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

Chris Myers Asch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2008

The epic struggle for black equality in the twentieth century, told through the deeply intertwined life histories of the staunch segregationist and his sharecropper nemesis.

Sunflower County, Mississippi, is a land of seeming contradictions. It boasts some of the world's richest soil, yet has produced widespread poverty that lingers to this day. It stood at the epicenter of the civil rights movement, yet still suffers from racial inequality. It has been on the forefront of globalization, yet continues to stagnate economically.

The Senator and the Sharecropper explores these paradoxes, telling the story of two larger-than-life personalities who epitomized the county's extremes: the senator, James O. Eastland, a wealthy white cotton planter who was one of the most powerful segregationists in the U.S. Senate, and the sharecropper, Fannie Lou Hamer, who grew up desperately poor just a few miles from the Eastland plantation and rose to become the spiritual leader of the Mississippi freedom struggle. Their intertwined histories-set against a backdrop of Sunflower County's rise and fall as a center of cotton agriculture-show how this isolated county weathered revolutionary changes in seemingly distant realms, from the global economy to the Cold War to national politics.

Although Sunflower County would be transformed during the tumultuous decades of the mid-twentieth century, it remained at century's end resiliently separate and unequal. Asch, who spent nearly a decade here as an educator, combines a scholar's attention to fact with an insider's love of the area to tell a maddening but compelling, discouraging yet inspirational story of change and continuity in a land few Americans understand.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Arch, co-founder of the U.S. Public Service Academy and a former elementary school teacher in Mississippi's Sunflower County, chronicles the life and times of two Sunflower natives who became central civil rights figures: U.S. Senator James Eastland, scion of one of the region's oldest plantation families, and Fanny Lou Hamer, the sharecroppers' daughter who led the drive for voting rights in Mississippi. Hamer's involvement began in August, 1962, when she joined a group of 17 other African-Americans registering to vote; that courageous decision got her kicked off the plantation where her family eked out an existence. After that, "the movement" literally became her home, and she worked feverishly overly the following years to challenge the status quo. As the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Eastland fought long and hard against the demands of Hamer and others, successfully watering down civil rights initiatives in 1957 and killing them outright in '66. Asch does a commendable job illuminating mid-twentieth century cotton kingdom economics while keeping his narrative moving. Though Eastland looms larger in these pages, it's satisfying to watch the tide of history overtake the largely unrepentant (and all but forgotten) senator, and see Hamer, famously "sick and tired of being sick and tired," become a legend in the Delta and throughout the country.
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From Booklist

Infamous senator Eastland and famed civil rights leader Hamer grew up only miles apart in the Mississippi Delta but in vastly different circumstances. Eastland, part of a wealthy cotton-planter family, became one of the most powerful men in the U.S. as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Hamer grew up a sharecropper on the receiving end of Eastland’s efforts to protect the interests of the planters at the expense of the workers. Asch, who served as a Teach for America teacher in Sunflower, Mississippi, offers a detailed and impassioned look at the Delta that produced Eastland and Hamer and the historical, social, and economic factors that informed their lives. Eastland equated freedom with economic freedom of the planters and protection of the cotton industry; civil rights equaled communism. Hamer recognized in the tumult of the civil rights movement the moment when she and her neighbors could achieve the social justice that had been denied them for generations. Asch’s book is a well-researched, incredibly detailed look at the Delta and continuing challenges to social justice. --Vanessa Bush

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The; 1St Edition edition (May 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595583327
• ISBN-13: 978-1595583321
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #583,757 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read This Book!, May 31, 2008

By 

Shawn L. Raymond - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer (Hardcover)

This book is a must read for any person interested in Mississippi or the civil rights movement. Chris Myers Asch has weaved the crucial historical facts relating to two juggernaughts from Sunflower County, Mississippi - Fannie Lou Hamer and Sen. James Eastland - into an incredibly compelling narrative. In so doing, Dr. Asch explains the journey of these two characters in a fair, hard-hitting way that does not unnecessarily deride Sen. Eastland or excessively over-promote Ms. Hamer. He just tells it like it is. I went through two highlighters underlining my favorite passages!

I particularly enjoyed Dr. Asch's masterful ability to highlight the historical irony surrounding these two extraordinary figures: despite Ms. Hamer's long fight to bring voting rights to blacks in Mississippi, Sen. Eastland - and not Ms. Hamer - in many ways emerged (at least during their lifetimes) as having adapted better to the social and political changes brought about by the civil rights movement. Talk about food for thought.

Having worked with Dr. Asch in Sunflower County and having followed his career with keen interest, I am thrilled we all have an opportunity to appreciate the important contribution he has made to American historical scholarship.

Shawn Raymond
Houston, Texas

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book on the Delta, on civil rights, on America, August 8, 2009

By 

Robert A. Watts (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer (Hardcover)

This is one amazingly good book. If you have any interest in American history, the South, race relations, racism, sharecropper, Mississippi, African American history, this is a great book to read.

