Books by Cindy L Grisham
Book Reviews by Cindy L Grisham
A book review of Michael Honey's biography of John Handcox, a union organizer and singer/songwrit... more A book review of Michael Honey's biography of John Handcox, a union organizer and singer/songwriter for the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union.
Papers by Cindy L Grisham
Journal of American Folklore, Oct 1, 2015
Sharecropper's Troubadour: John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and the A... more Sharecropper's Troubadour: John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and the African American Song Tradition. by Michael K. Honey. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. xi + 210, acknowledgments, foreword, introduction, references, index, 19 illustrations.)This beautifully written book brings a new dimension to the story of a unique southern labor union through the life and work of organizer, activist, songwriter, and poet John L. Handcox. Handcox was a leader in the Southern Tenant Farmers' union, a loosely organized union of sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and day laborers created during the worst years of the Great Depression in the cotton fields of eastern Arkansas. The union leadership was a combination of white Socialists, who were proponents of J. Alva Taylor's Social Gospel, and black ministers and sharecroppers, who faced political corruption, planter-led violence, and economic as well as physical intimidation as they strove to create integrated locals in a region where the Ku Klux Klan was alive and well.The book centers on the life of John Handcox, who was born in 1904 near the small farming town of Brinkley, Arkansas. Descended from black slaves, their white masters, and Native Americans, he grew up luckier than many of his neighbors, both black and white, in that his parents owned their own farm. Able to grow what they wanted, when they wanted, the Handcox children were free to attend school more than the standard two months a year attended by the average sharecropper child. Young John was enamored with the work of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar and began writing poems and songs primarily as a way to entertain his classmates and family. When his father died suddenly in an accident, John was forced to leave school to help support his family. His education, especially his ability to calculate figures in his head, allowed him to avoid the unscrupulous merchants and businessmen who preyed on the poor. His entrepreneurial spirit kept him ahead of most of his friends and family financially, which allowed greater independence. A keen observer of life, he came to believe that the problems of Africans Americans would never be solved unless the issues of class inequality were addressed and the poor of every color worked together to achieve unity.Handcox learned of the Southern Tenant Farmers' union from a neighbor, and almost immediately went to work organizing the local farm families. Although not a churchgoer himself, he understood the power of music to unite individuals to a common way of thinking. He began writing new words to old, well-known songs, utilizing a common method to folksingers: shape-note singing, popular in both the African American church and the evangelical white churches in the South, allowed the membership to easily understand his methods and join in. …
Journal of American Folklore, Oct 1, 2015
Journal of American Folklore, 2015
Sharecropper's Troubadour: John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and the A... more Sharecropper's Troubadour: John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and the African American Song Tradition. by Michael K. Honey. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. xi + 210, acknowledgments, foreword, introduction, references, index, 19 illustrations.)This beautifully written book brings a new dimension to the story of a unique southern labor union through the life and work of organizer, activist, songwriter, and poet John L. Handcox. Handcox was a leader in the Southern Tenant Farmers' union, a loosely organized union of sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and day laborers created during the worst years of the Great Depression in the cotton fields of eastern Arkansas. The union leadership was a combination of white Socialists, who were proponents of J. Alva Taylor's Social Gospel, and black ministers and sharecroppers, who faced political corruption, planter-led violence, and economic as well as physical intimidation as they strove to create integrated...
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Books by Cindy L Grisham
Book Reviews by Cindy L Grisham
Papers by Cindy L Grisham