Lanterns on the Levee by William Alexander Percy

His plantation, Trail Lake, was worked by Black sharecroppers, 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. In his early years, some clients paid in horses and others in land, and Percy acquired a total of 20,000 acres. Percy became an attorney in Greenville, Mississippi, the county seat of Washington County, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta. During the Great 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. In 1922, Percy came to national notice by confronting Ku Klux Klan organizers in Greenville and uniting local people against them. Vardaman, also a Democrat, ran unopposed in the general election. Vardaman, a white supremacist, who attacked Percy for being relatively liberal on race issues and for being a member of the state's planter elite. Senator in the state, by the populist James K. In 1912, he was defeated in the first popular election of a U.S. He was elected by the state legislature to the U.S. Percy's influence led him to become active in politics. He also leased land in Chicot County in the Arkansas Delta. His plantation of Trail Lake eventually covered 20,000 acres and was worked by black sharecroppers and Italian immigrants. Often being paid in land, he became a major planter in Greenville, Mississippi, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta.

He was admitted to the bar later that year and achieved wealth as an attorney. He graduated from the University of the South at Sewanee in 1879, and the University of Virginia School of Law in 1881, where he was a member of the Chi Phi fraternity. Percy was a grandson of Charles 'Don Carlos' Percy. LeRoy Percy (November 9, 1860 – December 24, 1929) was an American attorney, planter, and Democratic politician who served as a United States Senator to the state of Mississippi from 1910 to 1913.

Lanterns on the Levee by William Alexander Percy