Shadows over Sunnyside : An Arkansas Plantation in Transition, 1830-1945

by Jeannie M. Whayne

This remarkable collection of essays addresses social, historical, cultural, and labor issues as they affect a Southern plantation. The heart of the book is an examination of a "great experiment" to import Italian laborers to Sunnyside Plantation. From the crucible of tensions that this experiment produced, the reader obtains a concrete understanding of the implications of U.S. immigration policy, of changing labor relations following Reconstruction, and of a minority culture's introduction into the Delta.

180 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting collection of essays depicting the curious experiment of "Northern Italians" to work as cotton farmers in Arkansas on Sunnyside Plantation briefly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Bertram Wyatt-Brown's essay is by far the most fair of the lot and takes both sides of the debate into consideration. While peonage and poor conditions definitely existed for some of the immigrant families, Mary Grace Quackenbos was indeed a hysterical "quack" and deserved every ounce of retribution and revenge enacted upon her by LeRoy Percy. Luckily, Percy had friends in the highest of places (including the White House) to ultimately defeat the first woman assigned as a special assistant to the US attorney's office.

Especially troubling is the final "Appendix" analysis by Pete Daniel.

Anyone interested in the Italian diaspora to the US during the 20th century will enjoy this look into a rural agricultural experience rather than the urban Italian-American path that we are more familiar with in both academic studies and writings than modern media and film portrayals.

[Michael Compton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fine collection of scholarly essays on a little-known chapter of the Italian immigrant experience in America: the importation of farm workers to the former plantations of the South. The focus is a massive holding called Sunnyside, on Lake Chicot in Arkansas, across the Mississippi River from Greenville, but the practice was surprisingly widespread. The essays were written independently, have different emphases, and overlap (helpfully) in many details. They can be dry, but there are hair-raising details, a heroic female Federal investigator, shady characters, and villains, among whom LeRoy Percy (uncle of Walker) and Teddy Roosevelt are prominent. Most of the essays are clear-eyed about the mistreatment of the immigrants, but one essay goes a long way to defending the malefactors. A lengthy appendix, including a critical commentary and primary sources, help keep things straight. A great resource for researchers.