Invisible Hands in the Winter Garden: Power, Politics, and Florida’S Bahamian Farmworkers in the Twentieth Century

INVISIBLE HANDS IN THE WINTER GARDEN: POWER, POLITICS, AND FLORIDA’S BAHAMIAN FARMWORKERS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

ERIN L. CONLIN

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2014

To my parents, Joe and Judy Conlin

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to thank the members of my supervisory committee: William A. Link, Elizabeth

Dale, Maria Stoilkova, Paul Ortiz, and most particularly, Joseph Spillane, for their help and support on this endeavor. Joe is the quintessential mentor and advisor—thoughtful, kind, patient and dedicated. His tireless support throughout this project—and graduate school more broadly— has been invaluable. Joe’s readings and re-readings, criticisms and suggestions, have sharpened my arguments and clarified my thinking. Any success is thanks to him; any shortcomings are solely my own. Over the years I’ve also had the pleasure of getting to know Jennifer, Maggie, and Lily Spillane. I appreciate their welcoming me into their home and family.

Speaking of my UF family, I would be remiss if I did not thank the Wise family, Jessica

Harland-Jacobs, Matt, Jeremy, and Alexandra Jacobs, as well as Jack Davis, and Sonya and

Willa Rudenstien, for their support over the past few years. It was a pleasure getting to know each of you and becoming a part of your families. I also want to thank Allison Fredette, William

Hicks, Johanna Mellis, Greg Mason, Ashley Kerr, Taylor Patterson, Rachel Rothstein, Brian

Miller, and many others at the University of Florida. They make life more enjoyable, and their intellectual curiosity is inspiring. I deeply appreciate the personal and professional relationships we have forged.

Above all, I thank my family. Graduate school would have been impossible without them. I owe an endless debt of gratitude to Jill Baumgarter, Brian Robinson, and Oriane, for welcoming me into their home. They gave me an amazing opportunity to be a part of their family, focus on my work, and explore a new city. Similarly, I thank Sharon and Gene

Baumgartner, my second set of “parents,” for always checking in on me and keeping their door open. I appreciate my brother, Tony, and niece, Noelle’s, efforts to stay connected even when we are thousands of miles apart. Catching up with them brightens any day. And finally, I thank my

parents, Joe and Judy. They have modeled excellent teaching and what it means to work hard.

They have supported me in every way imaginable, throughout my entire life. Their love and generosity is boundless. Words cannot express how much I love and appreciate them.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

LIST OF FIGURES ...... 8

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...... 9

ABSTRACT ...... 10

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 12

2 THE VISION—FLORIDA FARMERS’ QUEST FOR AN ACCESSIBLE AND INVISIBLE WORKFORCE ...... 30

The Nation’s Winter Garden: Florida and the Rise of Modern Agriculture ...... 37 An Accessible and Invisible Workforce ...... 45

3 BOOM AND BUST: THE TRIALS OF BAHAMIAN FARM LABOR IN INTERWAR FLORIDA ...... 69

Boom: Bahamian Migration and Florida Farming, 1890-1926 ...... 70 Bust: Florida’s Long Depression and the (Temporary) Decline of Bahamian Farm Labor ...92

4 CREATING A NEW AGRICULTURAL LABOR REGIME: FLORIDA AND THE BAHAMIAN/BRITISH WEST INDIAN TEMPORARY FOREIGN LABOR PROGRAM, 1942 TO 1947 ...... 109

Back Door Immigration Policy ...... 111 World War II and Agricultural Labor Demands ...... 116 The Debate Over Labor Shortages and Efforts to Control Domestic Workers ...... 117 Alternative Labor Supplies ...... 129 The Bahamian/BWI Solution ...... 132 Support for Foreign Labor in the 1940s: ...... 134 Muted Opposition to Foreign Labor ...... 138 Bahamian/BWI Program Structure ...... 140 Worker Placement ...... 145 The Importance of the Bahamian/BWI Program ...... 147

5 EXPECTATION AND REALITY: GROWERS’ EFFORTS TO SHAPE THE FOREIGN FARM LABOR PROGRAM, 1943—1966 ...... 153

Labor Supply: Managing the Flow of Bahamian Workers ...... 156 Labor Quality: Expectations and Realities ...... 171

6 WORKERS’ STRUGGLE FOR VISIBILITY DURING THE FARM LABOR PROGRAM, 1943-1966 ...... 184

Challenging the Terms and Conditions of Employment ...... 187 The Boundaries of Citizenship and Rights ...... 209 The Roots of Modern Farm Labor Advocacy ...... 216 Non-Profit Groups ...... 218 The African American Press ...... 221 Government and Quasi-government Groups ...... 225 Local Organizations ...... 232 Establishing Visibility and a Voice ...... 233

7 CONCLUSION: THE END OF THE BAHAMIAN FOREIGN LABOR PROGRAM AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE MODERN FARM LABOR REGIME ...... 235

Promoting Domestic Labor ...... 237 Contested Policy and Practice ...... 239 Changing Conditions at Home and Abroad ...... 245 Reducing Legal Access to Foreign Labor ...... 245 A Rebounding Bahamian Economy ...... 249 The Emergence of the Modern Farm Labor Regime ...... 251

LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 263

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 273

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure page

Figure 2-1. Post Card, “Truck Farming in Florida.” ...... 64

Figure 2-2. Florida Crops and When to Plant. New Series Bulletin—Florida State Department of Agriculture, 1. September 1953...... 65

Figure 2-3. Overview of celery crop and men in the field. 1930s...... 66

Figure 2-4. Convicts leased to harvest timber. 191-? ...... 66

Figure 2-5. Martin Tabert. December 1921...... 67

Figure 2-6. Convicts at work on a privately owned farm. 192-? ...... 68

Figure 3-2. Hurricane action shot in Miami Beach, Florida. 1926...... 104

Figure 3-3. Miami After 1926 Hurricane. 1926...... 105

Figure 3-4. Map showing flood damage to the Lake Okeechobee area by the hurricanes of 1926 and 1928. 1948...... 106

Figure 3-5. Belle Glade, Florida, after the 1928 Hurricane. 1928...... 107

Figure 3-6. Coffins stacked along the bank of a canal, after the hurricane of 1928-Belle Glade, Florida. 1928...... 107

Figure 3-7. Dwellings for migrant workers—Belle Glade, Florida. June 1940...... 108

Figure 3-8. Migrant workers relaxing outside labor camp shelters—Belle Glade, Florida. February 1941...... 108

Figure 4-1. Bahama natives arriving for work in U.S. fields—Miami, Florida. April 11, 1943...... 152

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

BP Border Patrol

DOL United States Department of Labor

DOS United States Department of State

ES United States Extension Service

FFVA Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association

FHA United States Farm Home Administration

FIC Florida Industrial Commission

FSA United States Farm Security Administration

FSDS Florida State Defense Council

INS United States Immigration and Naturalization Service

OL United States War Manpower Commission, Office of Labor

RIC United States Department of State, Records of the International Commissions

USCG United States Coast Guard

USES United States Employment Service

WMC War Manpower Commission

Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

INVISIBLE HANDS IN THE WINTER GARDEN: POWER, POLITICS, AND FLORIDA’S BAHAMIAN FARMWORKERS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Erin L. Conlin

May 2014

Chair: Joseph Spillane Major: History

This project explores the evolution of Florida’s modern farm labor system, from the

1910s through the 1960s, by looking at the working lives of migrant and imported Bahamian farm laborers. The Bahamian experience affords an excellent opportunity to examine how agencies of the state and private agricultural employers collaborated in the creation of a labor regime that perpetuated Florida’s long reliance on low-wage, migrant workers. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, including state, federal, and foreign government documents, and a rich trove of employer correspondences, this dissertation not only illuminates previously hidden experiences of Bahamian guestworkers, but also reconstructs the processes that created and sustained farm labor policies.

