Page 153 - Swann Galleries - Printed & Manuscript African Americana- Sale 2308 - March 21, 2013

272 ● (CIVIL RIGHTS—MISSISSIPPI—TENANT FARMERS.) Appreciation
Ceremony. Sherard Plantation Negroes Gather to Honor Owners. April 30,
1950, Sherard, Mississippi. 39 full-page actual photographs, bound with 30 pages of
Xerox copies of letters, newspaper articles etc. Large 4to, bound in full black morocco with
the title in gilt on the upper cover. Sherard, Mississippi, 1950 [400/600]
ONE OF AN UNSPECIFIED, BUT OBVIOUSLY LIMITED NUMBER OF COPIES bound up to
celebrate the occasion of the colored population of Sherard Mississippi’s celebration of the owner
of their land, town and, to all practical purposes their homes and livelihood. The 6000 acre
plantation was established in 1874 when, as an article in the March 8, 1967 Memphis Press-
Scimitar stated, “the first John Holmes Sherard, then 18 years old, left the ante-bellum home
of his parents in Alabama with six mule wagons, four ox wagons, 50 head of cattle and many
colored families, who had ‘belonged’ to the Sherard family before the Civil War, to found his
own Mississippi plantation.” By 1950, the 6000 acre plantation included not only tenant
homes, but several churches, a post office, general store, railroad station and a school. The main
crop was cotton, but in 1890, when cotton prices bottomed out, Sherard planted a grove of
pecans, which eventually grew into a money crop. Today, people from all over the country order
Sherard’s famous “sherardized” pecans.
271 ● (CIVIL RIGHTS—MISSISSIPPI.) Mississippi, the Most Lied About State in
the Nation.” License plate, 53 ⁄
4 x 117⁄
8 inches, stamped iron, painted deep blue-green with
raised gray lettering; four holes for mounting; some rust here and there.
Mississippi, circa 1964-65 [600/800]
A RARE RELIC OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE IN MISSISSIPPI Plates like this appeared
after Mississippi became associated with civil rights abuses in the 1960’s. National focus had
first come upon Mississippi in 1955 following the murder of 14 year old Emmet Till —Till
was said to have been “flirting” with a white woman. A decade later after the murders of civil
rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in 1964, and Viola
Liuzo in ’65, Mississippi became synonymous with what was wrong in America’s South.
Television reporting reflected a sense of national rage aimed at Mississippi. A “push-back” from
White Citizens’ Committees, claiming that the state was being unfairly singled out, started to
produce things like this license plate and other anti-civil rights propaganda.
272