Foundation, 2001)
Gene Dattle, Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Costs of Economic Power (Lanham, Md.: Ivan R. Dee, 2009)
Mark Fannin, Labor’s Promised Land: Radical Visions of Gender, Race, and Religion in the South (Knoxville, Tenn.: The University of Tennessee Press, 2003)
E.N. Fergus, Carsie Hammonds, Hayden Rogers, and R.W. Gregory., eds. Southern Field Crops Management (Chicago: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1949)
Laurie B. Green, Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle (Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007)
David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Villard Books, 1993)
Van Hawkins, Plowing New Ground: The Southern Tenant Farmers Union and Its Place in Delta History (Virginia Beach, Va.: The Donning Company Publishers, 2007)
Gerard Helferich, High Cotton: Four Seasons in the Mississippi Delta (Berkeley, Calif.: Counterpoint, 2007)
Donald Holley, The Second Great Emancipation: The Mechanical Cotton Picker, Black Migration, and How They Shaped the Modern South (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2000)
Holly Hope, Get Down the Shovel and the Hoe: Cotton and Rice Farm History and Architecture in the Arkansas Delta, 1900-1955 (Little Rock: Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, 2004)
R. Douglas Hurt, “John R. Rust,” American National Biography, Vol. 19. Editors: John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)
Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1991)
Gilbert R. Merrill, Alfred R. Macormac, and Herbert R. Mauersberg, American Cotton Handbook: A Practical Text and Reference Book for the Entire Cotton Industry (New York: Textile Book Publishers, 1949)
D.J. Pledger and D.J. Pledger Jr., Cotton Culture on Hardscramble Plantation: Conservation Mechanization (Shelby, Miss.: Hardscramble Plantation, 1951)
N.A. Richardson, Introduction to Socialism (Girard, Kansas: Press of Appeal to Reason, 1902)
Edna Turpin, Cotton (New York: American Book Company, 1924)
Vance, Rupert B. Human Factors in Cotton Culture: A Study in the Social Geography of the American South. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1929.
L.F. Wegerly, Stukenborg Mechanical Cotton Picking Machine: The Key to Southern Progress. (Chicago: Cotton Picker Co. of America, 1920)
Jeannie Whayne, Delta Empire: Lee Wilson and the Transformation of Agriculture in the New South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011)
Clyde Woods, Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta. (London: Verso, 1998)
Monroe N. Work, Encyclopedia of the Negro, 9th ed. (Tuskegee, Alabama: Tuskegee Institute Press, 1937)
Stephen Yafa, Cotton: The Biography of a Revolutionary Fiber (New York: Penguin, 2005)
PERIODICALS
“Cotton Picker: Its Effect on Southern Agriculture May Rival That of the Cotton Gin,” Successful Inventions: A Magazine for Inventors and Others Interested in New Ideas (October 1936): 8-9
“Biggest Cotton Plantation,” Fortune, 15, 3 (March 1937): 125-132 and 156-160
“Cotton-Gin Rival: Inventors Fear Mechanical Picker’s Effort on Labor; Propose Relief,” Literary Digest, 5 Sept.1936: 45-46
“Mr. Little Ol’ Rust.” Fortune (December 1952): 150-152 and 198-205
Oliver Carlson, “The Revolution in Cotton.” The American Mercury (February 1935): 129-136
Carl Crow, “Machine Picks Cotton at Last.” Technical World (February 1911): 645-651
Gilbert C. Fite, “Recent Progress in the Mechanization of Cotton Production in the United States.” Agricultural History, 24, 1 (January 1950): 19-28
Gilbert C. Fite, “Mechanization of Cotton Production since World War II,” Agricultural History, Vol. 54, No. 1 (January 1980): 190-207
T.A. Heppenheimer, “The Machine That Killed King Cotton,” American Heritage, 20, 1 (Summer 2004)
J.R. Hildebrand, “Cotton: Foremost Fiber of the World.” National Geographic, 74, 2 (February 1941): 137-185
Donald Holley, “Leaving the Land of Opportunity: Arkansas and the Great Migration,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly. 64, 3 (Autumn 2005): 1-17
Ralph C. Hon, “The Rust Cotton Picker.” Southern Economic Journal, 3, 4 (April 1937): 381-392
Henry Goddard Leach, “Humanizing Machines: The Rust Cotton Picker,” The Forum and Century, 96, 2 (August 1936): 49-50
E.E. Lewis, “Black Cotton Farmers and the AAA,” Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life (March 1935): [from internet]
Willis Peterson, Yoav Kislev, “The Cotton Harvester in Retrospect: Labor Displacement or Replacement?” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 46, No. 1 (March 1986): 199-216
Lela Pratte, “King Cotton Still Part of Southeast’s Fabric,” EconSouth, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. (Third Quarter 2010): 24-29
Bob Ratliff, “Modern Cotton Production Has Deep Delta Roots,” Mississippi Landmarks (Fall 2007)
Robert Kenneth Straus, “Enter the Cotton Picker: The Story of the Rust Brothers’ Invention.” Harper’s Monthly Magazine (September 1936): 386-395
James H. Street, “Mechanizing the Cotton Harvest.” Agricultural History, 31, 1 (January 1957): 12-22
Brian Wayne Wells, “Cotton Growing on the Mississippi Delta.” Belt Pulley Magazine (November-December 2007)
Clarence A. Wiley, “The Rust Mechanical Cotton Picker and Probable Land-Use Adjustments,” The Journal of Land & Public Utility Economics, Vol. 15, No. 2 (May 1939): 155-166
OTHER
John D. Rust, “The Origin and Development of the Cotton Picker.” Rust papers. Special Collections, University of Memphis, 1952.
Mack D. Rust, “Rust Cotton Picker 1928-1962.” Unpublished history (included in E. Marshall and S. Murray Rust papers), 1962.
Turner v. Rust, 309 S.W. 2d 731 (Arkansas Supreme Court, 1958).
“The Rust Cotton Picker: Its Origin And Development.” sales brochure (undated)
Roberta Miller, “An Interview with Dr. Lyne Starling Gamble,” Oral History Project: Greenville and Vicinity, Mississippi Department of Archives and History and the Washington County Library System, Dec. 13, 1977.
FBI records.
J. Porter Fite correspondence.
Rust patents.
Correspondence and interviews: Mary Turner, Jim Rust, Ben Pearson, R. Douglas Hurt, Donald Holley, Norma Jane Bumgarner, Carol Evans Simmons, Kathryn Vaughn, Norma F. Gerace, Aubrey Vaughn