This study begins by tracing Florida’s development as the nation’s winter garden and the coercive labor practices commonly found throughout the state in the early twentieth century. It then examines the long history of Bahamian migration to Florida, and how these temporary workers fundamentally shaped the state’s history. In the years following World War I, traditional forced labor practices came under attack. This change, coupled with the Great Migration and increasing immigration restriction, created a crisis among agricultural employers forcing them to

consider alternative labor models. A surplus of available workers during the Great Depression lessened calls for imported foreign labor, but World War II again heightened growers’ concerns about a potential dearth of labor. Investigating how farm owners leveraged increased demands for Florida produce with threats of real labor shortages elsewhere in the country reveals how they finally succeeded in getting the U.S. government to actively import temporary foreign workers.

A final analysis examining how growers and workers struggled to craft, control, and operate within the system demonstrates the disconnect between policy and practice, and how workers struggled for visibility within the confines of the evolving regime. Concluding with the termination of the Bahamian program and the eventual Latinization of the Florida workforce, this project argues Florida’s modern farm labor regime perpetuates an historic reliance on informal, low-wage, often invisible, migrant workers.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

On September 16, 1928, a raging hurricane ripped through the Florida hinterlands, bearing down on Belle Glade, a small farming community situated on the southeastern shore of

Lake Okeechobee.1 With little warning regarding the magnitude of the storm, most residents were caught unprepared. In a brief moment of racial solidarity, whites and blacks sought shelter wherever they could, in whatever structures appeared most secure—in homes, businesses, or boats. As wind and rain battered the city, it became clear that the dike holding back Lake

Okeechobee was no match for the storm. Water poured over the levee washing buildings off their very foundations, sending the people inside them careening through flooded streets. Some individuals managed to catch hold of buildings and trees that had not yet toppled in the storm; others clung to passing debris and were swept miles outside the city limits in a torrent of water.

Many more simply drowned.2

In the most famous account of the devastating storm, Zora Neale Hurston opens Their

Eyes Were Watching God, with Janie’s return from the “muck” farms on the shores of Lake

Okeechobee. Janie had come back from burying the dead—“the sodden and the bloated; the

1 The storm was estimated to be a category four hurricane. The lake is like a large, shallow frying pan. The average depth is only 20 feet and it covers 730 square miles. The natural water flow trickles down over the southern bank and into the Everglades where it works its way to the Florida Bay. In 1928, the small towns along the southern end of the lake were protected only by a five foot 47-mile dike designed to hold back the waters in the case of heavy rains The 1926 hurricane showed it to be useless, yet the state government failed to secure funding to improve the dike and prevent future flooding. At the time of the 1928 hurricane an estimated 8,00 black migrant farm workers (many of them from the Caribbean) inhabited the southern rim of the lake. Exact estimates are unknown because most men were paid in cash, few employers kept records of their workers, and most only knew them by their first names. (Eliot Kleinberg, Black Cloud: The Great Florida Hurricane of 1928 (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003), 5, 14-15.)

2 Ibid.

sudden death, their eyes flung wide in judgment.”3 In the wake of the storm, the Red Cross and the Florida Department of Health estimated the death toll at 1836. Today, virtually everyone agrees that number is too low. Most historians believe the estimate should be closer to 2500-

3000.4 Eliot Kleinberg pointedly observes that had the storm drowned 3000 wealthy whites in downtown West Palm Beach, instead of killing mostly black migrant workers in Florida’s vegetable fields, this discrepancy probably would not exist.5 Hurston describes how black men like Tea Cake were tasked with collecting and identifying the dead. Their job was to sort white from black bodies. White bodies would be temporarily held for identification and then placed in simple pine coffins. Black bodies were unceremoniously dumped in mass graves or burned immediately, the identities of the individuals unknown.6 As Kleinberg eloquently notes,

“Second-class citizens in life, they became truly invisible in death.”7 While the anonymity of these black residents has been noted in many studies, and in some cases it is mentioned that a large number of victims were Bahamians working as seasonal laborers, few scholars elaborate on the important role foreign labor played in providing a critically-needed labor force in the newly developing agricultural regions of Southern Florida.8

The 1928 hurricane marked a pivotal moment in the story of Florida farmers’ quest for cheap, replaceable labor. The simple fact that thousands of black farmworkers died with little

3 Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (New York: Harper Perennial, 1937), Kindle book Location 341. Hurston provides one of the richest studies of the human element of the hurricane, as well as illuminating divisions between the Afro-American and Afro-Caribbean communities

4 Ibid., xiv. A National Hurricane Center study in 2003 also increased the death toll to 2,500.

5 Ibid., xiv-xv.

6 Ibid., 148. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (New York: Harper Perennial, 1937), Kindle book Location 2726.

7 Ibid., xiii.

8 Robert Mykle. Killer 'Cane: The Deadly Hurricane of 1928 (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002.)

fanfare indicates Florida’s ambivalent relationship with its workers. While accessibility to these men and women was central to the economic success of the region, as people, they were essentially invisible to the state and the surrounding communities. The state repeatedly failed to provide adequate dikes that would protect them in the case of a large storm, and this neglect doomed thousands to death.9 The surrounding communities’ inability to account for those killed further highlights how invisible these workers were both in life and in death. Florida farmers’ and politicians’ responses to the hurricane also illustrate the power of historical contingency. The storm could have been the occasion for significant changes undertaken to improve the lives of

Florida’s farmworkers. Instead, the state’s powerful agricultural and political interests clung to the tenets of the existing labor regime, focused on exploiting the most marginalized workers.

The invisibility of Caribbean guestworkers in the historiography of twentieth-century southern agricultural labor echoes the silences that followed the 1928 hurricane. In general,

Florida’s agriculture history is often overlooked or given short shrift in agricultural studies.

Numan Bartley argued in his general survey of postwar southern history that by the 1960s, “the colonial economy of the sort described in President Roosevelt’s Report on the Economic

Conditions of the South was a memory, and modern economic infrastructure was its successor.”10 Although southern agriculture may have modernized economically, for the

9 A strong hurricane in 1926 caused Lake Okeechobee to flood the region, and highlighted the need for a stronger levee system. However, only minor improvements were made and so the area was still vulnerable in 1928.

10 Bartley concluded, “By 1960 the South possessed a modern economy. The extent of modernization varied from state to state, but the region as a whole had become predominantly urban and the metropolitan population was soon to be in the majority…the colonial economy of the sort described in President Roosevelt’s Report on the Economic Conditions of the South was a memory, and modern economic infrastructure was its successor.” By the 1960s modernization had greatly affected many states, but Florida was not among them. Rather than seeking to improve production and earnings through mechanization, Florida’s farm owners sought to achieve these goals by maintaining a large labor surplus which would in turn drive down wages. (Numan V. Bartley, The New South, 1945-1980. A History of the South, V. 11 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), 146.) Pete Daniel identified the centrality of mechanization in some southern states and certain crops (cotton, tobacco, and rice) in Breaking the Land. He noted that in these places and industries, “traditional rural life yielded to the seemingly irresistible forces of mechanization.” Although true of many of the South’s traditional agricultural regions and crops, it did not apply

thousands of individuals entering Florida to perform stoop labor in its fields, southern labor practices appeared much more colonial than modern. Florida’s fieldwork was defined not by mechanization, but rather by backbreaking physical labor and limited mobility due to labor contracts that denied workers the opportunity to change employers.11 Pete Daniel, also exploring the mechanization of southern agriculture, concluded that “government policy…created a different rural structure.”12 His assessment is fundamentally true in more ways than one. Daniel’s focus was on government support and advocacy of mechanization, science, and the role of experts in determining best practices in farming. However, his insightful analysis also describes how government policies facilitating foreign labor importation during World War II helped create a different rural labor structure, one that would eventually be characterized by marginalized, low-wage, foreign laborers.

