Sharecropping is a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land (e.g. 50% of the crop). Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range of different situations and types of agreements that have encompassed the system. Some are governed by tradition, others by law. Legal contract systems such as the Italian mezzadria, the French métayage, the Spanish mediero, or the Islamic system of muqasat, enshrined in the Shariah, occur widely.^{[citation needed]}

Overview[link]

Sharecropping has benefits and costs for both the owners and the croppers. It encourages the cropper to remain on the land throughout the harvest season to work the land, solving the harvest rush problem. At the same time, since the cropper pays in shares of his harvest, owners and croppers share the risk of harvests being large or small and prices being high or low. Because tenants benefit from larger harvests, they have an incentive to work harder and invest in better methods than in a slave plantation system. However, by dividing the working force into many individual workers, large farms no longer benefit from economies of scale. On the whole, sharecropping was not as economically efficient as the gang agriculture of slave plantations.^[1] In the U.S. "tenant" farmers own their own mules and equipment, and "sharecroppers" do not, and thus sharecroppers are poorer and of lower status.

Sharecropping occurred extensively in colonial Africa, Scotland, and Ireland and came into wide use in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era (1865–1877). The South had been devastated by war; planters had ample land but little money for wages or taxes. At the same time, most of the former slaves had labor but no money and no land; they rejected the kind of gang labor that typified slavery. The solution was the sharecropping system focused on cotton, which was the only crop that could generate cash for the croppers, landowners, merchants and the tax collector. Poor white farmers, who previously had done little cotton farming, needed cash as well and became sharecroppers.^[2]

Jeffery Paige made a distinction between centralized sharecropping found on cotton plantations and the decentralized sharecropping with other crops. The former is characterized by political conservatism and long lasting tenure. Tenants are tied to the landlord through the plantation store. Their work is heavily supervised as slave plantations were. This form of tenure tends to be replaced by wage slavery as markets penetrate. Decentralized sharecropping involves virtually no role for the landlord: plots are scattered, peasants manage their own labor and the landowners do not manufacture the crops. Leases are very short which leads to peasant radicalism. This form of tenure becomes more common when markets penetrate.^[3]

Use of the sharecropper system has also been identified in England^[4] (as the practice of "farming to halves"). It is still used in many rural poor areas today, notably in Pakistan and India.

Although there is a perception that sharecropping was exploitative, “evidence from around the world suggests that sharecropping is often a way for differently endowed enterprises to pool resources to mutual benefit, overcoming credit restraints and helping to manage risk.”^[5]

It can have more than a passing similarity to serfdom or indenture, and has therefore been seen as an issue of land reform in contexts such as the Mexican Revolution. However, Nyambara states that Eurocentric historiographical devices such as 'feudalism' or 'slavery' often qualified by weak prefixes like 'semi-' or 'quasi-' are not helpful in understanding the antecedents and functions of sharecropping in Africa.^[6]

Sharecropping agreements can however be made fairly, as a form of tenant farming or sharefarming that has a variable rental payment, paid in arrears. There are three different types of contracts.^[7]

1. Workers can rent plots of land from the owner for a certain sum and keep the whole crop.
2. Workers work on the land and earn a fixed wage from the land owner but keep some of the crop.
3. No money changes hands but the worker and land owner each keep a share of the crop.

Advantages[link]

The advantages of sharecropping in other situations include enabling access for women^[8] to arable land where ownership rights are vested only in men.

Paige pointed out that sharecropping was economically inefficient in a free market. However, many outside factors make it efficient. One factor is slave emancipation: sharecropping provided the freed slaves of the USA, Brazil and the late Roman Empire with land access. It is efficient also as a way of escaping inflation, hence its rise in sixteenth century France and Italy. Landlords opt for sharecropping to avoid the administrative costs and shirking that occurs on plantations and haciendas. It is preferred to cash tenancy because cash tenants take all the risks, and any harvest failure will hurt them and not the landlord. Therefore, they tend to demand lower rents than sharecroppers.^[9]

Disadvantages[link]

The disadvantages of sharecropping, however, soon became apparent. A new system of credit, the crop lien, became closely associated with sharecropping. Under this system, a planter or merchant extended a line of credit to the sharecropper while taking the year’s crop as collateral. The sharecropper could then draw food and supplies all year long. When the crop was harvested, the planter or merchants who held the lien sold the harvest for the sharecropper and settled the debt.

Regions[link]

Africa[link]

In settler colonies of colonial Africa, sharecropping was a feature of the agricultural life. White farmers, who owned most of the land, were frequently unable to work the whole of their farm for lack of capital. They therefore allowed black farmers to work the excess on a sharecropping basis. In South Africa the 1913 Natives' Land Act^[10] outlawed the ownership of land by blacks in areas designated for white ownership and effectively reduced the status of most sharecroppers to tenant farmers and then to farm laborers. In the 1960s, generous subsidies to white farmers meant that most farmers could afford to work their entire farms, and sharecropping faded out.

