T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History Collection

ABSTRACT

INTERVIEWEE NAME: Brodie S. Crump # 4700.0399

IDENTIFICATION: Son of William Crump, secretary and campaign manager for Mississippi politician, Leroy Percy.

INTERVIEWER: Lewis Baker, LSU graduate student.

DATE: 10/22/76 FOCUS DATES: 1910 - 1930

ABSTRACT:

Tape 562

Election of 1910 for United States senator between James K. Vardaman and Leroy Percy and the alleged "Rotten Secret Caucus"; Will Crump's role in campaign, 1910-1911; campaign rhetoric; Sunnyside Plantation, Arkansas, and Italian tenant farmers - religious & family life; business activities of Leroy Percy -- cotton factoring, law firm, and banking; cotton cultivation; death of Leroy Percy, Jr.; Percy's home - Trail Lake Plantation; Will Percy, son of Leroy, in WWI; bear hunting with Teddy Roosevelt - Holt Collier as guide; Stuyvesant Fish; Percy law firm's involvement in early railroads in the Delta, circa 1905; Percy's political influence in Mississippi after 1913; "Percy Faction"; political pay-offs, Senator Theodore Bilbo and bribery; the McLaurin brothers, Sidney, Anhelm, and Aswolun; Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce & "Flood of 1927"; development of the Mississippi levee system; Louisiana Governor John Parker; reorganization of Ku Klux Klan, 1922-1925, in Mississippi; anti-Percy factions.

Tape 563

Passive opposition to KKK activities by the towns of Leland, Hollandale & Greenville, MS.; road-building in the Delta; development of Panther Burn Plantation, 1919; election threats; alleged KKK attempt against Percy; Greenville parade ordinance to deter KKK; John Hebron; treatment of blacks; Greenville lynchings; articles about Percy in Cosmopolitan and Atlantic Monthly magazines.

Tape 564

Death of Camille Percy, October, and Leroy Percy, December, 1929; activities between 1923 KKK confrontation.

TAPES: T 562, 563, 564 TOTAL PLAYING TIME: 2 hours, 15 min. # PAGES TRANSCRIPT: 59 pages

RESTRICTIONS: None