Where guestworkers do play a role in more traditional narratives of the South, they serve as something of an afterthought to the story of the decline of the existing system of domestic

African-American farm labor. The rise of this new, pervasive agricultural labor system that persists to the present day is accorded only secondary importance. While accounts of southern labor relations properly emphasize white efforts in the older labor regime to coerce and control local blacks through various schemes, including debt peonage, chain gangs, and the use of vagrancy laws, these accounts tend to end the story around mid-century.13 Additionally,

to Florida’s truck farmed vegetables or sugarcane, where manual labor ruled the day. (Pete Daniel, Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures Since 1880 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 290-291.)

11 This piece focuses primarily on the truck farming industry. However, some guestworkers were also engaged in industries like lumber and sugarcane and at times their stories will enter this narrative.

12 Daniel, Breaking the Land, 290-291.

13 David Tegeder, “Prisoners of the Pines: Debt Peonage in the Southern Turpentine Industry, 1900-1930.” Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Florida, 1996); U.S. Congress, Oversight Hearing on Peonage Among Agricultural Workers: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Labor Standards of the Committee on Education and Labor, House of

beginning with World War I, many scholars focus on African American out-migration as the centerpiece of the southern labor story.14 During this period, black Americans engaged in two types of migration. Some left the fields and moved to urban areas in the South to pursue higher paying industrial jobs resulting from war mobilization. Others abandoned the South entirely and headed North in search of higher wages and better living and working conditions. While these migrations are an essential part of the story, they dominate the narrative at the expense of the workers who joined, and sometimes replaced, African American field workers.

Examining the impact and experiences of black foreign laborers enriches the traditional southern labor story, and illuminates its complexity. Just as modern Americans all too often ignored their laboring contemporaries who helped put food on their tables, so too have scholars marginalized agricultural guestworkers in memory by relegating them to the footnotes of history.15 Here guestworkers are not simply an addition to the traditional narrative; they are an overlooked, critical component of that story.

Representatives (Ninety-Eighth Congress, First Session, Hearing Held in Washington, D.C., on September 22, 1983. Washington: U.S. G.P.O., 1984); Randolph Boehm, August Meier, and Mark Fox. Papers of the NAACP, Part 10. Peonage, labor, and the New Deal, 1913-1939 and Part 13. NAACP and Labor, 1940-1955 (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1982); Charles D. Chamberlain, Victory at Home: Manpower and Race in the American South during World War II (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2003); Pete Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901-1969 (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1972); Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Jerrell H. Shofner, “The Legacy of Racial Slavery: Free Enterprise and Forced Labor in Florida in the 1940s.” Journal of Southern History, Vol 47, No. 3 (Aug. 1981): 411-426; Gavin Wright, Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy since the Civil War (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1986)

14 Bartley, The New South; Chamberlain, Victory at Home; Jack Temple Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920-1960 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987); George Brown Tindall, The Emergence of the New South, 1913-1945. A History of the South, V. 10 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967)

15 The Bracero Program is an exception to this since its history is well recorded. However, most braceros typically worked in the West and Midwest; therefore, their story is not usually included in the traditional southern labor narratives.

Bahamian workers arriving in Florida between the 1910s and 1960s, helped shape

Florida’s modern agricultural labor system and highlight the evolving role of the state.16

Although not the focus of this study, British West Indian (BWI) workers of different nationalities weave their way in and out of this narrative. Often lawmakers in the twentieth century referred to

Bahamians as part of the British West Indian Temporary Foreign Labor Program, even though they technically had their own programs. However, they often operated under similar contractual conditions. The Bahamian/BWI story is important because, unlike the defunct Bracero Program, the smaller Caribbean program flourished and adapted over time to become the modern H-2A

Temporary Guestworker Program. Focusing on Florida allows for greater analysis of the program’s details: how growers conceived of the program, how they sold the idea to state and federal officials, how it was implemented, what it was like, and how it adapted to changing demands over time. A series of questions animate this study.

First, where do the formal Bracero and Bahamian/BWI programs really fit in American agricultural labor history? Were these programs “a momentous break with past policy and practice” or rather an evolution of a much longer labor story?17 While Cindy Hahamovitch is correct in arguing “the decision to import workers during the Second World War shaped the course of farm labor history over the next fifty years,” contextualizing this moment in a longer

16 The study begins in the 1910s, in order to illustrate change over time. It shows the transformation from an informal to formal labor regime, and then the return, albeit it to a new type, of informal system. The Bahamian program ended in 1966, though its effects extend into the present day. (Klaus de Albuquerque and Jerome L. McElroy. “Bahamian Labor Migration, 1901-1963,” New West Indian Guide/ Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 60, no: 3/4 Leiden (1986): 167-202.) Here “the state” refers to politicians, political parties, government agencies, or anyone authorized to act on behalf of the national government. This definition applies to the state of Florida, the United States, and the Bahamas.

17 Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 137.

seasonal Bahamian labor history illuminates some broader points.18 As the hurricane deaths show, and work by Raymond Mohl and Howard Johnson confirms, migration from the Bahamas to Florida was certainly nothing new when the formal Bahamian/BWI programs began in 1943.

Large numbers of Bahamians came to Florida between the 1880s and the 1920s seeking seasonal employment; and, prior to the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1924, many of these migrants permanently settled in Florida.19 Considering this “pre-history” of the Bahamian program helps enhance understanding regarding what was distinctively new about the program, and what built upon a longer history. Additionally, this extended historical analysis self- consciously explores Paul Pierson’s suggestion that “focusing on dramatic moments of policy choice blinds us to two broad aspect of policy development: what happens before the moment of choice and what happens after.”20 By paying attention to “processes that play out over considerable periods of time” we are better positioned to understand the “story of policy development.”21 An in depth study of Florida’s long farm labor system shows how

“Attentiveness to issues of temporality highlights aspects of social life that are essentially

18 Cindy Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 200-201.

19 Raymond A. Mohl, “Black Immigrants: Bahamians in Early Twentieth-Century Miami” Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Jan. 1987): 273; Howard Johnson, “Bahamian Labor Migration to Florida in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.” International Migration Review, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring 1988): 89-90. Klaus de Albuquerque and Jerome L. McElroy in their article, “Bahamian Labor Migration, 1901-1963,” (New West Indian Guide/ Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 60, no: 3/4 Leiden (1986): 167-202) also emphasize these points.

20 Paul Pierson, “The Study of Policy Development,” Journal of Policy History, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2005): 36. Related to this idea is the notion of policy feedback in which policies themselves create ripple effects of change, where one change sparks another—meaning that we need to consider policies in a longer stream of time. For example, Daniel Kryder (Divided Arsenal: Race and the American State During World War II (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000) shows how war mobilization starting in 1941 expanded industrial production into new areas, in turn affecting local labor sources and employment practices, and providing an additional impetus for a civil rights movement. Kimberly Johnson (Reforming Jim Crow: Southern Politics and State in the Age before Brown (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010)) and J. Douglas Smith (Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics, and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia (Chapel Hill The University of North Carolina Press, 2002)) make a similar point by illustrating how the classic Civil Rights Movement emerged in the wake of small reforms initially intended to perpetuate the southern racial order.

21 Ibid., 34. Emphasis in original.

invisible from an ahistorical vantage point.” Grounding the creation of the World War II formal guestworker program in a deeper history, illuminates how and why the program emerged, and how it evolved over time into the modern farm labor regime.

