Borrowed Land, Stolen Labor, and the Holy Spirit
The Struggle for Power and Equality in Holmes County, Mississippi
An in-depth microhistory highlighting how African American farmers and religious institutions played crucial roles in the struggle for land, voting rights, and school desegregation
Description
Borrowed Land, Stolen Labor, and the Holy Spirit: The Struggle for Power and Equality in Holmes County, Mississippi chronicles the profound history of a low-income county that became a pivotal site for Delta organizing during the civil rights movement. Landowning African American farmers, who enjoyed more economic independence than sharecroppers, emerged as the grassroots leaders of the movement.
The volume begins with the county’s Native American heritage, moving through the periods of removal, land sales to speculators, the rapid increase of enslaved labor in the nineteenth century, and early African American political engagement during Reconstruction. Author Diane T. Feldman explores how African Americans fostered cooperative landownership efforts in the 1880s and 1920s, alongside the development of schools and churches, particularly the Church of God in Christ, a denomination founded in Holmes County. The fight for voting rights started with African American farmers in the 1950s and gained momentum with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s. Their struggle to desegregate schools culminated in the landmark Supreme Court case Alexander v. Holmes, which abolished dual school systems in the South.
The final chapters cover the past sixty years and current initiatives to restore food production in the Mississippi Delta. Enriched with recent and historic photographs, this volume serves as a microhistory of a single county, illuminating broader themes prevalent throughout Mississippi and the rural South.
Reviews
"Borrowed Land, Stolen Labor, and the Holy Spirit is a powerful chronicle of Black resilience in Holmes County, Mississippi. Feldman skillfully captures the region’s legacy, from Native American roots to civil rights battles, the rise of Black political power, and the founding of the Church of God in Christ, despite white fear tactics and efforts to keep Black citizens down. This book shows how Black people pushed forward and led the resistance. Feldman reminds us that the fight for justice is far from over and that Black voices, then and now, continue to shape our nation’s progress."
- Congressman Bennie G. Thompson
"After reading Diane Feldman’s eminent, well-sourced, and scholarly book, I am left with feelings of deep pride and sorrow. Through stories recounted in vivid detail, we learn how economic independence achieved through land ownership vaulted former prominent slaves and their progeny towards the hard-fought civil rights goals they sought in hardscrabble Holmes County, Mississippi. Yet, against a culture of systemic repression we understand that the loss of those civil liberties, and the onset of poverty, are most quickly achieved when the land itself is taken. The story of Rodalton Hart says it all: legacy lands taken through force of federal government action—a cruel tragedy for one family, but which served to hasten the impact of severe economic loss to his entire community. Having represented the county in the US House of Representatives and its farmers as US Secretary of Agriculture, I always thought that I knew Holmes County, Mississippi. After reading this book, I realize that I didn’t."
- Mike Espy, former US Secretary of Agriculture
"Diane Feldman’s documented local history accounts for how white Americans forcibly took land in Holmes County from Native Americans and used the free labor of enslaved African Americans to develop it for the enslavers’ economic, political, and social benefits. She reveals how religious beliefs among Black Holmes Countians fueled determinations that founded the Holiness-Pentecostal Church of God in Christ (COGIC) denomination and set a path to the Holmes County civil rights movement. A must-read!"
- Sylvia Reedy Gist, director of Migration Heritage Foundation and former dean of the College of Education at Chicago State University
"Borrowed Land, Stolen Labor, and the Holy Spirit provides an incredibly effective synthesis of the history and geography of Holmes County, from pre-European contact through the present, giving us an important overview and necessary context for understanding Holmes County (and Mississippi and the United States more broadly) today. Feldman’s account effectively combines thoughtful analysis with important detail for a very readable book."
- Emilye Crosby, author of A Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi