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Sharecropper's Troubadour: John L. Hancox, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and the African American Song Tradition
Folk singer and labor organizer John Handcox was born to illiterate sharecroppers, but went on to become one of the most beloved folk singers of the prewar labor movement. This beautifully told oral history gives us Handcox in his own words, recounting a journey that began in the Deep South and went on to shape the labor music tradition.
- GenresHistory
244 pages, Paperback
First published November 27, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 12, 2023
Short, sweet and in the words of the troubadour himself. Although the book coulod use the dedicated hand of an editor to clean up the myriad grammatical and spelling errors littered throughout, the content itself flows delightfully (and linearly) through the spectacular life of John Handcox. His penchant for understatement seems to infect the author himself partway through the story and I find myself wanting for more of the implications and details of the ghastly setting John repeatedly finds himself in. and I don't know, perhaps some larger world-analysis about the concept of enrolling new union members who cannot possibly pay the dues. In fact interviews (or even second hand accounts) with the then head of the union or some new recruited members would have served the book well to round out the reality we are currently doomed to view through the limited perspective of John himself. All that being said, (maybe consider it for a new edition release) it was an interesting book and a sobering perspective both showing how bad things got in the Jim Crow South and how far we've come. And ultimately how much farther we still have to go.
I found myself having the opportunity t0 interview the granddaughter of John, Sabrina Bishop, who is a union member and advocate and a homecare provider for the elderly and disabled. This book served as good 'interview research' ahead of time and I found it incredibly valuable in that regard.
I found myself having the opportunity t0 interview the granddaughter of John, Sabrina Bishop, who is a union member and advocate and a homecare provider for the elderly and disabled. This book served as good 'interview research' ahead of time and I found it incredibly valuable in that regard.
December 21, 2014
This book was assigned reading for a Community History course taught at University of Washington Tacoma by the author, Michael K. Honey. This is a personal response paper I wrote following my reading this book.
Personal Response: Sharecropper's Troubadour John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and the African American Song Tradition by Michael K. Honey
Oral history is more than the transcription of a word-for-word interview. The process of creating a narrative and historical analysis in which to frame the personal experiences of the person interviewed requires creativity, attention to detail, research, and a commitment to accuracy. In Sharecropper’s Troubadour the “shared authority” or collaboration between the author, Michael K. Honey, and the book’s subject, John L. Handcox, adds a depth to this story that goes well beyond what either Handcox’s personal memories, or Honey’s detailed history, would have conveyed alone.
The author sets the stage for Handcox’s life by allowing John to tell the story of his ancestors’ arrival in the United States and their lives as slaves. Although the author’s actual questions to Handcox are not directly included in the book, it is easy to infer that the questioning began with something along the lines of, “So, tell me your earliest memories. What stories do you remember hearing from your parents? And from your grandparents? Did they tell you about slavery?” By developing the context of John’s life and placing it into the stream of his family’s history—and the history of the United States—it becomes easier to follow the progression of his life and work. John’s eventual work with the labor movement and his desire to fight injustice in regard to plantation owners and the sharecroppers who worked their land made sense in the life of someone raised hearing the firsthand accounts of his grandparents’ years in slavery.
In some ways they were treated worse by the plantation capitalists after their emancipation. During slavery, the plantation owners felt compelled to at least provide basic sustenance for their laborers, but after their hired workers were no longer their property, they felt no obligation to care for their basic necessities. About this John wrote, “The way I see it when we were slaves we were valuable but when we became free we lost our value.” (15) When a man could work an entire year on a plantation and end up deeper in debt at the end of the year than at the start, it definitely seems more like a continued form of slavery rather than real labor for real wages.
John’s family did better than many of the families around them as they were able to accumulate a few things (land, tools, livestock) and stay out of debt. The author was able to successfully weave John’s personal story into the historical context of the time which included poll taxes, white terror which “prevented blacks from voting” (19), lynching, segregation laws, and lack of educational opportunities.
By hearing the firsthand recollections of Handcox and by reading the historical context their surrounding the formation of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU) and the folk songs Handcox wrote and performed, the reader’s understanding of what actually took place is deepened. Not only does the reader come away knowing what happened and when it happened—as they would in straightforward historical account—the reader can also gain a strong sense of what the events sounded like through Handcox’s distinctive way of speaking and through the songs he composed that help to communicate the heart and soul of the STFU labor movement of his time. Oral histories convey people’s feelings and impressions rather than just a straight retelling of the facts of what happened. Without the direct input from people, themselves, we can only imagine what the everyday details of their lives were like. John Handcox’s memories help to fill in the reader’s imagination with the more concrete thoughts and feelings of a real person who actually lived the history.
John Handcox was truly a “scholar of his own life” and only by directly listening to him tell his own story in his own words can readers gain his perspective on things that were happening and understand the meaning the story of his life and songs held for him, personally. By hearing the firsthand recollections of Handcox and by reading the historical context surrounding the formation of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU) and the folksongs Handcox wrote and performed, the reader’s understanding of what actually took place is deepened.
by Debi Taylor-Hough, Spring 2014
Personal Response: Sharecropper's Troubadour John L. Handcox, the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, and the African American Song Tradition by Michael K. Honey
Oral history is more than the transcription of a word-for-word interview. The process of creating a narrative and historical analysis in which to frame the personal experiences of the person interviewed requires creativity, attention to detail, research, and a commitment to accuracy. In Sharecropper’s Troubadour the “shared authority” or collaboration between the author, Michael K. Honey, and the book’s subject, John L. Handcox, adds a depth to this story that goes well beyond what either Handcox’s personal memories, or Honey’s detailed history, would have conveyed alone.
The author sets the stage for Handcox’s life by allowing John to tell the story of his ancestors’ arrival in the United States and their lives as slaves. Although the author’s actual questions to Handcox are not directly included in the book, it is easy to infer that the questioning began with something along the lines of, “So, tell me your earliest memories. What stories do you remember hearing from your parents? And from your grandparents? Did they tell you about slavery?” By developing the context of John’s life and placing it into the stream of his family’s history—and the history of the United States—it becomes easier to follow the progression of his life and work. John’s eventual work with the labor movement and his desire to fight injustice in regard to plantation owners and the sharecroppers who worked their land made sense in the life of someone raised hearing the firsthand accounts of his grandparents’ years in slavery.
In some ways they were treated worse by the plantation capitalists after their emancipation. During slavery, the plantation owners felt compelled to at least provide basic sustenance for their laborers, but after their hired workers were no longer their property, they felt no obligation to care for their basic necessities. About this John wrote, “The way I see it when we were slaves we were valuable but when we became free we lost our value.” (15) When a man could work an entire year on a plantation and end up deeper in debt at the end of the year than at the start, it definitely seems more like a continued form of slavery rather than real labor for real wages.
John’s family did better than many of the families around them as they were able to accumulate a few things (land, tools, livestock) and stay out of debt. The author was able to successfully weave John’s personal story into the historical context of the time which included poll taxes, white terror which “prevented blacks from voting” (19), lynching, segregation laws, and lack of educational opportunities.
By hearing the firsthand recollections of Handcox and by reading the historical context their surrounding the formation of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU) and the folk songs Handcox wrote and performed, the reader’s understanding of what actually took place is deepened. Not only does the reader come away knowing what happened and when it happened—as they would in straightforward historical account—the reader can also gain a strong sense of what the events sounded like through Handcox’s distinctive way of speaking and through the songs he composed that help to communicate the heart and soul of the STFU labor movement of his time. Oral histories convey people’s feelings and impressions rather than just a straight retelling of the facts of what happened. Without the direct input from people, themselves, we can only imagine what the everyday details of their lives were like. John Handcox’s memories help to fill in the reader’s imagination with the more concrete thoughts and feelings of a real person who actually lived the history.
John Handcox was truly a “scholar of his own life” and only by directly listening to him tell his own story in his own words can readers gain his perspective on things that were happening and understand the meaning the story of his life and songs held for him, personally. By hearing the firsthand recollections of Handcox and by reading the historical context surrounding the formation of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU) and the folksongs Handcox wrote and performed, the reader’s understanding of what actually took place is deepened.
by Debi Taylor-Hough, Spring 2014
April 29, 2016
“Paraphrasing Pete Seeger’s comments about Woody Guthrie, many people can write something complicated but it takes a genius to write something simple that communicates profound truths to masses of people.” (p.3)
“The black song tradition provided an almost inexhaustible storehouse of tunes and lyrics to fights against impossible odds to achieve something glorious and new, preordained and righteous.” (p.4)
“Black women, afflicted by sexual attacks by white men and other atrocities rooted in the South’s history of slavery and segregation, had every reason to be timid and quiet. Instead, they were often bold and militant. Stith said ‘women look like always were apt to move out. They would walk up and say to the plantation owner, look, this is what I ain’t gonna do.’” (p.59)
“In coming to Missouri, he had insisted, ‘I am particularly anxious that a meeting be planned in the town where the mayor denied us permission to speak.’” (p. 106)
“ ‘I know that it will be the day we all dread/ when they take my name off the board and the tap off my bed.’” (John Handcox) (p. 151)
Further reading:
- Pete Seeger, Alan Lomas, Woody Guthrie, Hard-Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People (1967)
- Paul Laurence Dunbar poems
- Ned Cobb, All God’s Dangers
“The black song tradition provided an almost inexhaustible storehouse of tunes and lyrics to fights against impossible odds to achieve something glorious and new, preordained and righteous.” (p.4)
“Black women, afflicted by sexual attacks by white men and other atrocities rooted in the South’s history of slavery and segregation, had every reason to be timid and quiet. Instead, they were often bold and militant. Stith said ‘women look like always were apt to move out. They would walk up and say to the plantation owner, look, this is what I ain’t gonna do.’” (p.59)
“In coming to Missouri, he had insisted, ‘I am particularly anxious that a meeting be planned in the town where the mayor denied us permission to speak.’” (p. 106)
“ ‘I know that it will be the day we all dread/ when they take my name off the board and the tap off my bed.’” (John Handcox) (p. 151)
Further reading:
- Pete Seeger, Alan Lomas, Woody Guthrie, Hard-Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People (1967)
- Paul Laurence Dunbar poems
- Ned Cobb, All God’s Dangers
July 26, 2016
I ran out of time on my library loan, so I didn't finish the last few chapters, but I really enjoyed this glimpse of history and the words that one man put to it, seeking change.
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August 25, 2014782.42162 H7723 2013
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews