The Son of a Sharecropper Achieves the American Dream: A Memoir and Family History

James C. Thomas was born in Mississippi in 1941 to an 18-year-old sharecropper. He didn't know his biological father until he was 15. A high school dropout, he grew up in dire poverty in the pre-Civil Rights south, chopping and picking cotton for ten hours a day, eight months of the year. Yet Thomas overcame these difficult beginnings to enjoy a successful career in government service and business. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison at age 33, went to work for the Madison city government as the first black assistant mayor in the city's history. He later opened Madison's first African-American art gallery and with his family started a multi-service pain management and treatment center in metropolitan Milwaukee. Thomas and his wife Yvonne, married for 52 years, have four children, eight grandchildren, and three great grandchildren. This book is an honest look at being black in this country. Thomas faced many hardships as a poor boy growing up in 1950s Mississippi, and his struggles didn't end when he moved to the north and began his professional career. But this is also a story of hope and perseverance-about how one man never gave up, overcame tremendous odds, and achieved the American Dream.

James C. Thomas was born in Coahoma, Mississippi, in 1941, the son of a sharecropper. As a child and teenager he worked on cotton plantations, chopping and picking cotton. He attended Hull Jr. High School from primary through the ninth grade. He attended one year at Agricultural High School near Clarksdale, Miss., and later earned his GED. James served in the United States Army as a rocket specialist in Germany and with the Big Red One in Fort Riley, Kansas. He was honorably discharged in September 1963. After leaving the service he worked for a number of Fortune 500 companies in marketing and sales. He received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and earned a Certificate for Urban Executives from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. In 1973 he took a job in the Madison, Wis. city government as a manpower planner with the mayor’s office. He was later appointed the first black assistant mayor in the city’s history, and held a number of different positions in municipal government before starting his own medical transcription business in the early 1980s. Thomas later opened the first African-American art gallery and custom framing shop in the city of Madison. In 1996 he moved to Milwaukee to partner with his daughter, Dr. Pamela Thomas-King, M.D. and her husband, Dr. George Penn King II, M.D., to open the first black and female owned multi-disciplinary chronic pain management and treatment center in the metropolitan Milwaukee area. In 2002, the Thomas family bought a 9,000 square foot building in north Milwaukee, which now houses the clinic and a new ambulatory surgery center. Now semi-retired, Jim Thomas and his wife Yvonne live in Brown Deer, Wis., a suburb of Milwaukee, and have a winter home in a gated community in Orlando, Fla. Thomas now spends his time traveling, enjoying his family, and writing about issues facing the black community