William Alexander Percy | |
|---|---|
 Percyc. 1941 | |
| Born | May 14, 1885 Greenville, Mississippi, U.S. |
| Died | January 21, 1942 (aged 56) |
| Education | The University of the South (B. A.) Harvard University (LLB) |
| Parent(s) | LeRoy Percy Camille Percy |
William Alexander Percy (May 14, 1885 – January 21, 1942) was a lawyer, planter, and poet fromGreenville, Mississippi. His autobiographyLanterns on the Levee (Knopf 1941) became a bestseller. His fatherLeRoy Percy was the lastUnited States Senator from Mississippi elected by the legislature. In a largely Protestant state, the younger Percy championed the Roman Catholicism of his French mother.
He was born to Camille, a French Catholic, andLeRoy Percy, of theplanter class in Mississippi, and grew up in Greenville. His father was elected as U.S. senator in 1910. As an attorney and planter with 20,000 acres under cultivation for cotton, he attendedThe University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, as did three previous generations in his family. He graduated in 1904.[1]
He spent a year in Paris, then went to Harvard for a law degree. After returning to Greenville, Percy joined his father's firm in the practice of law.
During World War I, Percy joined theCommission for Relief in Belgium in November 1916. He served in Belgium as a delegate until the withdrawal of American personnel upon the US declaration of war in April 1917. He served in the U.S. Army in World War I, earning the rank of Captain and theCroix de Guerre.
From 1925 to 1932, Percy edited theYale Younger Poets series, the first of its kind in the country. He also published four volumes of poetry with the Yale University Press. A Southern man of letters, Percy befriended many fellow writers, Southern, Northern and European, includingWilliam Faulkner. He socialized withLangston Hughes and other people in and about theHarlem Renaissance. Percy was a sort of godfather to theFugitives atVanderbilt, orSouthern Agrarians, asJohn Crowe Ransom,Allen Tate andRobert Penn Warren often were called.
Percy's family was plagued with suicides, including that of his first cousin LeRoy Pratt Percy and possibly his wife Martha Susan (Mattie Sue) Phinizy Percy, who died in a car accident. William adopted his cousin's children,Walker, LeRoy (Roy) and Phinizy (Phin) Percy, after they were orphaned. As adults, all three prospered. Walker Percy became a medical doctor and a best-selling author. Roy married Sarah Hunt Farish, the daughter of Will Percy's law partnerHazlewood Power Farish. He took charge of Trail Lake, the Percy family's plantation. Phin married and moved to New Orleans to practice law.
Percy's most well-known work is his memoirLanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son (Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1941). His other works include the text of "They Cast Their Nets in Galilee", which is included in theEpiscopal Hymnal (1982) (Hymn 661), and theCollected Poems (Knopf 1943).
Percy wrote a one-act play, "In April Once", published with a collection of his poems in a volume also titledIn April Once (1920). One of his poems, originally part of "In April Once", was re-published in a revised form under the name A. W. Percy inMen and Boys, an anonymous anthology ofUranian poetry (privately printed, New York, 1934). There is speculation that Edward M. Slocum, the compiler of the anthology, changed the text of the poem before printing it, and that it may have been included in the anthology without Percy's knowledge.[2]
A friend ofHerbert Hoover from theBelgium Relief Effort during the early years of World War I, Percy was put in charge of relief during theGreat Mississippi Flood of 1927, when an area larger than all New England except Maine was flooded in the spring. During the flood, thousands of blacks, fleeing farms and plantations under water, were forced to seek refuge on the narrow rim of the levee in Greenville. Percy believed that the Black citizens of Greenville needed to be evacuated toVicksburg to receive better care and food, and he arranged for ships to prepare to remove them. However, LeRoy Percy and local planters prevented the evacuation, and the Black citizens remaining on the levee were forced to work in conditions that many compared to slavery.[3] The Colored Advisory Commission led byRobert Russa Moton, formed to investigate abuses that had taken place during the flood, named the Greenville camp as one where black refugees complained of poor treatment.[4]
It remains unclear whether Will Percy submitted this version of the poem to be included inMen and Boys or whether Slocum read it, liked it, and revised it himself for the anthology. ... In addition, there is no extant evidence of connection between and Percy and Slocum in Percy's own papers.
