High John, the conqueror

the long version

Set in the river bottoms of southeast Texas where the Navasota and Brazos rivers come together, High John the Conqueror tells the story of African American cotton farmers struggling to keep their land during the last years of the Great Depression. Ruby Lee and Cleveland Webster are sharecroppers on property owned by the rich white man, John Cheney, but Cleveland's parents are struggling to hold on to the farm they have owned since the end of slavery. The Websters are about to lose their forty acres because of one flood too many and one final disastrous crop failure. John Cheney is rich enough to withstand droughts and floods, and as blacks lose their land Cheney buys it up. The Webster family land is next on Cheney's list of foreclosures. Cleveland thinks John Cheney also has an eye for Ruby Lee. In telling the story of the Websters and John Cheney, John W. Wilson captures the hopelessness of poor southern blacks during the Depression.