ENTERTAINMENT
AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE MEMOIR CHRONICLES JOURNEY FROM SHARECROPPING TO MAKING MADISON HISTORY
school dropout, Thomas saw the U.S. Army as an escape from his extreme poverty, and served as a rocket specialist in Germany and with the Big Red One at Fort Riley in Kansas. After leaving the Army in 1963, Thomas made his way to Madison where he attended the University of Wisconsin, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees before going to work for the city. Thomas served as a planner in the mayor’s of ce before becoming the rst black assistant mayor in the city’s history. He would go on to open the city’s rst African-American owned art gallery, leaving a legacy in the city that he hopes will inspire others. “I hope that they get an appreciation for the kind of life that I led and where I come from, from humble beginnings,” Thomas says. “I hope they know that it’s there if they want to emulate it, they can do it.”
The road to success in America isn’t as easy for some as it is for others. While some hold the proverbial silver spoon, others are left with very little to hold on to at all. But from adverse circumstances often come extraordinary achievements. Such was the life of James C. Thomas, who chronicles his early struggles, and his eventual successes, in his recent book, “The Son of a Sharecropper Achieves the American Dream.” “People have always told me that I have an interesting story to tell,” Thomas says. “Basically, it’s a memoir about my life starting off as a kid in Mississippi working on the plantation.” Thomas was born in rural Coahoma, Mississippi, in 1941 to an 18-year-old sharecropper. He grew up on the plantation, spending his early years chopping and picking cotton for 10 hours a day, eight months out of the year. As a high
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