I have an interest in southern history and in the history of Mississippi (visited there twice, which is a lot for a liberal northerner) and there was so much I learned from Chris Myers Asch. First, I was shocked to learn that the Mississippi Delta, home of the blues, home of huge cotton plantations, did not have much of a slave history. Why? Because the land was too forbidding until much later after the end of enslavement. It's so easy to read about sharecroppers picking cotton on plantations and to think, "Oh, these must be old plantations from the days of slavery." Wrong.

The sections on James Eastland presiding over the Senate Judiciary Committee were highly informative and infuriating (no fault of the author). Anyone who wants to think that racism, direct, blatant, evil racism, was somehow a "blot" on American history--well read about Eastland heading one of the most powerful committees in Congress and you will see that there was nothing "exceptional" about racism in American history. It cut right through the center of American history. To think that my father and other Negro (yes, I'll go old-fashioned here) veterans of World War II came home from serving their country and faced a man like James Eastland as head of the Senate Judiciary Committee--I just find that shameful.

Chris Myers Ash does a great job of linking cotton to the world economy. He also does a great job of outlining the massive crop subsidies Eastland and the cotton planters got from the U.S. Government. These folks were the worst type of citizens. They fought like hell to get major subsidies for themselves. They fought like hell to prevent colored folks from getting anything. And yet there is a paternalistic worldview at work and Myers Ash does a great job of explaining that view. I was perhaps most taken with the fact that he interviewed Eastland's children. One of his daughters tells Myers Asch that her father never had to explicitly speak about the inferiority of black people. It was just so much a part of her world that it was assumed. They didn't have to talk about it. Eastland's son makes a great appearance in the book and he talks about how liberating it was to escape the racism of his father's generation.

As a Democrat I have to point out another aspect of James Eastland's political maneuvers that Myers Asch picks up on so well. At some point in the 50's or so, Eastland cleans up his racist language. He opposes every piece of civil rights legislation, harasses and disrespects every civil rights advocate who comes to speak before the Judiciary Committee and yet he stops explicitly calling blacks inferior. I read this and I thought, well the modern Republican Party sure figured out how insidiously slick this maneuver was. The Republicans from Reagan on (I'll do something strange and give George W. some credit for breaking this pattern) attacked black folks in all kinds of ways without every explicitly calling us names. But every one and every white southern voter knew exactly who the Republicans were speaking of when they let loose their attacks on welfare recipients and "criminals."

The sections on Mrs. Hamer as quite good as well. Mrs. Hamer really became an icon to the movement, but Myers Asch captures the real pain and agony and sense of defeat that she suffered, especially in her last agonizing days of cancer. Though Mississippi did see change as a result of the civil rights movement, the change never quite addressed the depth of the poverty and powerlessness of the descendants of the sharecroppers. Mrs. Hamer wanted to really deeply address these inequities. She was stymied in the political system, in her education fight and in her heart-breaking attempt to create a cooperative called Freedom Farm. It's all here captured brilliantly and poignantly by Myers Asch.

Final word, Asch is bold for a white writer in that he implicates African Americans in their own oppression. He shows how a sharecropper mentality definitely hindered efforts of black people to organize, start businesses and to develop into full citizens in the aftermath of the movement. I am African American and I found Myers Asch thoroughly persuasive (not to mention courageous) here. If we are to really deeply heal the racial divide, it will require courage and imagination of the type Myers Asch displays in this book.

Readers should know: Myers Asch was a member of Teach for America and he lived in Sunflower County for a number of years, and still has friends and former students down there. All told an excellent effort. I found this to be an indispensable book in helping me make sense of an important era of American history.

I have met the author, and he is the real deal. In fact, Myers Asch is currently at work on starting a United States Public Service Academy as a counterpart to the military academies, this one focused on civilian and public sector service. In my estimation, he has the wisdom and understanding of American history that befits such an undertaking.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressive and moving, December 8, 2009

By 

Robin N. Hamilton - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer (Hardcover)

Review for the Senator and the Sharecropper

Chris Myers Asch's book "The Senator and the Sharecropper" came to me as a gift from my sister. I had no idea what a gift it would be.
Asch took me, as the reader, on an unflinchingly honest journey into the depths of Mississippi, the Civil Rights era, and the United States. What is remarkable about this book is that Asch uses two key historical figures, who are living two very disparate lives, and illustrates how their presence impacted each other and those around them.
The story of Senator James Eastland and Civil Rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer is told not through the dry prism of historical facts and numbers. Make no mistake, Asch provides thorough and well-researched data explaining the state of the country at the time. Rather, the stories of both protagonists are told through the personal traits that make Eastland and Hamer who they were. The author is able to do this by talking to those who knew either Eastland, or Hamer, or both. The history is a mere backdrop. The revelation of each individual brings the story to life.
Asch's immersion in the historical fabric of the state is evident in this story, after he spent many years in Mississippi as a volunteer (first with Teach for America, and later as co-founder of The Freedom Project). His experience offers an authenticity not usually found in historical books.
This is a well-written, comprehensive look at a Senator and a Sharecropper who made an indelible mark on United States history. For anyone looking to learn about a part of history in a part of the country that they think they know, this book will bring you the gift of a new perspective.