Beyond Plantation Alley

About the Book

Beyond Plantation Alley is a book about the lives of sixty or more sharecropping families that lived on plantation land in an Alley in a southern town call Natchez, Mississippi from the late 1800’s.  This compelling story is about family love, forgiveness, friendships, family gatherings, spirituality, harvesting, fornication, adultery, murders, rapes and endurance in the south when racism, terror, and fear often appeared.  In 1971 several of the families began to migrate to the north and west to seek better living conditions and education.  Twenty years later the first Alley reunion was held in 1993 and death had visited most of the elders in all of the families.  Some familiar faces were no longer visible in the crowd as I watched families running to one another hugging, talking, crying and kissing.  I realized at that moment no matter what we all went through, heard, seen and done it was and still is love and fellowship that sustains the Alley even today.

About the Author

LJ Thomas was born in Natchez, Mississippi in 1955. The second of four children, she grew up as a sharecropper on plantation land in an alley. She was seven years old when her father died and was raised under the strong influence of two generations of womens. The alley was a community where love, work, friendships, and families contributed to her growth and well being.  LJ moved to Minnesota in 1972 at age of seventeen before entering her last year of high school in Minneapolis and went on to the University of Minnesota from 1973 to 1977. She has three adult children and one grandson (Isaiah).