One of the largest cotton planters in the United States, Oscar G. Johnston of Mississippi (1880 1955) became King Cotton's most effective advocate during the New Deal era. In this biography, Lawrence J. Nelson explores Johnston's long career and the critical role he played in shaping public policy toward a vital but depressed industry.
In 1927, the year of the Great Mississippi River Flood, Johnston became president of the largely British-owned Delta and Pine Land Company of Mississippi, a mammoth plantation that encompassed some 38,000 acres and employed thousands of black sharecroppers....