The arrangement has reappeared in other African countries in modern times, including Ghana^[11] and Zimbabwe.^[12]

United States[link]

Sharecroppers at roadside after eviction (1936)

Sharecropping became widespread as a response to economic upheaval caused by the emancipation of slaves and disenfranchisement of poor whites in the agricultural South during Reconstruction. Plantations had first relied on slaves for cheap labor. Prior to emancipation, sharecropping was limited to poor landless whites, usually working marginal lands for absentee landlords. Following emancipation, sharecropping came to be an economic arrangement that largely maintained the status quo between black and white through legal means. One area that has attracted scholars interested in the rise or origins of Sharecropping is the Natchez District, roughly centered in Adams County, Mississippi and the county seat, Natchez. The location of the city, with access to the Mississippi River, but high on a bluff and safe from flooding, meant that the records of the cotton trading gentry survived the natural disasters. The Civil War largely bypassed the city, saving the records from man-made disasters as well.^[13] The mass influx of immigrants in the 1900s brought an increase in sharecropping during the World War I era. Sharecroppers worked a section of the plantation independently, usually growing cotton, tobacco, rice, and other cash crops and received a small portion of the parcel's output.^[14][15]

Although the sharecropping system was primarily a post-Civil War development, it did exist in antebellum Mississippi, especially in the northeastern part of the state, an area with few slaves or plantations,^[16] and most likely existed in Tennessee.^[17] Sharecropping, along with tenant farming, was a dominant form in the cotton South from the 1870s to the 1950s, among both blacks and whites, but it has largely disappeared.

After the American Civil War, plantation owners had to borrow money to produce crops. Interest rates on these loans were around 15%. The indebtedness of cotton planters increased through the early 1940s, and the average plantation fell into bankruptcy about every twenty years. It is against this backdrop that the wealthiest owners maintained their concentrated ownership of the land.^[18]

In Reconstruction-era United States, sharecropping was one of few options for penniless freedmen to conduct subsistence farming and support themselves and their families. Other solutions included the crop-lien system (where the farmer was extended credit for seed and other supplies by the merchant), a rent labor system (where the former slave rents their land but keeps their entire crop), and the wage system (worker earns a fixed wage, but keeps none of their crop). Sharecropping was by far the most economically efficient, as it provided incentives for workers to produce a bigger harvest. It was a stage beyond simple hired labor, because the sharecropper had an annual contract. During Reconstruction, the Freedman's Bureau wrote and enforced the contracts.

However, sharecropping was an easy way for white former slave owners to take advantage of uneducated freedmen. Former slaves had little to no education, so the landowner could draw up a 70-30 contract instead of half.

Cotton sharecroppers, Hale County, Alabama, 1936

Croppers were assigned a plot of land to work, and in exchange owed the owner a share of the crop at the end of the season, usually one-half. The owner provided the tools and farm animals. Farmers who owned their own mule and plow were at a higher stage and are called tenant farmers; they paid the landowner less, usually only a third of each crop. In both cases the farmer kept the produce of gardens.

The sharecropper purchased seed, tools and fertilizer, as well as food and clothing, on credit from a local merchant, or sometimes from a plantation store. When the harvest came, the cropper would harvest the whole crop and sell it to the merchant who had extended credit. Purchases and the landowner's share were deducted and the cropper kept the difference—or added to his debt.

Though the arrangement protected sharecroppers from the negative effects of a bad crop, many sharecroppers (both black and white) were economically confined to serf-like conditions of poverty. To work the land, sharecroppers had to buy seed and implements, sometimes from the plantation owner who often charged exorbitant prices against the sharecropper's next season. Arrangements also typically gave half or less of the crop to the sharecropper, and the sale price in some cases was set by the landowner. Lacking the resources to market his crops independently, the sharecropper was sometimes compensated in scrip redeemable only at the plantation.

Thus the cost of production and price of sale were both largely controlled by the land owner, with the sharecropper having little, if any, margin for profit. These factors made sharecroppers dependent on the plantation owners in a way that perpetuated some of the aspects of slavery, and in the late 19th century maintained a stable, low-cost work force that replaced slave labor; it was the bottom rung in the Southern tenancy ladder.

Photo of sharecropper family in Walker County, Alabama, ca. 1937

By the early 1930s there were 5.5 million white tenants, sharecroppers, and mixed cropping/laborers in the United States, and 3 million blacks.^[19][20] In Tennessee whites made up two thirds or more of the sharecroppers.^[17] In Mississippi, by 1900, 36% of all white farmers were tenants or sharecroppers, while 85 percent of black farmers were.^[16] Sharecropping continued to be a significant institution in Tennessee agriculture for more than sixty years after the Civil War, peaking in importance in the early 1930s, when sharecroppers operated approximately one-third of all farm units in the state.^[17]

The situation of landless farmers who challenged the system in the rural south as late as 1941 has been described thus: "he is at once a target subject of ridicule and vitriolic denunciation; he may even be waylaid by hooded or unhooded leaders of the community, some of whom may be public officials. If a white man persists in 'causing trouble', the night riders may pay him a visit, or the officials may haul him into court; if he is a Negro, a mob may hunt him down."^[21]

Sharecroppers formed unions in the 1930s, beginning in Tallapoosa County, Alabama in 1931, and Arkansas in 1934. Membership in the Southern Tenant Farmers Union included both blacks and poor whites. As leadership strengthened, meetings became more successful, and protest became more vigorous, landlords responded with a wave of terror.^[22]

Sharecroppers' strikes in Arkansas and the Bootheel of Missouri, the 1939 Missouri Sharecroppers' Strike, were documented in the film Oh Freedom After While.^[23]

In the 1930s and 1940s, increasing mechanization virtually brought the institution of sharecropping to an end in the United States.^[17][24] The sharecropping system in the U.S. increased during the Great Depression with the creation of tenant farmers following the failure of many small farms throughout the Dust bowl. Traditional sharecropping declined after mechanization of farm work became economical in the mid-20th century. As a result, many sharecroppers were forced off the farms, and migrated to the industrialized North to work in factories, or become migrant workers in the Western United States during World War II.

