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The Senator and the Sharecropper, by Chris Myers Asch, is the story of the Civil Rights Movement in Sunflower County, Mississippi. The book is framed around two of the county’s most famous citizens, former US Senator James Eastland and civil rights pioneer Fannie Lou Hamer. Eastland was known as one of the foremost advocates of segregation and Hamer was one of the most prominent civil rights leaders in Mississippi, playing a crucial role in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and beyond.

The story begins by detailing the unquestioned white supremacy in the aftermath of Reconstruction. A few wealthy planters made the rules while the black population, by far the majority, toiled in extreme poverty as the basic plantation mentality continued unchallenged. This was the world into which both Eastland and Hamer were born. The Great Depression and the invention of the mechanized cotton picker reduced the demand for sharecroppers and effectively ended the plantation system, Asch maintains, but not its mentality, complicating race relations. The Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education changed everything for both sides, as they both gained resolve from its implications. Blacks were galvanized to overcome inequality and whites became entrenched in maintaining segregation. With the rise of Lyndon Johnson, Asch claims, legal progress was made, although true progress was never realized because of lingering economic disparity. He finishes by tracing the history of the county into the new millennium, where legal desegregation has failed to result in de facto equality.

On a larger level, the author seeks to understand how a place can have a dramatic upheaval yet remain unchanged. The isolated Sunflower County weathered the tumultuous Civil Rights Era and, while some changes can be seen, remains a highly segregated place in the new millennium. Asch credits this lack of progress to white flight and the fact that, while blacks were gaining legal equality, they were becoming economically expendable due to the end of the sharecropping system. Because of economic stagnation, Asch maintains, former sharecroppers were now dependent on the government instead of a wealthy landowner for their livelihood, and the plantation mentality remained.

The format of comparing two lives works well, though they were not intertwined to a large degree on any level besides a theoretical one. Still, it is a good way to see both sides of the story. Eastland and Hamer were both vital players in the Civil Rights Movement in Sunflower County and beyond. Their actions helped shape the movement both locally and nationally and Asch’s attempt to understand them is a good way to shed light on the era.

The writing is functional and scholarly, the product of a dissertation, and the book has no organizational flaws. Besides telling the story of a rural county important to the history of civil rights, Asch’s most valuable contribution to the historiography is his excellent understanding of why Eastland and his contemporaries believed what they did and how they articulated their arguments chiefly in Cold War terms. Indeed, he seeks to understand why Eastland so steadfastly remained on what history has proven to be the wrong side of the issue, as well as why Hamer would endure unspeakable hardships for a struggle that seemed so daunting. By focusing on these two individuals and refusing to present them as simple caricatures, Asch makes the era accessible in human terms. The best and the worst of the Civil Rights Movement are objectively articulated, and the reader can grasp the background behind both the best and worst of the movement, its heroism and villainy. The Senator and the Sharecropper should appeal to anyone interested in expanding their view of the psychology of the Civil Rights Movement that has yet to realize true equality in Sunflower County.