Private Project

Sharecrop: Delta Cotton

SHARECROP DELTA COTTON (Stack Stories LLC 2018) features stories from the life of Sylvester Hoover, who was born into a cotton sharecropping family in the Mississippi Delta in 1957. Hoover recounts his family's struggles to access education and voting rights. He also paints a vivid picture of daily life and the unrelenting toil of even the young children on cotton plantations. Scenes include the plantation where he was raised, the church he still attends (burial place of Blues music legend Robert Johnson), and Hoover's school in Money, MS, where Emmett Till had his fateful encounter at Bryant's Grocery. Hoover reflects on his upbringing, the peonage system, and his feelings for the land and Blues music.

  • Claudia Stack
    Director
    UNDER THE KUDZU, CARRIE MAE: AN AMERICAN LIFE
  • Claudia Stack
    Writer
    UNDER THE KUDZU, CARRIE MAE: AN AMERICAN LIFE
  • Middle Road Foundation
    Producer
  • Carolina Video Edit Centers
    Producer
  • Historic Wilmington Foundation
    Producer
  • Trinity Washington
    Key Cast
    "Narrator"
  • Richard Gehron
    Editor
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short
  • Runtime:
    17 minutes 30 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    July 18, 2017
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Rapport International Black Film Festival
    London
    United Kingdom
    June 16, 2018
    International premiere
    official selection
  • National Council for Black Studies Conference
    Atlanta GA
    United States
    March 15, 2018
  • Copa Shorts Film Festival
    Maricopa AZ
    United States
    February 17, 2018
    official selection
  • Cotton Kingdom Symposium at MS Valley State University
    Itta Bena, MS
    United States
    November 10, 2017
    North American Premiere
Director Biography - Claudia Stack

Claudia Stack (Ed.M.) is an educator and documentary filmmaker. Her background includes 22 years in education with a focus on building college preparedness, especially for first-generation college students. Her documentary films on historic African American schools were screened at the 2012 and the 2015 National Trust for Historic Preservation Conferences and many other venues. In 2009 Stack organized the inaugural UNCW Rosenwald School Legacy Conference. Stack has just finished SHARECROP, her third documentary film, supported by The Middle Road Foundation.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

I have been documenting historic African American schools since 2003, and SHARECROP is my third feature documentary. My interest in documenting the lives of sharecroppers grew out of my first two films, which featured Rosenwald schools. These were schools that southern African American communities built during the segregation era with help from philanthropist Julius Rosenwald. Sharecropping was the economic context for many of the Rosenwald schools that were built.

However, when we visited the Delta and interviewed Sylvester Hoover, I realized that in his early youth African American children had only improvised schools that they attended for only a few months each year. Hoover and his older siblings had no public school of any kind until 1963. This was just one of the harsh realities his family faced.

We created the short film SHARECROP DELTA COTTON in order to highlight the experiences of African American cotton sharecroppers in the Delta.