As products of state policy, guestworker programs raise a second critical question: how do we properly understand the role of the state in the emergence and development of a new farm labor regime? In southern history, the state can sometimes appear at its weakest in rural and agricultural domains. However, the development of the formal Bahamian program was a notable exception since the federal government assumed responsibility for facilitating every aspect of temporary farm labor migration. In this case, the state helped build upon existing migration networks and reshaped them into the foundations of a new labor system. Examining the formal and direct role of the state, but considering the way in which it helped facilitate private economic interests after the end of the wartime program sheds light on how the H-2A program came into existence, and how informal undocumented workers filled voids left by H-2A workers when that system came under attack.22 Examining the actions of foreign migrant workers and the role of the

Bahamian government and British colonial officials in fostering and supporting the new labor regime also highlights the transnational element of the story.23

22 The creation and then eventual privatization of the BWI program clearly demonstrates the shifting role of government and how it continuously realigns itself with various interests, including those that promote private economic interests. In a 2010 article about state power, William J. Novak argues this point when he states that the “actual mobilization of state power and resources on behalf of some and at the expense of others…remains a hallmark of the American experience.” (William J. Novak, “Long Live the Myth of the Weak State? A Response to Adams, Gerstle, and Witt,” The American Historical Review Vol. 115, No. 3 (June 2010), pp. 799.)

23 Several works provide excellent frameworks for analyzing state interactions in a transnational labor and migration context. They include David Griffith, American Guestworkers: Jamaicans and Mexicans in the U.S. Labor Market (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006); Jim Norris, North for the Harvest: Mexican Workers, Growers, and the Sugar Beet Industry (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2009); Michael J. Piore, Birds of Passage: Migrant Labor and Industrial Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). The Bahamas gained limited internal self-governing privileges in 1964 and full independence in 1973 (although they still remain part of the Commonwealth.)

The new farm labor system thrived in an era of postwar liberalism and rights consciousness, raising the question: how were guestworkers largely excluded from conversations about the nature of citizenship in the postwar South? Rights-based liberalism is a key piece of this puzzle because, by definition, it is only through citizenship that people gain access to political, economic and social rights. Building on the work of Rogers Smith, Linda Bosniak and

Evelyn Nakano Glenn, I explore the contours of American citizenship, the rights associated with it, and how guestworkers complicate this relationship. Second-class citizenship has always been a feature of the United States. Evelyn Nakano Glenn illustrated this point by exploring how race and gender have shaped American citizenship and labor policies. She argues that Americans’ embrace of the concept of a “worker citizen” is detrimental to many people because it is often synonymous with the “twin attributes of whiteness and masculinity.”24 For obvious reasons, this definition harms agricultural guestworkers who are usually categorized as non-white. One of

Glenn’s most important contributions, and central to this study, is the issue of formal versus substantive citizenship, or citizenship as embodied in law and policy versus one’s ability to exercise the rights of citizenship.

Linda Bosniak’s The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership adds to the conversation of formal versus substantive citizenship by looking at internal and external borders, or in other words physical borders and the boundaries of citizenship.25 While her work provides many insightful analyses about the relationship between citizens and aliens, it does not discuss the way guestworkers complicate this dichotomy. A thorough examination of temporary foreign laborers helps fill this historiographical void by looking at the relationship

24 Glenn, Unequal Freedom, 2.

25 Linda Bosniak, The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.)

between rights, citizenship, and the state. Unfortunately, since guestworkers are by definition and design ineligible for citizenship, they are rendered invisible under the rights-based citizenship model. The result is that once again their voices and stories are silenced, just as they were by the hurricane of 1928.

Fourth, and finally, moving away from large structural questions, how do we best understand the experiences of migrant farm laborers themselves, and what role do they play in this history? In the words of Susan Lee Johnson, how do “groups of people united by shared interests…create for themselves spheres of autonomy and strategies of interdependence?”26 This is a question has emerged as a vital one in the literature on migrant farm labor.27 Many of these studies show that (Mexican) migrant laborers struggled, and often succeeded, in creating semi- autonomous spaces that provided them with greater flexibility and control over their lives and

26 Susan Lee Johnson, Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000), 51. Johnson identifies how in Western mining camps during the Gold Rush, the relative absence of women and overwhelming numbers of men of different nationalities, ethnicities, races, and classes resulted in clashes that upset “white, American-born, Protestant” men’s visions about gender, race, and culture. In the context of the mines, where the traditional social elements used to construct normative gender, racial, and cultural standards of the day were absent, minority groups were able to create spaces, physically and socially, in which they could reject the pressures to meet these normative standards. Instead, they pursued alternatives that they felt were in their own best interest and the interests of their particular community. As Johnson notes, these spaces enabled miners to create “spheres of autonomy and strategies for interdependence.”

27 Carey McWilliams was one of the first to engage this topic in Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California (Santa Barbara: Peregrine Publishers, Inc. 1971 (first published in 1935, updated in 1939, and again in 1971) by exploring how Chinese and then Japanese migrant workers carved out a place for themselves in California’s economy and how eventually the state turned to Mexican labor. Works pertaining primarily to Mexican agricultural labor include Kathleen Mapes, Sweet Tyranny: Migrant Labor, Industrial Agriculture, and Imperial Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009) and Jim Norris, North for the Harvest. David Griffith’s, American Guestworkers bridges the literatures by focusing on both Mexican and Jamaican experiences. Cindy Hahamovitch provides an overview of East Coast migrants experience, including some Caribbean workers, in The Fruits of the Their Labor and in her article “‘The Worst Job in the World’: Reform, Revolution, and the Secret Rebellion in Florida’s Can Fields,” Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 35, Issue 4, (Oct. 2008), 770-800. As the title suggests, Ramón Grosfoguel’s Colonial Subjects: Puerto Ricans in a Global Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) complicates the narrative by engaging the Puerto Rican experience of being a citizen, yet still an imported labor source. Daniel Sidorick addresses the question of autonomy and interdependence by not only examining labor’s experience, but also by looking at industry’s response to labor’s actions in Condensed Capitalism: Campbell Soup and the Pursuit of Cheap Production in the Twentieth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009). Although not about migrant farm labor, Yasemin Nuhoglu Soysal’s Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994) is useful because it examines how migrant populations, often excluded politically from the state, attempt to carve out a place for themselves in order to secure basic human rights.

with the necessary space to push for reforms. Building on Johnson’s conception of “spheres of autonomy,” I use the phrase “semi-autonomous spaces” when examining temporary guestworkers. In contrast to the individuals Johnson examines, Bahamian workers rarely, if ever, experienced complete autonomy because they operated within a highly structured social, political, and economic system explicitly designed to minimize their freedoms. Consequently, they created semi-autonomous spaces, or moments in time, in which they could exert pressure against the people or elements that sought to reduce their independence. Workers pushed back in different ways. In some cases they exerted basic forms of agency, such as making decisions about what was best for themselves as an individual or for their family.28 At other times, they vociferously rejected the terms of employment. This discontent manifested itself in a range of behaviors including complaining about conditions, to refusing to work, and outright rebelling. As rights based-liberalism gained a foothold in America, formal labor organizing in order to try to reduce the power imbalance between growers and workers increased.

Regarding formal efforts at organization, the most familiar examples are those of the

National Farmworkers Union by Mexican and Mexican American workers in the West, under the leadership of César Chávez and Dolores Huerta. Bahamian and BWI guestworkers failed at formal organizing because it was impossible under the power structure in which they operated.

The program’s economic and political structure made it impossible because workers could be deported at an employer’s will if they were perceived to be causing “trouble” among fellow workers.29 Consequently, since full autonomy was denied by the system within which migrants

28 Here “agency” is used in its most basic form, as one’s ability to take action and make decisions about one’s own life.

29 One aspect of labor resistance I hope to examine in the dissertation is how marginalized workers could push back against employers in ways that were note deemed worthy of deportment, but did result in some improvements over wages or conditions.

operated, we need to look at ways in which migrant farm workers created semi-autonomous spaces that allowed them to pursue plans and engage in activities that best served their needs and those of their families and communities.30

As Kathleen Mapes notes, Mexican migrants frequently exerted agency by creating situations that enabled them to move back and forth between rural and urban centers in the

Midwest in order to secure their families’ wellbeing. Furthermore, Jim Norris shows how these migrants gained greater autonomy when they purchased automobiles because controlling the means of transportation enabled workers to make decisions about where and when to migrate.

