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LeRoy Percy (November 9, 1860December 24, 1929) was an attorney, planter and politician in Mississippi. In 1910 he was elected to the United States Senate, serving until 1913. Percy had attended the University of Virginia, where he was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity. He achieved wealth as an attorney. Often being paid in land, he became a major planter in Greenville, Mississippi, in the heart of the Delta. His plantation of Trail Lake eventually covered 20,000 acres and was worked by African-American sharecroppers. He also leased land in the Arkansas Delta. That plantation recruited Italian immigrants as sharecroppers. In 1907 conditions were investigated by the US Department of Justice, due to Italian complaints to their consulate. The investigator found it constituted peonage, but Percy's political influence led to the report being buried and neither he nor his overseers were prosecuted. Due to his influence, Percy became active in politics; he was elected by the Mississippi state legislature to the U.S. Senate, serving from 1910 to 1913. He was defeated in 1912 by a populist Democrat in the first popular election of US Senators. As a progressive leader, in 1922 Percy came to national notice by confronting Ku Klux Klan organizers in Greenville and uniting local people against them. During the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, he appointed his son, William Alexander Percy, to direct the work of thousands of black laborers on the levees near Greenville. He prevented them from being evacuated when the levee was breached. They were forced to work without pay to unload Red Cross relief supplies, which required the work of volunteers. Both father and son were criticized later for these actions. ==Planter== Percy became an attorney in Greenville, Mississippi, the county seat of Washington County, Mississippi in the Mississippi Delta. In his early years, some clients paid in horses, others in land; and Percy acquired a total of 20,000 acres. His plantation, called Trail Lake, was worked by African-American sharecroppers. They provided most of the labor on all the plantations in the area and had constituted a majority of the population in the county since before the American Civil War. Percy gave them a better share than many planters, set up schools on the property for the children, allowed his tenants to buy land, and made other changes to build a community. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「LeRoy Percy」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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