Sharecropping agreements[link]

Typically, a sharecropping agreement would specify which party was expected to cover certain expenses, like seed, fertilizer, weed control, irrigation district assessments, and fuel. Sometimes the sharecropper covered those costs, but they expected a larger share of the crop in return. The agreement would also indicate whether the sharecropper would use his own equipment to raise the crops, or use the landlord's equipment. The agreement would also indicate whether the landlord would pick up his or her share of the crop in the field or whether the sharecropper would deliver it (and where it would be delivered.)

For example, a landowner may have a sharecropper farming an irrigated hayfield. The sharecropper uses his own equipment, and covers all the costs of fuel and fertilizer. The landowner pays the irrigation district assessments and does the irrigating himself. The sharecropper cuts and bales the hay, and delivers one-third of the baled hay to the landlord's feedlot. The sharecropper might also leave the landlord's share of the baled hay in the field, where the landlord would fetch it when he wanted hay.

Another arrangement could have the sharecropper delivering the landlord's share of the product to market, in which case the landlord would get his share in the form of the sale proceeds. In that case, the agreement should indicate the timing of the delivery to market, which can have a significant effect on the ultimate price of some crops. The market timing decision should probably be decided shortly before harvest, so that the landlord has more complete information about the area's harvest, to determine whether the crop will earn more money immediately after harvest, or whether it should be stored until the price rises. Market timing can entail storage costs and losses to spoilage as well, for some crops.

Farmer's cooperatives[link]

Cooperative farming exists in many forms throughout the United States, Canada, and the rest of the world. Various arrangements can be made through collective bargaining or purchasing to get the best deals on seeds, supplies, and equipment. For example, members of a farmers' cooperative who cannot afford heavy equipment of their own can lease them for nominal fees from the cooperative. Farmers' cooperatives can also allow groups of small farmers and dairymen to manage pricing and prevent undercutting by competitors.

Economic theories of share tenancy[link]

The theory of share tenancy was long dominated by Alfred Marshall's famous footnote 5^{[citation needed]}, wherein he illustrated the inefficiency of agricultural share-contracting. Steven N.S. Cheung (1969),^[25] challenged this view, showing that with sufficient competition and in the absence of transaction costs, share tenancy will be equivalent to competitive labor markets and therefore efficient.^[26] He also showed that in the presence of transaction costs, share-contracting may be preferred to either wage contracts or rent contracts—due to the mitigation of labor shirking and the provision of risk sharing. Joseph Stiglitz (1974,^[27] 1988),^[28] suggested that if share tenancy is only a labor contract, then it is only pairwise-efficient and that land-to-the-tiller reform would improve social efficiency by removing the necessity for labor contracts in the first place. Reid (1973),^[29] Murrel (1983),^[30] Roumasset (1995)^[31] and Allen and Lueck (2004)^[32] provided transaction cost theories of share-contracting, wherein tenancy is more of a partnership than a labor contract and both landlord and tenant provide multiple inputs. It has been also argued that the sharecropping institution can be explained by factors such as informational asymmetry (Hallagan, 1978;^[33] Allen, 1982;^[34] Muthoo, 1998 ^[35]), moral hazard (Reid, 1976;^[36] Eswaran and Kotwal, 1985;^[37] Ghatak and Pandey, 2000^[38]) or limited liability (Shetty, 1988;^[39] Basu, 1992;^[40] Sengupta, 1997;^[41] Ray and Singh, 2001^[42]).

