Overview

Illustrated with extraordinary works by outsider artists, Shared Crop is a gripping collection of stories about Shorty Lawson and his family, who lived in rural North Carolina during the Jim Crow era. Together the text and artwork paint a nuanced picture of the daily life of a Black tenant farmer, with the Lawsons’ own words providing the detail. Bathing without running water. Five buzzards following an exhausted man and mule. Identity, stored deep in her heart, released for racial reckoning. Shorty’s story would be told in formal history as that of a laborer who fueled the tobacco economy from the 1950s to the 1970s. Yes, race and class constrained him, but his life was far richer, a character known throughout the community for his insistence that work was its own reward. His joys, make-do innovations, command of his territory, and the way he and Annie raised their children were legendary. He dispelled myths of white superiority, not by a calculated strategy, but rather by how he lived. In doing so, he challenged his children, those who worked with him, and everyone who knew of him, Black and White, landed and tenants. To each he left a legacy of a shared crop of steadfast lessons that might well guide us through troubled times.

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9780991479733

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Reviews

“Randy Hester has found the extraordinary in ordinary-seeming lives. Pairing the stories of Black tenant farmer Shorty Lawson and his family with the work of mostly African American vernacular artists, Hester creates a dynamic call and response between text and image that illuminates a fascinating history of agricultural life in the South in the years between Jim Crow and the Civil Rights era.” - John Beardsley, curator, Dumbarton Oaks; co-author: Black Folk Art in America: 1930–1980, Hispanic Art in the United States, Gardens of Revelation, and The Quilts of Gees Bend ""Hester captures a world where contradiction and connection coexist, where tending the land means being cared for in return, where relationships between people and the land run deep, complex, and sacred. … With echoes of Zora Neale Hurston, Hester shines a light on everyday moments that often go unseen."" - Alma Du Solier, studio director, Hood Design; board president, Landscape Architecture Foundation “In a time of impossible, but repeated, attempts to rip Black history from the American consciousness, Randy Hester gifts us the story of a singular individual, Shorty Lawson, whose circumstances were not uncommon for Black People in the American South, but whose code for living was. Through outsider art and first-hand accounts that are beautiful and often painful, Hester makes us yearn to dwell within the Lawsons’ home. What becomes clear is that Hester is compelled by a haunting that has driven him to reveal this story of race, kinship, and land that was Mr. Lawson’s life and foundational to his own. He does so with art and honesty that will likewise haunt the hearts of all who read his tribute.” - Diane Jones Allen, educator, University of Texas at Arlington; landscape designer; author, Lost in the Transit Desert “Shared Crop is filled with wisdoms of living together inclusively to produce a harvest of enviable virtues. While society remains segregated, fearful and anxious, the Lawsons describe an alternative way of being, dwelling painfully and sadly, beautifully and joyfully, outside the dominant culture. In their story people’s hearts and actions celebrate the hard work of each other. What a rich world! This book will incite those who desire such a world.” - Masato Dohi, educator, Institute of Science Tokyo; founder and director, Ecological Democracy Foundation Japan

Author Information

Randolph T. Hester is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and editor or author of two dozen books including Design for Ecological Democracy and Inhabiting the Sacred in Everyday Life. Award-winning city designers of projects in Raleigh and Manteo, North Carolina, Los Angeles, California, and the East-Asian Australasian Flyway, Hester and his wife Marcia McNally founded and curate the Shorty Lawson Museum of the Black Tenant Farmer.

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