Additionally, as education became increasingly important in determining a child’s opportunity in life, migrant parents placed greater emphasis on keeping their children in school as much as possible. Consequently, they attempted to make careful decisions about seasonal migration so that they caused the least amount of harm to their children’s educational futures.31 These efforts illustrate how migrants created semi-autonomous spaces that enabled them to control or at least influence certain aspects of their lives, even while operating under a system traditionally designed to eliminate individual agency.

The points above largely reflect the experiences of Mexican bracero workers, rather than those of Bahamian or British West Indian workers.32 To the extent that the latter have been

30 James C. Scott’s Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, essentially speaks to this issue. He notes that in situations where subordinates are unable to openly resist, we need to consider ways in which everyday actions can become acts of resistance. (James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.)) Although this study is not necessarily looking at “resistance” in the way that Scott is, it applies the same logic when considering the “choices” temporary farm laborers made. This point is addressed in the discussion of Mapes’s and Norris’s migrant workers who engaged in a variety of activities designed to best suit their needs. Hence, these individuals were acting in a semi-autonomous way within a power structure that denied them complete autonomy.

31 Mapes, Sweet Tyranny; Norris, North for the Harvest.

32 The exception to this is that Mexican and Caribbean workers faced threats of deportation if they attempted to challenge employers.

considered, they have widely been regarded as more quiescent and pliable than Mexican bracero labor.33 Building upon these useful studies of workers elsewhere encourages careful consideration of what might be called the “bounded autonomy” of Bahamian workers.34

Examining workers’ actions in Florida illuminates how they made decisions about migration and employment.35

To address the central questions raised, this study traces the rise of Florida’s commercial farming and the evolution of its labor regime through and the working lives of migrant and imported Bahamian farm laborers. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, including state, federal, and foreign government documents, and a rich trove of employer correspondences, the project not only illuminates previously hidden experiences of Bahamian guestworkers; it reconstructs the processes that created and sustained farm labor policies.

33 In general, most primary sources indicate that employers believed this to be true. Secondary sources typically reflect this by emphasizing how growers wanted, and were successful in securing, labor that could easily be repatriated if it caused “trouble.” Interestingly, this fact alone highlights growers’ unstated acknowledgement that BWI guestworkers were often just as likely as domestic laborers to seek greater autonomy and strategize various ways to improve their working conditions. Because growers were unable to legally limit Puerto Ricans’ autonomy and mobility, the famers preferred to import foreign labor that could be deported if necessary. Newspaper articles and government correspondences show Bahamian/BWI workers, especially when exposed to local black labor, were more likely to question their low wages and poor working conditions and demand improvements. (The Clewiston News, Dec. 1, 1994, p.1.)

34 BWI workers certainly experienced the “bounded” part of “bounded autonomy”—their movements were carefully controlled, some of their wages were deposited directly back to their hometowns, they had no access to American legal institutions or labor law, and their employers could deport them immediately for nearly any cause. Nevertheless, even under these exploitative conditions, as previously mentioned, it seems clear guestworkers worked together to push the boundaries of the rules under which they operated and sought to resist the limitations of this labor system.

35 David Griffith’s American Guestworkers, Kathleen Mapes’s Sweet Tyranny, Jim Norris’s North for the Harvest, and Michael J. Piore’s Birds of Passage are all good examples of studies in other settings that look not only at migrant experiences in America, but also in their home country setting. Kathleen Mapes and Samuel Truett also show how migrants use vernacular maps to navigate social networks at home and abroad. This practice is particularly common among migrants since their relationship with society often changes. These social maps can provide an element of stability because those involved can assist individuals in securing both employment and a place in the community. (Samuel Truett, Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.) Unlike the Mexican laborers noted in Mapes and Norris, whose families were often in the United States, most Bahamian workers were single men. Their families typically remained in the Bahamas, and thus it is important to look at decision making along all points of the migration loop.

Chapter two investigates the rise of Florida as a preeminent agricultural producer, and farmers’ desire to maintain an accessible and invisible labor supply. For decades visual representations of Florida—as well as the state’s legal, social, and political policies—rendered workers invisible. Early images of Florida farming rarely represented workers’ labor. The people themselves were often absent from discussions about labor because they worked in an industry considered paternalistic by many. Consequently, they often went unnoticed and underserved by government programs and policies. Policymakers had little to gain by advocating on behalf of marginalized people who lacked political power or representation. Migrant workers, often isolated from local communities, were thus made invisible and easily exploited by employers.

When employers found they could not utilize the common labor practices of the day, like debt peonage and convict leasing, they looked for similar alternatives. They soon adopted and adapted local and international labor models to create a new farm labor regime in Florida.

Understanding how the state became the nation’s winter garden is central to uncovering its evolving labor history and practices. First, farmers had to reshape the natural environment by draining the Everglades and fertilizing the “muck” in order to make the land suitable for agriculture. Their successes led to the rise of modern industrial agriculture, which relied heavily on a large pool of migrant workers to harvest a variety of crops. However, many African

Americans saw migratory work as a means of escaping coercive labor practices. Growers responded by trying to adapt the current labor regime, so as to maintain an invisible and accessible workforce through the importation of foreign workers. The Panama Canal model proved useful in shaping the new vision by demonstrating how imported labor could be used to control workers, wages and conditions.

Around the time of World War I, Florida experienced an agricultural labor crisis as its labor desires collided with national labor and immigration policy changes. Efforts to end the most abusive labor practices, coupled with the Great Migration and increased immigration restriction, created a labor situation that foiled growers’ hopes to capitalize on marginalized domestic workers. Chapter three, therefore, examines this crisis and how growers looked to

Bahamians, whom had a long history of labor migration to Florida, as the solution to their labor woes. However, the informal migration system came under attack following more stringent immigration restriction. Although Bahamians continued to move back and forth between the

Islands and Florida, it became more challenging and less desirable to do so because of nativist, restrictionist immigration policy and attitudes. Informal migration flows were also susceptible to unpredictable elements such as unreliable sending nations and unpredictable economic factors.

The Great Depression, however, would actually help the state’s employers. It lessened growers’ demands for foreign labor because it displaced large numbers of domestic workers, who in turn looked to Florida with its burgeoning agricultural economy as a potential land of opportunity.

Like the Great Depression, World War II fundamentally altered domestic labor policies.

As chapter four demonstrates, between 1942 and 1947 Florida growers leveraged wartime labor shortages found throughout the United States to their advantage by claiming a dearth of labor in their state as well. To a very limited extent, the war did reduce the available number of farmworkers, as some shifted from the fields to industry positions. However, the main issue for growers was that those remaining in agriculture refused to work for Depression-Era wages; consequently, they sought access to guestworkers from the Bahamas and British West Indies in order to recreate the labor surplus typical of the past. Additionally, guestworkers were desirable because if they did not act accordingly to employers’ standards or expectations, they could be

deported and replaced.36 The evidence demonstrates that Florida growers were losing control of the traditional workforce, and so they sought new ways to regain power. A critical study of the policymaking aspects of the Bahamian Program illuminates the relationship between immigration, economics, and labor, and highlights recurrent trends resulting from interactions between these interests.