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sharecroppers

• Convict lease
• Peonage
• Rural tenancy
• Sharefarming
• Sharemilking

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Adams, Jane, and D. Gorton, "This Land Ain’t My Land: The Eviction of Sharecroppers by the Farm Security Administration," Agricultural History, 83 (Spring 2009), 323–51.
• Allen, D. W and D. Lueck. "Contract Choice in Modern Agriculture: Cash Rent versus Cropshare," Journal of Law and Economics, (1992) v. 35, pp. 397–426.
• Barbagallo, Tricia (June 1, 2005). "Black Beach: The Mucklands of Canastota, New York" (PDF). http://www.archives.nysed.gov/apt/magazine/MagSummer05FeatureArticle_000.pdf. Retrieved 2008-06-04. 
• Davis, Ronald L. F. Good and Faithful Labor: From Slavery to Sharecropping in the Natchez District, 1860-1890 Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 1982
• Ferleger, Louis. "Sharecropping Contracts in the Late-Nineteenth-Century South," Agricultural History Vol. 67, No. 3 (Summer, 1993), pp. 31–46 in JSTOR
• Garrett, Martin A., and Zhenhui Xu. "The Efficiency of Sharecropping: Evidence from the Postbellum South," Southern Economic Journal, Vol. 69, 2003
• Grubbs, Donald H. Cry from the Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmer's Union and the New Deal (1971)
• Hurt, R. Douglas Hurt. African American Life in the Rural South, 1900–1950 (2003)
• Liebowitz, Jonathan J. "Tenants, Sharecroppers, and the French Agricultural Depression of the Late Nineteenth Century," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Winter, 1989), pp. 429–445 in JSTOR
• Reid, Jr., Joseph D. "Sharecropping in History and Theory," Agricultural History Vol. 49, No. 2 (Apr., 1975), pp. 426–440 in JSTOR
• Roll, Jarod. "Out Yonder on the Road": Working Class Self-Representation and the 1939 Roadside Demonstration in Southeast Missouri", Southern Spaces, March 16, 2010. Southernspaces.org
• Shaban, R. A. "Testing Between Competing Models of Sharecropping," Journal of Political Economy, (1987) 95(5), pp. 893–920.
• Singh, N. "Theories of Sharecropping," in P. Bardhan. ed., The Economic Theory of Agrarian Institutions, (1989) pp. 33–72.
• Southworth, Caleb. "Aid to Sharecroppers: How Agrarian Class Structure and Tenant-Farmer Politics Influenced Federal Relief in the South, 1933–1935," Social Science History, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring, 2002), pp. 33–70
• Stiglitz, J. "Incentives and Risk Sharing in Share Cropping," Review of Economic Studies, (1974) v.41 219–255.
• Turner, Howard A. "Farm Tenancy Distribution and Trends in the United States," Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. 4, No. 4, Farm Tenancy (Oct., 1937), pp. 424–433 in JSTOR
• Virts, Nancy. "The Efficiency of Southern Tenant Plantations, 1900–1945," Journal of Economic History, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Jun., 1991), pp.  385–395 in JSTOR
• Wayne, Michael The Reshaping of Plantation Society: The Natchez District, 1860-1880 Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Louisiana State University Press, 1983

Stoney LaRue (born Stoney Larue Phillips in 1977) is a Texas Country/Red Dirt artist. Born in Taft, Texas, LaRue was raised in Southeastern Oklahoma and began playing country music at a young age.

LaRue moved to Stillwater, Oklahoma and began to play in the various bars around the college town, as well as his brother, Bo Phillips and sister, Hallie Bertrand. He befriended Jason Boland and Cody Canada and the three moved into the infamous "Yellow House" where they would have late night jam sessions and entertain other various musicians around the town, like Mike McClure and Brandon Jenkins.^[1]

In 2002, LaRue led The Organic Boogie Band and released Downtown, recorded in private sessions at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa. LaRue's 2005 follow-up, The Red Dirt Album, reached the Billboard sales charts in its debut week. The next year, Stoney released his first live record Live at Billy Bob's Texas.

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

Music videos[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Larue's biography at CMT
• Larue's biography at Lonestar Music

Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer in 1964
Born	Fannie Lou Townsend (1917-10-06)October 6, 1917 Montgomery County, Mississippi
Died	March 14, 1977(1977-03-14) (aged 59) Mound Bayou, Mississippi
Other names	Fannie Lou Hamer
Known for	Civil Rights Activist; vice chair of Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

Fannie Lou Hamer (born Fannie Lou Townsend; October 6, 1917 – March 14, 1977) was an American voting rights activist and civil rights leader.

She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, attending the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in that capacity. Her plain-spoken manner and fervent belief in the Biblical righteousness of her cause gained her a reputation as an electrifying speaker and constant activist of civil rights.

Beginnings of activism[link]

During the 1950s, Hamer attended several annual conferences of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL) in the all-black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi. The RCNL was led by Dr. T.R.M. Howard, a civil rights leader and wealthy black entrepreneur, and was a combination civil rights and self-help organization. The annual RCNL conferences featured entertainers, such as Mahalia Jackson, speakers, such as Thurgood Marshall and Rep. Charles Diggs of Michigan, and panels on voting rights and other civil rights issues.^[1] Without her knowledge or consent, she was sterilized in 1961 by a white doctor as a part of the state of Mississippi's plan to reduce the number of poor blacks in the state.^[2]

On August 23, 1962, Rev. James Bevel, an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and an associate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a sermon in Ruleville, Mississippi and followed it with an appeal to those assembled to register to vote. Black people who registered to vote in the South faced serious hardships at that time due to institutionalized racism, including harassment, the loss of their jobs, physical beatings, and lynchings; nonetheless, Hamer was the first volunteer. She later said, "I guess if I'd had any sense, I'd have been a little scared - but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember."

On August 31, she traveled on a rented bus with other attendees of Bevel's sermon to Indianola, Mississippi to register. In what would become a signature trait of Hamer's activist career, she began singing Christian hymns, such as "Go Tell It on the Mountain" and "This Little Light of Mine," to the group in order to bolster their resolve. The hymns also reflected Hamer's belief that the civil rights struggle was a deeply spiritual one.

Hamer's courage and leadership in Indianola came to the attention of SNCC organizer Bob Moses, who dispatched Charles McLaurin from the organization with instructions to find "the lady who sings the hymns". McLaurin found and recruited Hamer, and though she remained based in Mississippi, she began traveling around the South doing activist work for the organization.

