In David L. Jordan's earliest memories, he is lying in the fields, the black earth beneath him and the sky and sun above, filtered through the leaves of the cotton plants. The youngest of five children in a family of sharecroppers, he was nursed and grew up in those fields, joining his family in their work as soon as he was old enough to carry a sack. David L. Jordan: From the Mississippi Cotton Fields to the State Senate is the memoir of black Mississippi...