During the programs’ life, from 1945 to 1966, growers sought to define the boundaries of the program. They believed a successful agricultural regime hinged on an adequate supply of qualified workers. Chapter five examines these two pillars in depth. Labor supply was critical— growers needed appropriate numbers of workers, willing and able to perform certain technical jobs, and ready to conform to southern segregation and social practices. However, the efforts of sending nations to supply workers to the United States fluctuated. Most sending nations tried to find a balance between, on the one hand, assisting people who needed employment and maintaining a good working relationship with the United States, and on the other, protecting workers and their families, and trying to rebuild domestic economies. Consequently, the

Bahamian government frequently varied between support, ambivalence, and outright reluctance when it came to making large numbers of workers available for export. These concerns centered on the legitimacy and legality of the labor contract according to international standards, the impact the program would have on workers employed in necessary wartime occupations in the

36 The large number of Mexicans and Mexican Americans inhabiting western states has long encouraged scholars to consider how significant numbers of foreign workers affect labor politics and policies in the United States. However, many studies of labor in the American South have traditionally examined the African American/white paradigm, rarely taking note of the presence of black foreign labor. Recent scholarship adds to the historiography by examining the impact of Mexican and Mexican American labor on the South; but, few delve fully into the impacts other non-white migrants have had on the region. Examples of works considering Latino impacts on the U.S. South include Mary E. Odem and Elaine Lacy, Latino Immigrants and the Transformation of the U.S. South. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2009. Heather A. Smith and Owen J. Furuseth, eds. Latinos in the New South: Transformations of Place. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2006. Mary E. Frederickson, Looking South: Race, Gender, and the Transformation of Labor from Reconstruction to Globalization. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 2012.

Bahamas, and the impact it would have on laborer’s expectations and behaviors upon returning from the program. To make the new regime run smoothly, growers also emphasized the quality of foreign workers. In some cases they referred to their harvesting ability and willingness to work long hours. In others, they often falsely attributed certain characteristics to offshore workers so as to make them appear better workers and members of society than domestic workers. Unsurprisingly, workers often fell short of grower expectations.

Labor control was an equally critical element in the emergent farm labor regime.

However, like the quest to secure the highest quality workforce, efforts to render workers powerless proved elusive. Workers and their supporters often undermined grower and government officials’ attempts to manage guestworkers’ labor and limit their rights. Chapter six highlights workers’ struggle for visibility, and their efforts to exert agency during the farm labor program. Like the state’s earlier employers, Florida’s agricultural producers expected to exercise strict control over their workforce and force them to conform to the common wages and working conditions of the day. However, workers and their advocates resisted these efforts on every front and struggled to shed light on their situation, and be active participants in labor discussions and decision-making. Their efforts forced governments and growers to confront issues like housing, wages and working conditions, and mobility in daily life. These in turn forced many to consider the boundaries of citizenship and basic human rights.

The study concludes with an analysis of the decline of the Bahamian Temporary Foreign

Labor Program and its impacts on Florida’s modern agricultural labor regime. Rights-based liberalism in the 1960s changed national attitude towards issues like human rights and workers’ rights, and guestworker programs came under greater scrutiny and criticism. Some government agencies, like the Department of Labor, sought to terminate guestworker programs arguing they

depressed domestic wages. In contrast, agencies like the Department of Agriculture continued to promote their usage. Conflicting agency and constituent interests resulted in inconsistent, and often ineffective, national immigration and labor policies and practices. Consequently, as a long historical analysis demonstrates, Florida’s agricultural labor regime came full circle in the twentieth century. The state’s present-day reliance on falsely or undocumented low-wage, migrant foreign workers is a result of private and public, individual and group, efforts to perpetuate a system rooted in historical coercive labor practices.

CHAPTER 2 THE VISION—FLORIDA FARMERS’ QUEST FOR AN ACCESSIBLE AND INVISIBLE WORKFORCE

“In no other section of the United States can land be found that will produce so abundantly two or three crops a year with so little labor” given the “variety, fertility, and productivity of her soils.”1 Narratives of lush farmland may prompt readers to conjure up images of California’s Salinas or Imperial Valleys, two of the nation’s most established agricultural producing regions. However, as the twentieth century progressed, Florida ratcheted up production and solidified its own reputation as the nation’s winter garden.2 Florida’s agricultural promoters described the land’s limitless possibilities and the vast fortunes it could bestow on those willing to commit to the cause. Boosterism and promotional campaigns, however, masked the challenging realities of producing copious harvests. In some cases the land was naturally fertile, but more often than not it required “liberal” fertilization.3 And the claim to abundant crops with “so little labor,” was simply not true.4 Nevertheless, the authors were correct—vast stretches of uninhabited lands promised economic success to those who could manipulate the environment and find an adequate labor supply to support large-scale agriculture.

Early images of agricultural production in the state can be deceiving. Many only show the lush fertile land, and bountiful harvests, not the workers who plant, tend, and harvest its

1 Frank Parker Stockbridge and John Holliday Perry, Florida in the Making (Kingsport, Tennessee: Kingsport Press, 1926), 48.

2 California leads the nation in truck farm acreage, but Florida gains a competitive advantage during the winter months, due to its warm climate. Edward A. Fernald, Florida: Its Problems and Prospects (Tampa, Florida: Trend House, 1972), 224-226.

3 Stockbridge and Perry, Florida in the Making, 52. The authors argued that although Florida agriculture required significant investments in fertilizers, the cost was justified because of the “great bonanza” yields it helped produce.

4 Stockbridge and Perry acknowledge the difficulty of Florida farming later in the chapter, commenting on the need to put “labor and intelligence into the soil” in order to make it productive. However, their assessment is from the land-owning perspective. While they discuss the potential success or failure of farmers, they do not acknowledge the workers who played a pivotal role in securing an owner’s success. (Ibid., 52)

bounties. Few acknowledge the centrality of workers to the land’s production.5 Figure 2-1, a postcard from the 1910s bearing the heading, “Truck Farming in Florida,” displays endless orderly rows of lettuce, with three overflowing baskets in the foreground, and workers standing idly next their baskets in the background. The workers are dressed neatly and most appear to be

African American.6 Although they are present, the workers are not the focal point of the composition. Rather, they are positioned behind the overflowing baskets of lettuce, which dominate the foreground. The workers are physically evident, but their labor is not. Though their baskets are full, this is unmistakably not an image about people actively working the land.

Rather, it was designed to instill the viewer with the sense that farming in this area was easy.

Perhaps even a leisurely pursuit, and that with minimal effort, high crop yields were common.

Other images similarly misled viewers about the intense physical demands of fieldwork.

Countless pictures of neatly dressed businessmen standing next to fruit-laden trees or baskets filled with ripe produce cast Florida as a land of opportunity, where those who were able to invest a modest sum of money could reap significant rewards with little effort. (Figure 2-2) As was often the case, the people responsible for working the land and making it yield abundant harvests were excluded from the public images and narratives. Similarly, images of “mom and pop” family farming operations also play into this fictitious vision of Florida farming. While it is true that these types of farms did exist, almost from the beginning corporations purchased considerable tracts of land in Florida and hired workers to labor in the fields.

5 Don Mitchell, The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).

6 The H. & W.B. Drew Company was a printing company in Jacksonville, Florida. The image was likely printed in the early 1910s, to highlight Florida’s desirability with its warm climate and fertile soils. The image is postmarked in Ohio, 1915, on the backside. (http://www.postcardroundup.com/truck-farming-florida)

Industrial farming, or agribusiness, quickly emerged as the standard in the Sunshine

State.7 It began in the 1920s, but really flourished and expanded during the 1930s and 1940s.

Development required substantial capital investments, because the land had to be “cleared, ditched and drained, fenced and plowed,” and it needed roads and canals run through it to facilitate the movement of men and crops in and out of the area.8 However, even contemporary images of industrial farming give a false impression of the physicality of farm work. Aerial photography likewise suggests the well-ordered landscapes and the precise operations that make large-scale farming possible, yet workers are merely a blip in the fields, if present at all.

Photographs that include workers are often similar to those of the early postcard. Workers are shown, but their active labor is not. (Figure 2-3) Images rarely capture dirty, tired men, women, and children stooped over in the fields harvesting countless heavy baskets of produce—their labor was, in effect, erased from the landscape, their toil made invisible.