On June 9, 1963, Hamer was on her way back from Charleston, South Carolina with other activists from a literacy workshop. Stopping in Winona, Mississippi, the group was arrested on a false charge and jailed. Once in jail, Hamer and her colleagues were beaten savagely by the police, almost to the point of death.

Released on June 12, she needed more than a month to recover. Though the incident had profound physical and psychological effects, Hamer returned to Mississippi to organize voter registration drives, including the "Freedom Ballot Campaign", a mock election, in 1963, and the "Freedom Summer" initiative in 1964. She was known to the volunteers of Freedom Summer - most of whom were young, white, and from northern states - as a motherly figure who believed that the civil rights effort should be multi-racial in nature. In addition to her "Northeren" guest, Hamer played host to Tuskegee University student activists, Sammy Younge Jr. and Wendell Paris. Younge and Paris grew to become profund activst and organizers under Hamer's tutelage. Younge utlimately gave his life to the movement in 1966, when he was assissinated in Tuskegee. Paris continued however his activst career working and organzaing in Tuskegee as well as Mississppi.

Hamer at the Democratic National Convention[link]

In the summer of 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, or "Freedom Democrats" for short, was organized with the purpose of challenging Mississippi's all-white and anti-civil rights delegation to the Democratic National Convention of that year as not representative of all Mississippians. Hamer was elected Vice-Chair.

The Freedom Democrats efforts drew national attention to the plight of African-Americans in Mississippi, and represented a challenge to President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for reelection; their success would mean that other Southern delegations, who were already leaning toward Republican challenger Barry Goldwater, would publicly break from the convention's decision to nominate Johnson — meaning in turn that he would almost certainly lose those states' electoral votes in the election. Hamer, singing her signature hymns, drew a great deal of attention from the media, enraging Johnson, who referred to her in speaking to his advisors as "that illiterate woman".

Hamer was invited, along with the rest of the MFDP officers, to address the Convention's Credentials Committee. She recounted the problems she had encountered in registration, and the ordeal of the jail in Winona, and, near tears, concluded:

"All of this is on account we want to register [sic], to become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings - in America?"

In Washington, D.C., President Johnson called an emergency press conference in an effort to divert press coverage away from Hamer's testimony; but many television networks ran the speech unedited on their late news programs. The Credentials Committee received thousands of calls and letters in support of the Freedom Democrats.

Johnson then dispatched several trusted Democratic Party operatives to attempt to negotiate with the Freedom Democrats, including Senator Hubert Humphrey (who was campaigning for the Vice-Presidential nomination), Walter Mondale, and Walter Reuther, as well as J. Edgar Hoover. They suggested a compromise which would give the MFDP two non-voting seats in exchange for other concessions, and secured the endorsement of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for the plan. But when Humphrey outlined the compromise, saying that his position on the ticket was at stake, Hamer, invoking her Christian beliefs, sharply rebuked him:

"Do you mean to tell me that your position is more important than four hundred thousand black people's lives? Senator Humphrey, I know lots of people in Mississippi who have lost their jobs trying to register to vote. I had to leave the plantation where I worked in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Now if you lose this job of Vice-President because you do what is right, because you help the MFDP, everything will be all right. God will take care of you. But if you take [the nomination] this way, why, you will never be able to do any good for civil rights, for poor people, for peace, or any of those things you talk about. Senator Humphrey, I'm going to pray to Jesus for you."

Future negotiations were conducted without Hamer, and the compromise was modified such that the Convention would select the two delegates to be seated, for fear the MFDP would appoint Hamer. In the end, the MFDP rejected the compromise, but had changed the debate to the point that the Democratic Party adopted a clause which demanded equality of representation from their states' delegations in 1968.

Later activism[link]

Hamer continued to work in Mississippi for the Freedom Democrats and for local civil rights causes. She ran for Congress in 1964 and 1965, and was then seated as a member of Mississippi's legitimate delegation to the Democratic National Convention of 1968, where she was an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War.

She continued to work on other projects, including grassroots-level Head Start programs, the Freedom Farm Cooperative in Sunflower County, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign. She was also inducted as an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.

Hamer died of heart failure due to hypertension on March 14, 1977, at the age of 59 at a hospital in Mound Bayou, Mississippi and is buried in her hometown of Ruleville, Mississippi. Her tombstone reads one of her famous quotes, "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired."

Compositions based on Hamer's life[link]

Sweet Honey in the Rock, the Washington DC-based African American female a capella singing group, wrote and recorded a song called "Fannie Lou Hamer."^[3]

Dark River, an opera about Hamer written by composer and pianist Mary D. Watkins, premiered in November 2009 in Oakland, California.

95 South's "All of the Places We've Been" by Gil Scott-Heron with Brian Jackson is a standard at any Gil Scott-Heron show. The song is his tribute to Fannie Lou Hamer, as he stated in his DVD of a 2001 concert, New Morning: The Paris Concert.

