Synopses & Reviews
Although it came to epitomize the Cotton South in the twentiethcentury, the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta emerged as a distinct entity in the decadesfollowing the Civil War. As other southerners confronted the need to rebuild, theDelta remained mostly wilderness in 1865. Elsewhere, planters struggled to maintainthe perquisites of slaveholding and poor families tried desperately to escape thesharecropper's lot, yet Delta landlords offered generous terms to freed peoplewilling to clear and cultivate backcountry acres subject to yellow fever and yearlyflooding. By the turn of the century, two-thirds of the region's farmers wereAfrican Americans, whose holdings represented great political and economicstrength.
Most historical studies of the Deltahave either lauded the achievements of its white planters or found its record numberof lynchings representative of the worst aspects of the New South. By looking beyondwhite planters to the region as a whole, John C. Willis uncovers surprising evidenceof African-American enterprise, the advantages of tenancy in an unstable cottonmarket, and the dominance of foreign-born merchants in the area, including manyChinese. Examining the lives of individuals--freedmen, planters, andmerchants--Willis explores the reciprocal interests of former slaves and formerslaveholders. He shows how, in a cruel irony replicated in other areas of the South, the backbreaking work that African Americans did to clear, settle, and farm the landaway from the river made the land ultimately too valuable for them to retain. By thebeginning of the twentieth century, the Delta began to devolve back into astereotypical southern region with African Americans cast back into an impoverished, debt-ridden labor system.
The Yazoo-MississippiDelta has long been seen as a focal point for the study of Reconstruction, andForgotten Time enters this historiographical tradition at the same time that itreverses many of its central assumptions.
Review
"John Willis examines the 'forgotten time,' the several decades after the Civil War during which blacks achieved economic success in the Mississippi Delta. Whites returned home after the war and struggled to reconstruct the plantation without slavery. Economically beset, these planters reluctantly sold wild back country lands to freed people. The 'New South frontier' represented the 'promised land' for many freed people. As the black back country farmers grew in economic and political strength, they came into conflict with their former masters. Improved by the labors of blacks, back country lands attracted the interest of white planters and merchants. By the turn of the century, whites exerted economic pressure through both fraud and lien laws to drive blacks from the ranks of back country landholders. The Mississippi Delta by the early 20th century had become a plantation empire. The days of black economic success had almost been forgotten. Willis brings attention to these years. He introduces the reader to the white planter and the merchant as well as the black farmer of the back country. Beautifully written and rich in texture, Forgotten Time offers an important reminder of a nation that still has not fulfilled its promises." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 187-232) and index.