Praying for Sheetrock

Praying for Sheetrock is a book of literary nonfiction by writer Melissa Fay Greene. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1991. A group of experts convened by New York University’s journalism department also included the book on its list of the best journalism of the 20th century. The book’s author, Greene, is a native of Georgia. She has published six nonfiction books and has written for many publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. This study guide refers to the edition of the book published in 1991 by the Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc.

The book opens in June 1971 with a collision between two trucks on Highway 17, which cuts through the town of Darien in McIntosh County, Georgia. The white sheriff of McIntosh County, Tom Poppell, presides over the accident. Several black residents who live nearby come to pilfer brand-new shoes that have fallen from the trucks. Poppell condones this form of highway theft. In this opening scene, it’s clear how the sheriff operates outside the law and offers small favors in exchange for the black residents’ compliance with his authoritarian rule over McIntosh County, which acquires a reputation for lawlessness.

The civil rights movement and desegregation of the 1960s has largely bypassed this isolated section of marshland and forest in rural Georgia. White and black individuals live in separate spheres of society. Most of the residents in the main city, Darien, are white; white individuals largely own the businesses in Darien. Most of the black residents are impoverished and live in the countryside, performing manual labor jobs like woodworking and service work for the wealthier white residents.

Sheriff Poppell perpetuates a system of systemic racism in which he accumulates wealth by keeping the black residents of McIntosh in poverty. Although he curries the favor of black residents with acts of occasional generosity, Poppell is a tyrant who orders around the county’s commissioners; engages in corrupt acts and receives funds from illegal businesses like gambling and prostitution; and threatens anyone who challenges his king-like rule, which he inherited from the previous sheriff—his father. Poppell props up the “good old boy” network in which white men benefit from nepotism and the only black people in elected office are those whom Poppell has handpicked to carry out his bidding.

Enter Thurnell Alston: a black man, who, despite his lack of formal higher education, speaks eloquently and passionately and cares about the advancement of his black brethren. Following the shooting of a black man by a white police officer and the firing of the only black representative from the Board of Education, Alston leads two separate protests at city hall to protest discrimination against the black community. Alston forms a local NAACP chapter with his friends, Sammie Pinkney and Nathaniel Grovner. Alston receives some help from white lawyers from the Georgia Legal Services Project to file multiple lawsuits against the county and the city. This results in more black representation on the grand jury that selects the Board of Education and redistricting of voting districts so that black voters will have more of a say in the electoral process.

After enduring years of likely voter fraud that discriminated against black residents, Alston is finally elected as a county commissioner. Unlike his black predecessors on the county commission, Alston is outspoken and advocates fiercely to improve conditions for black people in McIntosh County—much to the chagrin of the white commissioners. Sheriff Poppell dies, and his terrible reign over McIntosh County comes to an end. After suffering the loss of his son and realizing that the poor black community does not have the time or energy to care about civil rights in the same way he does, Alston grows corrupt in his position. Alston eventually gets arrested for a drug deal by an undercover police agent and goes to jail, showing how power can corrupt anyone in its reach.