Other Tributes to Fannie Lou Hamer[link]

There is a Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden in Ruleville, Mississippi. ^[4] It was rededicated by the city on July 12th, 2008. ^[5]

The Fannie Lou Hamer Civil Rights Marker (part of the Memorial Garden) was unveiled on May 25th, 2011. ^[6]

A statue of Fannie Lou Hamer will be unveiled on Friday, October 5th, 2012 at the Memorial Garden. ^[7]

Quotes of Fannie Lou Hamer[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Fannie Lou Hamer

"We didn't come all the way up here to compromise for no more than we’d gotten here. We didn't come all this way for no two seats when all of us is tired."^[8]

"All my life I've been sick and tired. Now I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."^[9]

"Nobody's free until everybody's free."^{[citation needed]}

References[link]

• Asch, Chris Myers (2008). "The Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer." New York: The New Press. ISBN 978-1-59558-332-1
• Colman, Penny (1993). Fannie Lou Hamer and the Fight for the Vote. The Millbrook Press
• Lee, Chana Kai (1999). For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. Athens: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 0-252-06936-6
• Marsh, Charles (1997). God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02134-1
• Mills, Kay (1993). This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. New York: Dutton.
• Nelson, Jennifer (2003). Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 0-8147-5827-4.
• Payne, Charles M. (1995). I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-20706-8

External links[link]

	Mississippi portal
	Biography portal
	African American portal

• Oral History
• National Women's Hall of Fame entry
• Ron Schuler's Parlour Tricks: Fannie Lou Hamer
• Fannie Lou Hamer's Gravesite
• Fannie Lou Hamer Collection (MUM00215) owned by the University of Mississippi, Archives and Special Collections.
• FBI file on Fannie Lou Hamer
• Booknotes interview with Kay Mills on This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer, February 28, 1993.

Gillian Welch
Gillian Welch performing at MerleFest in 2007
Background information
Born	(1967-10-02) October 2, 1967 (age 44) New York City, New York, U.S.
Origin	New York, U.S. (born in); moved to LA, California with family; Nashville, Tennessee (currently resides)
Genres	Bluegrass, Americana, Country
Occupations	Singer-songwriter
Instruments	singing, acoustic guitar, banjo, drums
Associated acts	Dave Rawlings Machine
Website	gillianwelch.com
Notable instruments
1956 Gibson J-50

Gillian Welch (/ˈɡɪliən ˈwɛltʃ/; born October 2, 1967) is an American singer-songwriter. She performs with her musical partner, guitarist David Rawlings. Their sparse and dark musical style, which combines elements of Appalachian music, Bluegrass, and Americana, is described by The New Yorker as "at once innovative and obliquely reminiscent of past rural forms".^[1]

Welch and Rawlings have released five critically acclaimed albums. Their 1996 debut, Revival, and the 2001 release Time (The Revelator), received nominations for the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Their 2003 album, Soul Journey, introduced electric guitar, drums and a more upbeat sound to their body of work. After a gap of eight years, they released their fifth studio album, The Harrow & The Harvest, in 2011.

Welch was an associate producer and performed on two songs of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, a platinum album that won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2002. Welch has collaborated and recorded with distinguished musicians such as Alison Krauss, Ryan Adams, Jay Farrar, Emmylou Harris, The Decemberists, and Ani DiFranco. Welch and Rawlings perform at many music festivals.

Early life[link]

Gillian^{[a 1]} Howard Welch was born on October 2, 1967 in New York City, and was adopted by Ken and Mitzie Welch, comedy and music entertainers.^[1] Her biological mother was a freshman in college, and her father was a musician visiting New York City.^[1][2][3] Welch has speculated that her biological father could have been one of her favorite musicians, and she later discovered from her adoptive parents that he was a drummer.^[1][2][3] Alec Wilkinson of The New Yorker stated that "from an address they had been given, it appeared that her mother ... may have grown up in the mountains of North Carolina".^[1] When Welch was three, her adoptive parents moved to Los Angeles to write music for The Carol Burnett Show. They also appeared on The Tonight Show.^[1]

	"Orphan Girl" noicon The first track on Gillian Welch's first album Revival. This song exemplifies Welch and Rawlings' minimal arrangements and Welch's lyrics about outcasts
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As a youngster, Welch was introduced to the music of American folk singers Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Carter Family. She performed folk songs with her peers at the Westland Elementary School in Los Angeles.^[1][4] Welch later attended Crossroads School, a high school in Santa Monica, California. While in high school, a local television program featured her as a student who "excelled at everything she did".^[1]

When a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Welch played bass in a goth band, and drums in a psychedelic surf band.^[1] In college, a roommate played an album by the bluegrass band The Stanley Brothers, and she had an epiphany:

The first song came on and I just stood up and I kind of walked into the other room as if I was in a tractor beam and stood there in front of the stereo. It was just as powerful as the electric stuff, and it was songs I'd grown up singing. All of a sudden I'd found my music.^[5]

After graduating from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in photography, Welch attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she majored in songwriting.^[6] During her two years studying at Berklee, Welch gained confidence as a performer.^[1][6] Welch met her music partner David Rawlings at a successful audition for Berklee's only country band.^[7][8]

Career[link]

