M. Honey 
Sharecropper’s Troubadour 
John L. Handcox, 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.

Table of Content

Foreword by Pete Seeger Introduction: Music, Memory, and History 1. Freedom After ‘While: Life and Labor in the Jim Crow South 2. Raggedy, Raggedy Are We: Sharecropping and Survival 3. The Planter and the Sharecropper: The Southern Tenant Farmers Union 4. There Is Mean Things Happening in This Land: Terror in Arkansas 5. Join the Union Tonight: Interracial Organizing in Missouri 6. Getting Gone to the Promised Land: California 7. I’m So Glad to be Here Again: The Return of John Handcox

About the author

Michael Honey is the Fred T. and Dorothy G. Haley Endowed Professor of the Humanities at The University of Washington, USA, and was a 2011 Guggenheim fellow. He is author of numerous award-winning books on labor, race relations, and Southern history, including Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign (Norton, 2007). His interviews and writing regularly appear in national media such as The Atlantic, NPR/Fresh Air, The Nation, History News Network, Color Lines, and many other print and digital publications.