Dirt and Deeds in Mississippi: Film Highlights Long Threads in Civil Rights History

William Minter & Michael Honey

Like the episode on Mississippi of $41,000 a year, itself the lowest of all sippi Delta just under 80 miles north the classic film series Eyes on the Prize, 50 states). Holmes County, like most of the state capital Jackson. And it the Television Academy-Award-win- of the Delta region, voted overwhelm- gives priority to local activists who ning Dirt and Deeds in Mississippi ingly against Donald Trump in the seldom feature in the national nar- skillfully weaves together interviews 2016 election. But Mississippi remains rative. with civil rights activists, archival film a reliably Red state, where Republi- • In particular, it highlights the criti- footage, and original historical re- cans dominate the state government and cal roles of Black landowners, in search to portray the key period of hold both U.S. Senate seats and three Holmes County as around Missis- civil rights history leading up to the sippi, as the indispensable support Voting Rights Act of 1965. This his- The STFU powerfully base for the movement through pro- tory is worth recalling in the wake of viding housing for activists on their the presidential election of 2016, in affected a generation farms and armed defense for the or- large part the result of decades of voter of organizers in the ganizers of non-violent demonstra- suppression which threatens to usher Mississippi Delta of the tions and voter registration drives. in a new period of Jim Crow. 1930s. Unlike Blacks living on plantations Even in the wake of the civil rights or otherwise dependent on whites victories of the 1960s, including rep- for paychecks, landowners had resentation of Blacks in county and of four of the state’s seats in the U.S. achieved some level of indepen- state-level politics, the film’s setting House of Representatives. dence and were willing and able to of Holmes County remains one of the The themes raised in Dirt and Deeds step up as leaders. poorest counties in the United States, in Mississippi, in our view, have rel- • It also reveals links to earlier his- with more than half of households hav- evance both for interpretation of the tory, including a little-known ini- ing incomes under $21,000 a year (ap- centuries-long history of racial injus- tiative of the New Deal, which es- proximately half the state median of tice and the resistance against it in the tablished the Mileston farmers on United States and for our country in good Delta land from a white plan- the critical next years of the 21st cen- tation foreclosed at the height of the William Minter (wminter@gmail. tury. In particular, we are convinced Great Depression. On the hill coun- com) is the publisher and editor of that both past and future need to be try on the eastern side of Holmes AfricaFocus Bulletin and an indepen- analyzed paying attention not only to County, other farmers traced their dent scholar whose writing has focused the successes or failures of specific land ownership back over a century. on Africa, global issues, and U.S. for- organizations and institutions, but also One of these was Robert Clark, eign policy. His latest book, co-edited to personal and family networks that whose great-grandfather purchased with Gail Hovey and Charles Cobb, cross generational, geographic, racial, the land from his former master. Jr., is No Easy Victories: American cultural, and other social boundaries. In 1967, Clark became the first Activists and African Liberation over This film, narrated by Danny Black elected to the Mississippi leg- a Half Century, 1950-2000. Glover, is also distinctive in several islature since Reconstruction, and Michael Honey ([email protected]) ways that make it a particularly valu- served 36 years, retiring a Speaker is professor of Labor and Ethnic Stud- able resource for researchers, students, of the Mississippi House. ies and American History and Haley and social justice activists alike: Professor of Humanities at the Univer- • While touching on the historic The authors of this review share a sity of Washington, Tacoma. Honey events which received national at- common interest in these connecting has published five books of labor and tention (Freedom Summer, the threads, through different personal civil rights history; including murders of civil rights activists connections to the role of the interra- Sharecropper’s Troubadour: John L. Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner; cial Southern Tenant Farmers Union Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farm- the 1964 Democratic Convention, (STFU) in the region in the decades ers’ Union, and the African American and President Lyndon Johnson’s leg- preceding the 1960s civil rights move- Song Tradition. Honey’s most recent islative initiatives on civil rights), ment. Honey’s latest book, Share- work is a film, “Love and Solidarity: its focus is the small rural commu- cropper’s Troubadour, recounts the James Lawson and Nonviolence in the nity of Mileston, in Holmes life and legacy of John L. Hancock, Search for Workers’ Rights.” County, on the edge of the Missis- (Please turn to page 6)