Rawlings and Welch performing in Seattle in 2009

Upon finishing college in 1992, Welch and Rawlings moved to Nashville, Tennessee.^[9] She recalled, "I looked at my record collection and saw that all the music I loved had been made in Nashville—Bill Monroe, Dylan, The Stanley Brothers, Neil Young—so I moved there. Not ever thinking I was thirty years too late."^[1] Rawlings soon followed. In Nashville, after singing "Long Black Veil", the two first realized that their voices harmonized well and they started to perform as a duo.^[1] They never considered using a working name, so the duo were simply billed as "Gillian Welch".^[1] A year after moving to Nashville, Welch found a manager, Denise Stiff, who already managed Alison Krauss. Both Welch and Stiff ignored frequent advice that Welch should stop playing with Rawlings and join a band.^[1][4] They eventually signed a recording contract with Almo Sounds.^[4] Following a performance opening for Peter Rowan at the Station Inn, producer T-Bone Burnett expressed interest in recording an album. Burnett did not plan to disturb Welch's and Rawlings' preference for minimal instrumentation, and Welch agreed to take him on as a producer.^[10]

[edit] Revival

For the recording sessions of Welch's debut, Revival, Burnett wanted to recapture the bare sound of Welch's live performance.^[10] Welch recalled, "That first week was really intense. It was just T-Bone, the engineer, and Dave and myself. We got so inside our little world. There was very little distance between our singing and playing. The sound was very immediate. It was so light and small."^[10] Later, they recorded several more songs and played with an expanded group of musicians; guitarist and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee James Burton, bassist Roy Huskey, Jr., and veteran session drummers Jim Keltner, and Buddy Harman.^[10]

The album was released in April 1996 to positive reviews. Mark Deming of Allmusic called it a "superb debut" and wrote, "Welch's debts to artists of the past are obvious and clearly acknowledged, but there's a maturity, intelligence, and keen eye for detail in her songs you wouldn't expect from someone simply trying to ape the Carter Family."^[11] Bill Friskics-Warren of No Depression praised the album as "breathtakingly austere evocations of rural culture".^[10] The Arlington Heights, Illinois Daily Herald's Mark Guarino observed that Revival was "cheered and scrutinized as a staunch revivalist of Depression-era music only because her originals sounded so much like that era." He attributed this to the biblical imagery of the lyrics, Burnett's threadbare production, and the plainly-sung bleakness in Welch's vocals.^[12] Ann Powers of Rolling Stone gave Revival a lukewarm review and criticized Welch for not singing of her own experiences, and "manufacturing emotion."^[13] Robert Christgau echoed Powers: Welch "just doesn't have the voice, eye, or way with words to bring her simulation off."^[14] Revival was nominated for the 1997 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album, but lost to Bruce Springsteen's The Ghost of Tom Joad.^[15]

[edit] Hell Among The Yearlings

The duo's 1998 Hell Among the Yearlings continued the rustic and dark themes; the songs' subject matter varies from a female character killing a rapist, a mining accident, a murder ballad, and an ode to morphine before death.^[16] Like Revival, Hell Among The Yearlings featured a sparse style that focused on Rawlings and Welch's voices and guitars.^[16][17]

Gillian Welch performing at the 2007 New Orleans Jazz Fest

The album also received favorable reviews. Robert Wilonsky of the Dallas Observer observed that Welch "inhabits a role so completely, the fiction separating character and audience disappears".^[18] Thom Owens (Allmusic) stated that the album "lacks some of the focus" of Revival, but is "a thoroughly satisfying second album" and proof that her debut was not a fluke.^[19] No Depression's Farnum Brown commended the live and "immediate feel" of the album, Welch's clawhammer banjo,^[20] and Rawlings' harmonies.^[15] Similar to Revival, Welch was praised for reflecting influences such as the Stanley Brothers, but still managing to create an original sound,^[17] while Chris Herrington from Minneapolis's City Pages criticized the songs' lack of authenticity. He wrote "Welch doesn't write folk songs; she writes folk songs about writing folk songs."^[21]

[edit] O Brother, Where Art Thou?

David Rawlings, Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss performing at the 2008 Austin City Limits Music Festival

Welch sang two songs and served as an associate producer for the Burnett-produced soundtrack to the 2000 film of the same name.^[22] She shared vocals with Alison Krauss on a rendition of the gospel song "I'll Fly Away." Dave McKenna of The Washington Post praised their version: the singers "soar together."^[23] Burnett and Welch wrote additional lyrics for the song "Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby," sung by Welch, Emmylou Harris, and Krauss. The song is an elaboration of an old Mississippi tune discovered by Alan Lomax, and was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals.^[24] The platinum album won the 2002 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The surprise success of the soundtrack gave Welch a career boost.^[25][26] Welch also made a cameo appearance in the film.^[27]

[edit] Time (The Revelator)

When Universal Music Group purchased Almo Sounds, Welch began her own independent label, Acony Records (named for the Appalachian wildflower, Acony Bell, subject of the eponymous song on Revival).^[4][12] Rawlings produced the first release on Welch's new label, the 2001 album Time (The Revelator).^[12][28] All but one song on the album was recorded in the historic RCA Studio B in Nashville.^[29] "I Want To Sing That Rock and Roll" was recorded live at the Ryman Auditorium in the recording sessions for the concert film Down from the Mountain.