The concept of “invisibility” is useful because it creates a flexible framework for analyzing and understanding a central component of Florida’s complex and evolving labor regime—the physical and conceptual visibility of its workers. Invisibility, though, extends beyond applying only to farmworkers; the term can encompass a wide range of marginalized workers. Understanding the discourse of invisibility begins by analyzing the definition of

“work,” and what work entails. Women engaged in informal economies, such as domestic work, home-based occupations, and the sex industry, are often overlooked, as are many people engaged

7 Stockbridge and Perry, writing in 1926 noted that Florida agricultural development would likely come about “much as the great residential and resort development of the State.” They argued investors with significant capital would develop “large agricultural tracts.” (Stockbridge and Perry, Florida in the Making, 56.) They believed that eventually these tracts might be broken up and sold to smaller farmers and growers, but that rarely occurred.

8 Ibid., 57.

in farm work.9 The general public, and subsequently public policy, fails to acknowledge this type of work for different reasons. It is often not recognized as legitimate work or labor that necessitates or requires guaranteed protections. Exclusion from official labor protections may be due to preconceived notions about the difficulty of particular jobs, or a naïve belief that workers in certain industries operate in environments that are more benign or paternalistic, and therefore they do not need the same protections as other workers. Certainly the image of the family farm caters to this latter misconception about agricultural work. In fact, farm work is the second most dangerous occupation in the United States, and most farming in Florida is done on a large scale, with family operations a minority.10

For years, discussions about workers’ rights excluded farmworkers because farming was categorized as family work, and therefore a place where laborers did not need governmental protections. The deliberate decision to cast farm work in this light reflected the power and desire of southern agricultural interests to manipulate New Deal-legislation, including the Wagner Act and Social Security, to exclude farmworkers.11 The Roosevelt administration’s acquiescence to agricultural employers’ policy interests reflected its desire to maintain a strong political

9 Janet H. Momsen, ed. Gender, Migration, and Domestic Service, Vol. Volume 1 of International Studies of Women and Place Series (New York: Routledge Press, 1999). Lenni B. Benson, “The Invisible Worker,” North Carolina Journal of International Law & Commercial Regulation, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Spring 2002): 490.

10 Daniel Rothenberg, With These Hands: The Hidden World of Migrant Farmworkers Today (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1998), 7. Rothenberg also notes that forty percent of migrant children work in the fields, demonstrating this labor is invisible to most Americans and government regulatory agencies. Regarding the dangers of agricultural work, Lenni Benson also cites a recent study conducted by Rain Levy Minns in which “0.108% of all farms had inspections, but the violation rate found where inspections were conducted was sixty-three percent.” (Benson, “The Invisible Worker,” 494.)

11 Pete Daniel, Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures Since 1880. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 294, 297. According to Ira Katznelson, “Southern legislators understood that their region’s agrarian interests and racial arrangements were inextricably entwined.” Therefore, in order to maintain their coalition, the Administration allowed southern members of Congress to enforce Jim Crow and the South’s labor status quo through the decentralization of power at the state and local level. This meant they excluded maids and farmworkers from key programs. An estimated 53 percent of American farmworkers lived in the South in 1930, and of those, 40 percent were black. (Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2013), 163.)

coalition, even at the cost of some workers’ wellbeing.12 Poverty, racism, and lack of political representation rendered farm laborers invisible to many Americans, including policymakers in

Tallahassee and Washington D.C.13 The migratory habits of farmworkers also made them politically insignificant since politicians had little incentive to advocate on their behalf.14 In addition to trying to avoid facing challenging questions about destitution, discrimination, and unsavory labor practices, many elected officials believed that attempts to address these issues would only succeed in alienating their white, non-migratory constituents.15

12 Alan Brinkley explains FDR never promoted civil rights during his tenure because as a “coalition-builder” he was constantly striving to “to broaden his base of support, to win the loyalties of existing leaders.” In the South, this meant his administration had to avoid issues that would create “regional antagonisms.” As a result, New Deal racially discriminated in the administration of its own relief programs, accepted racial wage differentials, refused to endorse antilynching legislation, and generally failed to support union-organizing in the South. (See Brinkley, “The New Deal and Southern Politics,” in The New Deal and the South, ed. James C. Cobb and Michael Namorato (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1984.) pp. 101-2, as referenced in Katznelson, Fear Itself, p. 159, note 15.) One commentator, referring to Senate Majority Leader Joseph Robinson of Arkansas, noted “‘So long as they [New Dealers] fought the money power and the big industries—so long as they were pro-farmer and did not stir up the niggers—he was with them.’” (Katznelson, Fear Itself, 163.) Efforts to maintain the New Deal coalitions formed during the Depression, continued well into the postwar years. Numan Bartley describes how the Truman Administration found it “politically expedient to appease southern conservatives,” in order to remain viable. Like the New Deal coalition, this partnership sacrificed the interests of poor, often non-white, southerners. (Numan V. Bartley, The New South, 1945-1980. A History of the South, V. 11 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), 96.)

13 Edwin Amenta described this paradigm noting that “Because the groups unable to vote or discouraged from voting corresponded to those who might benefit from permanent, national spending reforms, a significant fraction of the polity had little interest in them.” (Edwin Amenta, Bold Relief: Institutional Politics and the Origins of Modern American Social Policy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 13.)

14 Since many migrants (un- or falsely documented, or legal guestworkers) are non-citizens, they are also legally excluded from political representation. (Kathleen Mapes, Sweet Tyranny: Migrant Labor, Industrial Agriculture, and Imperial Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 129; Cindy Hahamovitch, The Fruits of the Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 138.)

15 According to Kimberly Johnson, In the 1930s, New Deal reformers believed “amelioration would come through a direct assault on southern government and institutions. Stateway, not folkways, had contributed to the region’s poverty, which in turn was a root cause of its racial inequality and oppression. Only a reconstruction of the southern state and its economy could lead to the emergence of a New South.” “Stateway” referred to “the ability of society to be positively shaped by state actions, and a sometimes wavering belief in the fixedness of ‘folkways.’” Reformers believed that catering to their elite, white constituents was the only way to facilitate change. While Johnson is explicitly referring to the acceptance and perpetuation of Jim Crow segregation, the same principle applies to discrimination against migrant workers, many of who were African American or Bahamian/Afro-Caribbean. If reformers wanted to see improvements, they would have to engage the local power-holders and bring them on board with the proposed reforms. (Johnson, Kimberly. Reforming Jim Crow: Southern Politics and State in the Age Before Brown (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 22, 20.) Jill Quadagno also identifies how “Race first became

Although the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s resulted in significant gains for many marginalized people, millions of Americans were excluded from these improvements. In some cases, the broader public seemingly forgot or chose to forget that poor people existed at all. With the rise of suburbia after World War II, inner city ghettos became as distant to middle-class

America as rural communities in Appalachia; consequently, by the 1960s, invisibility emerged as part of America’s lexicon when discussing poverty.16 Unlike the Great Depression, when poverty was widespread and knew few boundaries, in the 1960s poor people once again became the

“other,” and often they were characterized as non-white, devastatingly impoverished, and lacking the ability or determination to change their situation. Safety nets created during the New Deal era to help people who were struggling economically often failed to help those at the very bottom of the social and economic ladder; and frequently, those people were migrant workers.17

The term “migrant” encompasses a variety of people with different backgrounds and experiences, but their transient life created a commonality that placed them outside the purview of society, politics, and the law. Migrant workers’ mobility kept them from fully integrating into the community, and so their neighbors often overlooked them. As part of the working poor, migrants were isolated from the more affluent members of society who generally did not frequent the same places of business and leisure. Politically, migrants lacked the power to hold

intertwined with social policy during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal.’” She argues that programs protected industrial workers and “reinforced racial segregation through social welfare programs, labor policy, and housing policy.” As noted, migrant farmworkers were excluded from Social Security, the Wagner Act, and often had minimal access to decent housing. Thus they fell beyond the practical reach of most federal laws. Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), (v.))

