LeRoy Percy

LeRoy Percy (November 9, 1860 – December 24, 1929) was an attorney, planter, and politician in Mississippi. In 1910, he was elected by the state legislature to the US Senate and served until 1913.

Percy had attended the University of Virginia, where he was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity. He achieved wealth as an attorney. Often being paid in land, he became a major planter in Greenville, Mississippi, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. His plantation of Trail Lake eventually covered 20,000 acres and was worked by black sharecroppers. He also leased land in Chicot County in the Arkansas Delta. The plantation recruited Italian immigrants as sharecroppers. In 1907, conditions were investigated by the US Department of Justice because of Italian workers' complaints to their consulate. The investigator found it to be peonage, but Percy's political influence led to the report being buried, and neither he nor his overseers was ever prosecuted.

His influence led Percy to become active in politics. He was elected by the state legislature to the US Senate and served from 1910 to 1913. He was defeated in 1912 by populist James K. Vardaman, a white supremacist, in the first popular election of US senators in the state, who attacked Percy for being relatively liberal on race.

In 1922, a progressive leader, Percy came to national notice by confronting Ku Klux Klan organizers in Greenville and uniting local people against them.

During the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, he appointed his son, William Alexander Percy, to direct the work of thousands of black laborers on the levees near Greenville. He prevented them from being evacuated when the levee was breached.They were forced to work without pay to unload Red Cross relief supplies, which required the work of volunteers. Both father and son were criticized later for these actions.

Percy became an attorney in Greenville, Mississippi, the county seat of Washington County, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta. In his early years, some clients paid in horses and others in land, and Percy acquired a total of 20,000 acres. His plantation, 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 the American Civil War. Percy gave them a better share than many other 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 in World 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's suicide and his mother's death in a car accident). The boys included Walker Percy, who became a notable novelist and won the National Book Award for his first book, The Moviegoer.

Percy also had interests in other plantations, such as by leasing Sunnyside Plantation in Chicot County, Arkansas, on the other side of the Mississippi River. Short on labor, the county recruited Italian immigrants 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, the Theodore Roosevelt administration had the US Department of Justice conduct an investigation of the plantation. Its investigator, Mary Grace Quackenbos, concluded the conditions constituted peonage, but Percy's influence with the state government and Roosevelt caused the report to be buried, and no action taken against the planter.

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 that disenfranchised most blacks by such devices as poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses. Blacks did not regain the full ability to vote until after 1965, when the US Congress passed the Voting Rights Act.

After the vacancy of the seat held by Senator James Gordon, the Mississippi legislature convened to fill it. A plurality of legislators (by then all white) then backed the white supremacist James K. Vardaman, but the fractured remainder sought to thwart his extreme racial policies. A majority united behind Percy to block Vardaman's appointment. In 1910, Percy became the last senator chosen by the Mississippi legislature. That was prior to the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment to the US Constitution for the popular election of senators.

Percy held office until 1913. In 1912, he was challenged in the Democratic primary under the new system by the populist Vardaman. The campaign was managed by Theodore Bilbo, who emphasized class tensions and racial 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 blacks and worked to improve race relations by appealing to the planters' sense of noblesse oblige. Disenfranchisement of blacks made the Democratic primary became 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; he received 10% of the profits.

In 1922, Percy rose to national prominence for confronting the Ku Klux Klan when it attempted to organize members in Washington 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 Vounty courthouse. Percy arrived during a speech by the Klan leader Joseph Camp, who was attacking blacks, 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."

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 devastating Mississippi 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 ever being paid to unload Red Cross relief supplies since the organization required work to be done by "volunteers." Both father and son would receive criticism for the forced labor.

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 a heart attack, at the age of 69.

LeRoy Percy State Park, a state park in Mississippi, is named after him.

• Charles "Don Carlos" Percy (1704–94), Irish adventurer and immigrant ancestor
• Sarah Dorsey (1829–79), historian and novelist
• Kate Lee Ferguson, "southern belle," novelist; daughter of Eleanor Percy Lee
• Eleanor Percy Lee (1819–49)
• Thomas George Percy, cotton planter and settler of Alabama; son of Charles "Don Carlos" Percy,
• Walker Percy (1916–90), Southern author; nephew of LeRoy Percy
• William Alexander Percy (1885–1942), lawyer, planter, and poet; son of LeRoy Percy
• Catherine Anne Warfield (1816–77), writer of poetry and fiction; sister of Eleanor Percy (Ware) Lee