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34 II the onLy thing you had WaS the Labor A Sharecropper’s Journey through Rural North Carolina Every Supreme Court case that involves a claim of individual rights is brought by a real person, who has sought legal redress for some kind of oppression. . . . We often learn more from the personal stories of these real people than from the impersonal pages of Supreme Court decisions. Peter Irons, A People’s History of the Supreme Court Willie Boyd emerges out of civil rights era history as one of the many faceless people who worked diligently to alter racial politics in the South. Without scholars continually questioning the role played by activists such as Boyd, his life, along with many others, might be discounted as a rather unremarkable journey through the twentieth century. Yet like many in his cohort of grassroots activists, Boyd’s life was far from unremarkable. His activism dramatically impacted post–civil rights era employment opportunities and played a role in the landmark Supreme Court decision tackling white employment supremacy. We should avoid the temptation to overromanticize the contrast between the simplicity of Boyd’s life and the overwhelming importance of his efforts as a grassroots organizer and key plaintiff in one of the most significant post-1965 civil rights cases. It is also important to acknowledge, however, that in Willie Boyd, a man from humble origins who embraced the spirit of sacrifice and commitment necessary to foster dramatic change, we have a prime example of the power that lay behind the successes of the civil rights movement. The grassroots campaigners of the civil rights era were groomed for radicalism in climates that presented little chance of them ever enjoying prosperity. The risks they faced for standing up to racial oppression could have easily resulted in violence, firings, or other attacks intended to discourage oppositional A Sharecropper’s Journey through Rural North Carolina 35 stances. Given these circumstances, lesser-known activists such as Willie Boyd are as remarkable as the better known civil rights leaders. In many respects they represent the most committed and the most courageous, given what their life’s work meant to the movement. Had grassroots opinion leaders not heeded the word of national spokespersons and shirked their responsibility at the local level, changes to America’s racial order would have been unlikely. Local radicals such as Boyd bore the burden of actualizing the goals and tactics of the civil rights movement with minimal protection from reprisals and general, albeit astute, guidance from afar. Local activists gave structure and direction to plans that would have fallen to the wayside had they not embraced with relentless dedication the movement ’s mission and programmatic philosophies. In many instances, local activists exhibited high levels of creativity and resorted to unconventional tactics to tackle the issues germane to their respective communities. Decades before Willie Boyd convinced his thirteen fellow “janitors” at Duke Power to file an employment discrimination suit with the federal government, he experienced a life common to blacks in the Carolinas, one serving as an illustration of the limitations prescribed upon African Americans under Jim Crow, specifically in the rural South. Willie Rufus Boyd inherited a world in which African Americans were marginalized economically, politically, and socially. As a result, large numbers of blacks were both poor and poorly educated. When questioned about his date of birth, Boyd responds in a very serious tone, “A long time ago,” a sly grin sneaking out from under the elusive comment.1 But that answer is not far from the truth. Boyd was born in Caswell County, North Carolina, in 1922 and raised in neighboring Rockingham County, in the small town of Ruffin. Both counties sit in the north-central part of the state and rest upon the fertile Piedmont plateau. Boyd’s parents, Trodry and Idabelle Boyd, were also born and raised in Caswell County and endured lives as sharecroppers in the heart of North Carolina’s tobacco belt. Willie was number twelve of seventeen Boyd children, all of whom were birthed by midwives. Boyd keeps their names, dates of birth, and obituaries in the family Bible, which is so old the pages have yellowed and are easily blown away by the gentlest of breezes. Two of Willie’s eleven brothers were born on the same day, May 31, fourteen years apart.2 Trodry, or “T. W.,” was a physically imposing man to the Boyd children, and his larger-than-life presence was punctuated by his stern discipline. Boyd...

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