Poverty & Race • Vol. 26, No. 1 • January-March 2017 • 5 (MISSISSIPPI: Cont. from page 5) now readily available to today’s lis- led to the establishment of the teners through Smithsonian Folkways Mileston community or similar the STFU, and the African-American and Honey’s oral history, Sharecrop- projects elsewhere in the South? Did song tradition. Minter’s parents met pers’ Troubadour. Although planter other such projects have specific in- at the Delta Cooperative Farm in violence suppressed the STFU struggle fluence on the civil rights move- Bolivar County, Mississippi, which for justice and dignity for rural work- ment in the 1960s in their local grew out of the Southern Tenant Farm- ers, its songs and legacy of interracial communities and states? ers’ Union in the 1930s (see Share- working-class organizing against im- More generally, were Black cropper’s Troubadour, pages 90-91), possible odds live on even today. landowners as central to the local and Minter himself spent part of his At the local level in Arkansas, civil rights movement in other childhood in Holmes County, living where the STFU was strongest, activ- Southern states and communities as on the successor Providence Coopera- ists like Carrie Dilworth spanned the they were in Holmes County? tive Farm just at the edge of the hill generations, carrying her activism into • Did the history of the 1960s South- country. work with the NAACP in the 1950s ern civil rights movement differ in The STFU powerfully affected a and with SNCC in the 1960s. It is areas where the STFU worked, in generation of organizers in the Missis- likely that similar stories could be told comparison with other areas in sippi Delta of the 1930s. Ed King of about the civil rights movement in other states? the Student Nonviolent Coordinating many more rural counties in the South. • What was the international influ- Committee recalled that civil rights or- ence on interracial cooperative ganizers of the 1960s drew inspiration projects in the U.S. South, such as from the STFU’s ability to pull together What factors have con- Providence Farm and parallels such former KKK members and African tributed to the enduring as Koinonia Farm in Georgia, Americans in both Mississippi and Ar- political backlash to which not only survived but gave kansas who were among the poorest civil rights victories in birth to the prominent Habitat for people in America at the time. Mississippi over the Humanity project? John Handcox, born in 1904 near • What factors have contributed to Brinkley, Arkansas, provides a vivid past five decades? the enduring political backlash to illustration of the themes raised in the civil rights victories in Mississippi film. He not only organized the STFU, Among the questions we offer for over the past five decades, as well but wrote some of its most memorable readers, researchers, and activists are as to continued impoverishment of songs, including “Roll the Union On,” the following, each of which would the state of Mississippi, despite the and helped to popularize “We Shall Not take far more than a short film review presence of African Americans in Be Moved” as a song that became an to explore: county and city governments? Why anthem in the civil rights movement can’t we crack the white barriers to and the Memphis sanitation strike of About the history bi-racial voting and progressive 1968. The Library of Congress politics? through the work of Charles Seeger • Did either the STFU or the Delta and others recorded Handcox’s songs Cooperative Farm have any influ- About 2017 and beyond in 1937. His songs and his story are ence on the New Deal policies that • What inspiration and/or positive or negative lessons can today’s social and racial justice activists take from New on PRRAC’s Website earlier periods of Black liberation “Protecting our gains and building a base of practice: PRRAC’s housing history and labor struggles? research and advocacy goals in 2017-18” (January 2017) • What are the 21st-century counter- parts to the assets of land that Black Fair housing comments on Treasury Department Notice 2016-77, regarding landowners in Mississippi drew on the Low Income Housing Tax Credit “Concerted Community Revitaliza- to be able to advance the 1960s civil tion Plan” requirement (February 2017) rights movement? Suggested changes to the draft Low Income Housing Tax Credit reform bill • What is the relevance of history in (letter to the United States Senate Committee on Finance) (February 2017) analyzing today’s “whitelash” and strategies to ensure that the next few “How Attacks on the Administrative State Can Be Attacks on the Most years build the foundation for a Vulnerable” by Megan Haberle (March 2017) “Third Reconstruction” as proposed “Preserving the Civil Rights Data Collection program” (March 2017) by Rev. Barber of North Carolina’s “Moral Mondays,” rather than con- (Please turn to page 17)

6 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 26, No. 1 • January-March 2017 (MISSISSIPPI: Cont. from page 6) Resources tinue the march backward analyzed by Philip Klinkner in his 1999 book Web Links on the Rise and Decline of Racial Inequality? Paragraph on authors

Recovering the songs and stories of AfricaFocus Bulletin: http://www.africafocus.org rural civil rights history may help us understand why we are moving for- No Easy Victories: http://www.noeasyvictories.org ward or backward politically and cul- turally in the United States today. Michael Honey: http://faculty.washington.edu/mhoney/ Black land ownership remains a cru- Sharecropper’s Troubadour: http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9780230111271 cial question going back to the seizure of plantation lands by former slaves Love and Solidarity: http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/love.html during the Civil War, as do struggles ever since to maintain a rural economic First paragraph in text base through cooperatives and small farms. Other films have chronicled the Eyes on the Prize episode on Mississippi: https://www.youtube.com/ Black freedom movement in more watch?v=aP2A6_2b6g8 well-known struggles from Montgom- ery to Memphis. Dirt and Deeds pro- Dirt and Deeds in Mississippi: http://newsreel.org/video/DIRT-AND-DEEDS vides a distinctive and crucial window Voter suppression: http://www.noeasyvictories.org/usa/voter- into a neglected theme of rural orga- suppression.php nizing, through documentation and interviews with movement veterans in Second paragraph in text Mississippi’s Deep South. Does this history have lessons for a Holmes County: http://www.noeasyvictories.org/usa/holmes-county.php predominantly urban United States in and the age of Trump, when the arrow of https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/15/poorest-town-in-poorest- history seems to be pointing back to state-segregation-is-gone-but-so-are-the-jobs “Jim Crow” acted out on a national stage? Mississippi activist Kali Fourth paragraph in text Akuno’s thoughts on the road ahead Robert Clark: https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2010039_crhp0075/ are worth pondering: Seventh paragraph in text I do think in a moment like this, living in Mississippi is an advan- Sharecropper’s Troubadour tage. Mississippi has been domi- http://www.folkways.si.edu/magazine-summer-fall-2014-sharecroppers- nated by the Tea Party, even be- troubadour-songs-of-solidarity-in-hard-times/article/smithsonian fore the party had its name. Our governor, Phil Bryant, is a Tea Eighth paragraph in text Party member. We have a Repub- lican supermajority and it has been Carrie Dilworth: https://snccdigital.org/people/carrie-dilworth/ that way for most of the last six years and they can pass almost any- About 2017 and beyond thing they want. ... Third Reconstruction: http://amzn.to/2gfr2Eq We were like, “Welcome to Mis- sissippi!” to the rest of the United Rise and Decline of Racial Inequality: http://amzn.to/2i5qS01 States. We don’t wish this on our worst enemies, but this is where we Kali Akuno: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/39061-insights-from- find ourselves. Crying about it or mississippi-on-organizing-in-a-right-wing-context-a-conversation-with-kali- wishing it was different is not go- akuno ing to change the situation. We are going to have to get down, get dirty and struggle and work our way out of this.” ❏

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