Summary: This study follows the parallel public lives of two of the most important and intriguing figures of the civil rights era: James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer. Though the two lived just five miles apart in the cotton fields of rural Mississippi, they appear at first blush to be polar opposites---Eastland the millionaire white planter who ruled not only a 5,200 acre cotton plantation but also the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and Hamer the poorly educated black sharecropper who faced eviction and harassment for exercising the right to vote. Yet, as this study shows, the two shared a heritage of dependence on the global cotton economy that nurtured a similarly uncompromising ideology. Though their goals were diametrically opposed, each emphasized the economic dimension of freedom, each viewed the civil rights struggles as part of a global, apocalyptic battle between the forces of slavery and freedom, and each earned widespread admiration and condemnation for their refusal to compromise on their avowed principles. This study reveals two remarkably consistent yet conflicted public figures struggling to come to grips with political, economic, and social changes that convulsed their native land beginning in the 1930s and continuing through the 1970s. By the time of their deaths, both Eastland and Hamer were profoundly ambivalent about the overall effect of these changes. The freedom each sought proved elusive.