Forty Acres and a Goat: A Memoir

When he was seven years old Will Campbell (b. 1924) decided that he would be a preacher. Ten years later he was ordained, then took a pastorate at a small church in Louisiana. "It just didn't work out," he writes. Nor did his stint as Director of Religious Life at the University of Mississippi, where his views on civil rights were far too radical, nor after that his assignment with the National Council of Churches. He thus found himself with "a call but no steeple," a sense of failure, doubt about himself (but not about his call), and "a penchant for self-destruction." What to do? In this memoir Campbell tells how he regrouped on a rundown two-hundred year old farmhouse with forty acres and a goat named Jackson. There in rural Tennessee he has flourished as a Christian anarchist and rabble rouser. He's farmed, wrote nearly twenty books, hosted a steady stream of troubled people both famous and unknown, wrote country music, visited the sick and the imprisoned, and continued his curmudgeonly protest against the principalities and powers. If you were raised in the south as I was, have an interest in the civil rights movement, or want to enjoy one of the most irreverent Christians ever to irritate the church, then read Will Campbell. He was born and raised in the rural and very poor deep south of Amite, Mississippi, "ordained" by family members at a local Baptist church when he was seventeen, and, in a delightfully improbable life, played a central role as an activist and agitator on behalf of African Americans. In 1957, Campbell was one of four people who escorted the nine black students who integrated Little Rock's Central High School; and he was the only white person to attend the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. But he also made nice and sipped whiskey with the KKK Grand Dragon of North Carolina, believing that God's indiscriminate love embraces all of us without exception or conditions. Will Campbell loves a good chew of tobacco and will strike many as enigmatic. Not everyone will appreciate his rapier wit. But PBS profiled him in their documentary "God's Will," in 2000 President Clinton honored him with a National Endowment for the Humanities medal, and his book Brother to a Dragonfly won numerous literary awards.

There are vague memories of Will Campbell, from my childhood days at St. Phillips Episcopal Church. I always knew that he was the Salman Rushdie of the Southern Babtist Convention but I never new why he was associated with the Episcopal Church until reading 40 Acres and a Goat. I recently hooked up with the Phil Rice the son of Father Charles Rice. My interest in 40 Acres and a Goat got rekindled during my search for Convention: A Parable, which I still have not found a copy of. Convention: A Parable was referenced in American Theocracy : The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21stCentury, and I have been on the search for a copy since. Will Campbell is probably the most effective activist I have ever known in my life. 40 Acres and a Goat made me aware just how effective he was. I would stack him right up with Micheal Moore. I have a twenty year old activist living in my home who I hope reads this book and it would be extraordinary if he could get an opportunity to meet Mr. Campbell to put his radicallism into a much larger perspective. There is almost a melancholy conclusion to the memoir with a lack of assurance to the effectiveness of his efforts. But I believe that if you bang the drum your whole life and all you have to show for it is someone to bang the drum for you when you are gone, your life is golden. I do not know if I would ever have met Kerry Majors, Donald Cockrill, Bonita Hayes, Sammy and Loretta Tally, Douglas Palmer who were transfered from Hopewell Elementary to Andrew Jackson Elementary as a result of Brown vs. the Board of Education and the efforts of Mr. Campbell so I consider his contribution phenomenal. And I think that it is ironic that it took place Andrew Jackson Elementary, whereas Jackson A' Goat was the name of the goat who witnessed all these events.

I've owned this book for fourteen years...a real treasure. Have told many friends about it...this was done first by a Southern publisher; then in paperback, I think, by HarperCollins.Now, it looks like a new Southern publisher is bringing it back out in paperback. It's funky, Southern, religious, racial...abosolutely Southern and a must read. I recommend it to anyone who asks big questions about themselves and world and people around them.

Will Campbell is one of the South's great writers and this re-issue of Forty Acres and A Goat is perhaps his best. This book, still in high demand, has an exciting new cover and should be read by all who love the South, goats and God.

This book is out of print. It is being reissued by Jefferson Press (see above.) It's a great buy.DM