Thank you for purchasing “Mary’s Story & Song” a memoir about the life of Mary Haralson Coleman of Scott County, Mississippi. Ms. Coleman grew up in the Jim Crow south with her family who were poor Negro sharecroppers.

Despite her humble beginnings, Mary excelled in life, in business, and in music. Mr. Haralson, a white Scott County, Mississippi landowner, purchased Mary’s ancestors – the entire family on the auction block in Virginia. Mary’s family and another family which Mr. Haralson purchased walked behind Mr. Haralson’s wagon and took turns riding on the back of the wagon from Virginia to Scott County, Mississippi. After slavery during Reconstruction, the Negro Haralsons became landowners. Mary’s maternal family became sharecroppers.

Mary’s Story & Song – audiobook available https://www.amazon.com/Marys-Story-Song/dp/B07LB88Z4D

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/marys-story-song-mary-haralson-coleman/1123858357?ean=9781538056622 Mary’s Story & Song hardback book

How is sharecropping different from slavery?

In addition, while sharecropping gave African Americans autonomy in their daily work and social lives, and freed them from the gang-labor system that had dominated during the slavery era, it often resulted in sharecroppers owing more to the landowner (for the use of tools and other supplies, for example) than they were …

Sharecropping… High interest rates, unpredictable harvests, and unscrupulous landlords and merchants often kept tenant farm families severely indebted, requiring the debt to be carried over until the next year or the next. Laws favoring landowners made it difficult or even illegal for sharecroppers to sell their crops to others besides their landlord, or prevented sharecroppers from moving if they were indebted to their landlord.

After reading “Mary’s Story & Song” compare sharecropping with Mass Incarceration. ***Laws favoring landowners made it difficult or even illegal for sharecroppers to sell their crops. Crops ($$$$) belonged to landowner as it did during slavery. ***drug-code violations targeted people of color. ***The federal laws and the state legislature set the system up.

The term “mass incarceration” refers to the unique way the U.S. has locked up a vast population in federal and state prisons, as well as local jails.

Legislators enacted policies that led to more people being locked away for increasingly smaller offenses… combined with policies that kept people locked up longer.

The prison population skyrocketed.

“We must understand our history to influence policy makers. Owning land, homes, businesses, products, and valuable assets is the America dream. Laws and policies over land, homes, businesses, products, and the media is in the hands of the 1 percent. Sweeping Public Policy reforms are needed to undo racial economic inequality.”

Meredith Coleman McGee, Publisher/Acquisition Editor, Meredith Etc

“Don’t believe the hype,” Public Enemy, 1988