The Senator and the Sharecropper : The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer

In this fascinating study of race, politics, and economics in Mississippi, Chris Myers Asch tells the story of two extraordinary personalities—Fannie Lou Hamer and James O. Eastland—who represented deeply opposed sides of the civil rights movement. Both were from Sunflower County: Eastland was a wealthy white planter and one of the most powerful segregationists in the U.S. Senate, while Hamer, a sharecropper who grew up desperately poor just a few miles from the Eastland plantation, rose to become the spiritual leader of the Mississippi freedom struggle. Asch uses Hamer and Eastland's entwined histories, set against a backdrop of Sunflower County's rise and fall as a center of cotton agriculture, to explore the county's changing social landscape during the mid-twentieth century and its persistence today as a land separate and unequal. Asch, who spent nearly a decade in Mississippi as an educator, offers a fresh look at the South's troubled ties to the cotton industry, the long struggle for civil rights, and unrelenting social and economic injustice through the eyes of two of the era's most important and intriguing figures. In this fascinating study of race, politics, and economics in Mississippi, Chris Myers Asch tells the story of two extraordinary personalities--Fannie Lou Hamer and James O. Eastland--who represented deeply opposed sides of the civil rights movement. Both were from Sunflower County: Eastland was a wealthy white planter and one of the most powerful segregationists in the U.S. Senate, while Hamer, a sharecropper who grew up desperately poor just a few miles from the Eastland plantation, rose to become the spiritual leader of the Mississippi freedom struggle. Asch uses Hamer's and Eastland's entwined histories, set against the backdrop of Sunflower County's rise and fall as a center of cotton agriculture, to explore the county's changing social landscape during the mid-twentieth century and its persistence today as a land separate and unequal. Asch, who spent nearly a decade in Mississippi as an educator, offers a fresh look at the South's troubled ties to the cotton industry, the long struggle for civil rights, and unrelenting social and economic injustice through the eyes of two of the era's most important and intriguing figures. Contents......Page 10 Preface......Page 12 Prologue: Sunflower County......Page 18 1. Sunflower County......Page 23 2. Planter’s Son, Sharecroppers’ Daughter......Page 50 3. “Cotton Is Dynamite”: New Deals in Sunflower County......Page 82 4. “An Enormous Tragedy in the Making”: Revolutions in Sunflower County and Abroad......Page 116 5. “From Cotton—to Communism—to Segregation!”: The Senator’s Rise to Power......Page 149 6. “No One Can Honestly Say Negroes Are Satisfied”: The Sharecropper Embraces the Movement......Page 184 7. 1964: Confrontations......Page 223 8. “This Is America’s Sickness”......Page 246 9. “The Pendulum Is Swinging Back”......Page 278 10. “Right on Back to the Plantation”......Page 304 Notes......Page 324 B......Page 380 C......Page 381 D......Page 382 E......Page 383 F......Page 384 H......Page 385 K......Page 386 M......Page 387 P......Page 388 S......Page 389 T......Page 391 W......Page 392 Z......Page 393 Prologue: Sunflower County, 1994 -- 1 -- 1 Sunflower County, 1904 -- 6 -- 2 Planter's Son, Sharecroppers' Daughter -- 33 -- 3 "Cotton Is Dynamite": New Deals in Sunflower County -- 65 -- 4 "An Enormous Tragedy in the Making": Revolutions in Sunflower County and Abroad -- 99 -- 5 "From Cotton-to Communism-to Segregation!": The Senator's Rise to Power -- 132 -- 6 "No One Can Honestly Say Negroes Are Satisfied": The Sharecropper Embraces the Movement -- 167 -- 7 1964: Confrontations -- 198 -- 8 "This Is America's Sickness" -- 221 -- 9 "The Pendulum Is Swinging Back" -- 253 -- 10 "Right on Back to the Plantation"-- 279. Chronicles the life and times of two natives of Mississippi's Sunflower County who became central civil rights figures: U.S. Senator James Eastland, scion of one of the region's oldest plantation families and a rigid segregationist, and Fanny Lou Hamer, the sharecroppers' daughter who led the drive for voting rights in Mississippi