David Rawlings and Gillian Welch performing at the 2009 Newport Folk Festival

Welch has said the album is about American history, rock 'n' roll, and country music.^[30] There are songs about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the Titanic Disaster, John Henry, and Elvis Presley.^[29] Time continues Welch and Rawlings' style of mellow and sparse arrangements. Welch explained, "As opposed to being little tiny folk songs or traditional songs, they're really tiny rock songs. They're just performed in this acoustic setting. In our heads we went electric without changing instruments."^[31]

Time (The Revelator) received extensive critical praise, most of which focused on the evolution of lyrics from mountain ballads.^[22][31][32] For Michael Shannon Friedman of The Charleston Gazette, "Welch's soul-piercing, backwoods quaver has always been a treasure, but on this record her songwriting is absolutely stunning."^[32] Critics compare the last track, the 15-minute "I Dream a Highway", to classics by Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Zac Johnson of Allmusic described I Dream... as akin to "sweetly dozing in the [river] current like Huck and Jim's Mississippi River afternoons".^[31][32] No Depression's Grant Alden wrote, "Welch and Rawlings have gathered ... fragments from across the rich history of American music and reset them as small, subtle jewels adorning their own keenly observed, carefully constructed language."^[22] Time finished thirteenth in the 2001 Village Voice Pazz & Jop music critic poll.^[33] Time (The Revelator) appeared in best of decade lists of Rolling Stone, Paste, Uncut, The Irish Times, and the Ottawa Citizen.^{[28][34][35][36][37]} The album was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album, but lost to Bob Dylan's Love and Theft.^[38] Time peaked at #7 on the Billboard Independent Album chart.^[39]

The Revelator Collection DVD was released in 2002. It featured live performances and music videos of songs from Time, and some covers. The concert footage was filmed in 2001, and the music videos included Welch and Rawlings performing three songs at RCA Studio B. No Depression's Barry Mazor praised the DVD as an accompaniment for Time, calling it "one last exclamation point on that memorable and important project".^[40]

[edit] Soul Journey

	"Wrecking Ball" noicon The final track on Gillian Welch's fourth album Soul Journey. The electric guitar and drums represent a new sound for Welch and David Rawlings
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For the 2003 release, Soul Journey, Welch and Rawlings explored new territory. Welch said: "I wanted to make it a happier record. Out of our four records, I thought this might be the one where you're driving down the road listening to it on a sunny summer day."^[41] Rawlings again produced the record. The album also reflected a change in the typically sparse instrumentation: Welch and Rawlings introduced a dobro, violin, electric bass and drums, and Welch later said, "Everything's not supposed to sound the same, you want it to reflect change and growth."^[7]

Justin Townes Earle & Gillian Welch performing in 2009

In three songs of Soul Journey, for the first time Welch and Rawlings recorded their own versions of traditional folk songs.^[42] On the original compositions, Welch's lyrics are more autobiographical than previous albums.^[12]

The album received mixed reviews. Allmusic's Zac Johnson wrote that it was "too casual and off-the-cuff", but called it a "wonderful, dusty summertime front-porch album, full of whiskey drawls and sly smiles, floorboard stomps and screen-door creaks".^[43] Jon Caramanica of Rolling Stone criticized the slower songs as stagnant, but complimented the upbeat songs.^[44] Soul Journey also garnered significant acclaim. John Harris of Mojo magazine described the album as "pretty much perfect", and Uncut's Barney Hoskyns favorably compared it to Bob Dylan and The Band's The Basement Tapes.^[45][46] Will Hermes of Entertainment Weekly wrote that Welch has "never sounded deeper, realer, or sexier."^[47] Soul Journey peaked at #107 on the Billboard charts, and reached #3 for Independent Albums.^[48]

Dave Rawlings Machine[link]

Welch and Rawlings continued their partnership in the band Dave Rawlings Machine. Welch co-wrote five of the songs with Rawlings, and provided guitar and harmony vocals.^[49][50] Andy Gill of The Independent described the 2009 debut album A Friend of a Friend as "akin to one of Welch's albums, but with the balance of their harmonies swapped to favour Rawlings' voice".^[51] Although ostensibly Rawlings' first solo album, Alex Ramon of PopMatters noted the similarities to Welch albums.^[50] Paste Magazine's Stephen Deusner praised A Friend of a Friend for incorporating "a wide swath of traditional American music," comments echoed by Rolling Stone's Will Hermes and in the PopMatters piece.^[50][52][53]

[edit] The Harrow & The Harvest

In a 2007 feature in The Guardian, critic John Harris expressed frustration that there had not been a Gillian Welch release in four years.^[54] Creation Records founder Alan McGee showed optimism about Welch and Rawlings testing out some new songs while opening some concerts for Rilo Kiley, and wrote in a 2009 blog entry "the long gestation period signals nothing less than a perfect album".^[55] In 2009, Rawlings said that recording for the next Gillian Welch album has started, but did not give a release date.^[56]

The Harrow & The Harvest was released on June 28, 2011.^[57] Welch attributed the long time period between releases to writer's block and dissatisfaction with initial recording attempts.^[58] She explained: "Our songcraft slipped and I really don't know why. It's not uncommon. It's something that happens to writers. It's the deepest frustration we have come through, hence the album title."^[58] The writing process involved "this endless back and forth between the two of us," Welch said, stating that "It’s our most intertwined, co-authored, jointly-composed album."^[59]

The album received praise from publications such as The Los Angeles Times, Uncut, and Rolling Stone.^[60][61][62] Thom Jurek of Allmusic wrote that the album "is stunning for its intimacy, its lack of studio artifice, its warmth and its timeless, if hard won, songcraft".^[63]