Forgotten Time: The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta after the Civil War

Abstract

This work explores the level of economic opportunity that African Americans in the Ya zooMississippi Delta experienced from the end of the Civil War through the early twentieth century. John C. Willis begins by noting how undeveloped this area was in 1860 when it contained fewer than fifty thousand settlers (87 percent African American) and but one tenth of its acreage had been cleared. It would be the combination of vast untapped resources and the need to attract a black labor force that would make this an area of unusual economic opportunity for blacks during the late nineteenth century. This book is held together by a combination of fascinating individual portraits of black farmers as well as an impressive database constructed by Willis from information on about twentyfive thousand farm owners and laborers from three counties using the 1870, 1880, and 1900 federal manuscript censuses. These portraits reveal interesting characters and families and raise important questions about the factors that shaped economic opportunity. For example, Willis describes the circumstances that influenced Bohlen Lucas, a black farmer who accumulated hundreds of acres of land through hard work and equally impressive manipulation of white patrons. Lucas enhanced his position within the white community by supporting the Democratic party—a position that ultimately led to his election as county treasurer and to the retribution of freedmen. Willis points out that it was not surprising that as county treasurer Lucas deputized two white Democrats as his assistants, since this otherwise very successful landowner was illiterate. This observation then leads Willis to note that Lucas was not unusual, as threefifths of black farm owners in his Delta database also were illiterate, and that this shortcoming did not pose an “insurmountable handicap” to farm ownership.