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LeRoy Percy | |
|---|---|
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| United States Senator fromMississippi | |
| In office February 23, 1910 – March 3, 1913 | |
| Preceded by | James Gordon |
| Succeeded by | James K. Vardaman |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1860-11-09)November 9, 1860 Greenville, Mississippi, U.S. |
| Died | December 24, 1929(1929-12-24) (aged 69) Memphis, Tennessee, U.S. |
| Party | Democratic |
LeRoy Percy (November 9, 1860 – December 24, 1929) was an American attorney, planter, and Democratic politician who served as aUnited States Senator from the state ofMississippi from 1910 to 1913.
Percy was a grandson ofCharles "Don Carlos" Percy. He graduated from theUniversity of the South atSewanee in 1879,[1] and theUniversity of Virginia School of Law in 1881, where he was a member of theChi Phi fraternity. He was admitted to the bar later that year and achieved wealth as an attorney. Often being paid in land, he became a majorplanter inGreenville, Mississippi, in the heart of theMississippi Delta. His plantation of Trail Lake eventually covered 20,000 acres and was worked by blacksharecroppers andItalian immigrants. He also leased land inChicot County in theArkansas Delta.
Percy's influence led him to become active in politics. He was elected bythe state legislature to the U.S. Senate in 1910. In1912, he was defeated in the first popular election of a U.S. Senator in the state, by thepopulistJames K. Vardaman, awhite supremacist, who attacked Percy for being relatively liberal on race issues and for being a member of the state's planter elite. Vardaman, also a Democrat, ran unopposed in the general election.
In 1922, Percy came to national notice by confrontingKu Klux Klan organizers in Greenville and uniting local people against them. During theGreat Mississippi Flood of 1927, Percy appointed his son,William Alexander Percy, to direct the work of thousands of black laborers on the levees near Greenville.[citation needed]
Percy became an attorney inGreenville, Mississippi, the county seat ofWashington County, Mississippi, in theMississippi Delta. In his early years, some clients paid in horses and others in land, and Percy acquired a total of 20,000 acres. Hisplantation, Trail Lake, was worked by Blacksharecroppers, who provided most of the labor on all of the plantations in the area and had been the majority of the population in the county since before theAmerican Civil War. Percy gave them a better share than many others by setting up schools on the property for the children and allowing his tenants to buy land. He worked to build a community on the plantation.
Soon after starting his law practice, Percy married Camille, a French Catholic woman. They had two sons, of whom only one survived to adulthood,William Alexander Percy (1885–1942).
William followed his father into law. He served with distinction inWorld War I and was best known for his memoir,Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son, but also published poetry. Never married, William Percy took in and adopted his cousin's three sons when they were orphaned as boys (after their father'ssuicide and their mother's death in a car accident). The boys includedWalker Percy, who became a notable novelist and won theNational Book Award for his first book,The Moviegoer.
Percy also had interests in other plantations, such as by leasingSunnyside Plantation inChicot County, Arkansas, on the other side of the Mississippi River. Short on labor, the county recruited Italianimmigrants in 1895 to work as sharecroppers. They found the conditions so unfavorable that most moved away to northwestern Arkansas. Others stayed but felt trapped by the sharecropper system of accounting, which seemed to be perpetual debt. They complained to their consulate.
In 1907, theTheodore Roosevelt administration had theUS Department of Justice conduct an investigation of the plantation. Its investigator,Mary Grace Quackenbos, concluded the conditions constitutedpeonage, but Percy's influence with the state government and personal friendship with Roosevelt caused the report to be buried, and no action taken against the planter.[2]
White Democrats had continued to work to suppress Black votes and reacted to prevent another biracial coalition with Republicans and Populists, as had occurred in the 1880s. In 1890, the white-dominated state legislature passed a new state constitution that included provisions thatdisenfranchised most blacks by such devices aspoll taxes,literacy tests, andgrandfather clauses. Black people did not regain the full ability to vote until after 1965, when the US Congress passed theVoting Rights Act.
After the vacancy of the seat held by SenatorJames Gordon, the Mississippi legislature convened to fill it. A plurality of legislators (by then all white) then backed thewhite supremacistJames K. Vardaman, but the fractured remainder sought to thwart his extreme racial policies. A majority united behind Percy to block Vardaman's appointment.[3] In 1910, Percy became the last senator chosen by the Mississippi legislature. That was prior to the adoption of theSeventeenth Amendment to theUS Constitution for the popular election of senators.
Percy held office until 1913. In 1912, he was challenged in the Democraticprimary under the new system by thepopulist Vardaman. The campaign was managed byTheodore Bilbo, who emphasized class tensions andracial segregation. The tactics caused the defeat of Percy, who was attacked as a representative of the aristocracy of the state and for taking a progressive stance on race relations. He advocated education for Black people and worked to improve race relations by appealing to the planters' sense ofnoblesse oblige. The issue of disenfranchisement of Black people caused the Democratic primary to become the deciding competitive race for state and local offices in Mississippi.
After his defeat, Percy retired from politics to run his model plantation at Trail Lake and to practice law for railroads and banks. British investors hired him to manage the largest cotton plantation in the country[citation needed]; he received 10% of the profits.
In 1922, Percy rose to national prominence for confronting theKu Klux Klan when it attempted to organize members inWashington County during the years of its revival in the South and growth in the Midwest. On March 1, 1922, the Klan planned a recruiting session at the Greenville courthouse. Percy arrived during a speech by the Klan leader Joseph G. Camp, who was attacking Black people, Jews, and Catholics. After Camp finished, Percy approached the podium and proceeded to dismantle Camp's speech to thunderous applause, concluding with this plea: "Friends, let this Klan go somewhere else where it will not do the harm that it will in this community. Let them sow dissension in some community less united than is ours."[4][5] After Percy stepped down, an ally in the audience rose to put forth a resolution, secretly written by Percy, condemning the Klan. The resolution passed, and Camp ceased his efforts to establish the Klan in Washington County. Percy's speech and victory drew praise from newspapers around the nation.
During the devastatingMississippi flood of 1927, which covered millions of acres of plantations and caused extensive damage, Delta residents began frantic efforts to protect their towns and lands. They used the many Black workers to raise the levees along the river by stacking sand bags on the top of the established levee walls. The former senator appointed his son,William Alexander Percy, to direct the work of the thousands of Black laborers on the levees near Greenville.
Percy kept the Black workers in the area isolated on top of levees when the levee was breached. In addition, they were forced to work without pay in unloadingRed Cross relief supplies as the organization required work to be done by "volunteers." Both father and son would receive criticism for theforced labor.[6]
Charles Williams, an employee of Percy on one of the largest cotton plantations in the Delta, set up camps on the levee that protected Greenville. He supplied the camps with field kitchens and tents for the many Black families to live while the men worked on the levee.
Percy died on Christmas Eve 1929 of aheart attack, at the age of 69.[7] He was a member ofThe Boston Club ofNew Orleans.[8]
LeRoy Percy State Park, astate park in Mississippi, is named after him.
United States Congress."Percy, Le Roy (id: P000223)".Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
| U.S. Senate | ||
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| Preceded by | U.S. senator (Class 2) from Mississippi February 23, 1910 – March 3, 1913 Served alongside:Hernando Money,John Sharp Williams | Succeeded by |
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| Class 2 | ||
| International | |
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| National | |
| People | |
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