16 Michael Harrington, The Other America: Poverty in the United States (New York: Penguin Books, 1992).

17 Ibid.

elected officials accountable for the policies they implement because itinerant workers did not establish deep community roots that foster meaningful political representation.18

Legal temporary guestworkers, a variation of the familiar migrant worker, occupy this area of limited visibility. They are legally permitted to live and work in a country, but their contract provisions and work obligations isolate them, preventing them from becoming part of the communities they serve. Modern discourses about invisible workers typically refer to undocumented, and falsely documented, non-citizen workers. The situations of these workers vary, but in many cases they appear similar to those of the individuals previously described.

However, undocumented workers are cloaked in even greater invisibility because they often have few, if any, claims to public services or legal recourse since they exist, by definition, outside of the nation’s laws. The repercussions for being recognized as such are severe, so most live hidden in plain sight.19

Similar to workers living in the shadows of society, Florida farm laborers in the twentieth century often lived invisible lives. Existing labor schemes that consciously and unabashedly exploited these workers, like debt peonage and convict leasing, came under attack in the first half of the twentieth century, forcing growers to adopt a new approach if they hoped to survive and thrive. Early farmers observed industrial labor recruitment and employment strategies at home and abroad and, based on those experiences, began to articulate a new vision of what they saw as the most economically, socially, and politically savvy and sustainable labor regime. Although this vision often collided with a chaotic reality, the perpetuation of these ideas as the solution to the state’s labor demands paid off. By World War II growers were able to facilitate the creation

18 Amenta, Bold Relief, 13; Mapes, Sweet Tyranny, 129; Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor, 138.

19 Benson, “The Invisible Worker,” 484.

and implementation of a guestworker program that essentially provided the much sought after accessible and invisible workforce.

Examining Florida’s ascendance as a premier national agricultural producer illuminates the formation and evolution of growers’ preferred labor system. A close scrutiny of the state’s heritage of debt peonage and convict leasing in industries like turpentine, lumber, and railroad construction demonstrate how those practices helped shape the emergent agricultural labor regime. External pressures, including federal government investigations, World War I, and the

Great Migration, guaranteed that the emerging farm labor system could not replicate its predecessors. Therefore, it developed distinctive attributes while retaining some of the core elements of the earlier regime. And although Florida’s farmers were not explicitly looking internationally for inspiration in creating their new labor system, they witnessed the U.S. government’s implementation of a labor system based on imported foreign labor during the construction of the Panama Canal. The canal project highlighted the government’s ability to execute this type of system, a capability farmers could point to in future years when making their case for importing foreign labor. These workers, regardless of their domestic or foreign status, often lived and labored apart from society. Various examples of invisible workforces flourishing throughout Florida, the Caribbean Basin, and Latin America in the first half of the twentieth century shed light on how the vision of the new agricultural labor regime took shape.

The Nation’s Winter Garden: Florida and the Rise of Modern Agriculture

The notion of America’s winter garden sounds naturalistic, almost an Edenic sort of paradise; in reality, this paradise was thoroughly constructed, one raised up out of a hostile environment. Early Florida was far from picturesque, particularly in the state’s southern interior.

Inland areas were low-lying swampy, hot, mosquito-, alligator-, and snake-infested regions where farming seemed possible given the warm climate, but the dense brush made clearing the

land a difficult and unpleasant job. Settlers carved a life out of this challenging terrain, and their persistent and monumental efforts to alter the landscape into a hospitable region piqued people’s interests around the world. South Florida’s coastal areas, Miami in particular, attracted the interest of wealthy Northerners looking for an idyllic getaway from bitter winters or for new investment opportunities. Lack of infrastructure made the state difficult to navigate, but in the late nineteenth century, that began to change.

Julia Tuttle, known for her remarkable energy, played a seminal role in encouraging development and investment in Florida. One of Tuttle’s hallmark achievements was convincing railroad magnate Henry Flagler to extend his line from Jacksonville to Miami.20 The railroad’s extension proved pivotal to the development of the area because it made Miami a viable community, accessible to the outside world. It opened up the possibility of more lucrative trade with the Caribbean and Latin America by providing a well-positioned port with railroad ties to the rest of the United States.21 Early Caribbean connections played a central role in shaping

Florida’s economy, society, and politics, as is evident through a thoughtful examination of the state’s labor policies and practices.

Although Florida is now recognized as the nation’s winter garden, it took great effort and investment to legitimately secure this moniker. The state’s initial economic viability came from a variety of industries including the harvesting of marine life (fish, turtles, sponges, etc.), building and railroad construction, tourism, and domestic service jobs. Florida became a significant agricultural producer with the rise of commercial truck farming, and the state’s ability to grow

20 Melanie Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami : A Social History (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009).

21 Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 26-32. Samuel Proctor noted that Flagler’s eagerness to extend his railway to Key West was directly connected to the U.S. government’s decision to open up the Panama Canal and expand Caribbean commercial activities. (Proctor, “Prelude to the New Florida, 1877-1919” in The New History of Florida, ed. Michael Gannon (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1996), 269; 271.) For a comprehensive overview of Florida’s development, see Gannon’s edited volume, The New History of Florida.

“every kind of garden produce at a season of the year when no other part of the United States is producing green vegetables.”22 Although this claim stretched the truth a bit, it encapsulated the unbounded enthusiasm Florida promoters felt in the 1920s, and how the state framed itself as the nation’s winter garden. Although agricultural production previously had a toehold in Florida, it was during this period that Floridians started to shift away from primarily harvesting the state’s natural resources to reshaping the environment to produce foodstuffs for the growing national marketplace. Florida farms cultivated over two hundred and fifty crops, fruits and vegetables.23

Citrus and sugar cane were early leaders, but peanuts, corn, and Irish and sweet potatoes quickly gained importance.24 Eventually, the state diversified to include other winter and spring vegetables such as string beans, peppers, lima beans, cabbages, cucumbers, eggplants, tomatoes, celery, lettuce, English peas, and snap beans, just to name a few.25 Citrus, the state’s oldest farm product, dominated the central part of the state, and fruits like watermelons, cantaloupes, strawberries, avocadoes, coconuts, and papaya were also popular. Peanuts, tobacco, cotton, and mixed farms were found throughout much of the northern regions.26 Although eventually a prolific agricultural producer, Florida’s bounty took time and significant effort to cultivate.

Labor in Florida was always difficult, and farming was no exception. Both the natural environment and the existing labor practices made the state a challenging place to work and thrive.

22 Stockbridge and Perry, Florida in the Making, 59.

23 Ibid., 48.

24 Ibid., 62-71. Florida also produced cotton and tobacco, though in limited quantities.

25 Ibid., 111-112, 116. Florida fruits include strawberries, watermelons, cantaloupes, squash and cucumbers.

26 Federal Writers' Project. The WPA Guide to Florida: The Federal Writers' Project Guide to 1930s Florida. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1939), 79-82, 84.

During Florida’s early settlement, frontiersmen engaged in a variety of activities and subsistence farming was central to their survival. Eventually some developed small farms with surpluses that could be sold at market; but, unlike much of the South, Florida never developed a strong plantation economy.27 The state, nevertheless, adopted southern segregation and racial practices associated with plantation communities. These racial ideologies and practices manifested themselves in a variety of ways over the next one hundred years and played a crucial role in shaping labor relations in the state. As part of the emerging New South, Florida embraced policies designed to facilitate economic development. However, the roots of these policies were firmly embedded in racialized labor practices common throughout the South in the 1880s.

Whites would take the higher paying industrialized jobs, and African Americans would remain on the farms as an agricultural peasantry. Most whites found this model appealing because it fit with their notions of African Americans as inferior people well suited to menial labor and requiring coercion in order to do work.28 Initially, as with much of the post-war South, sharecropping, tenancy, and forced labor practices dominated the state and would do so until the

1930s and 1940s.29

Florida’s earliest agricultural roots are in citrus, dating back to the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century. Citrus rapidly expanded throughout the state, but it took significantly longer for other crops to gain a foothold. Truck farming, the cultivation of fresh fruits and vegetables for sale in the market place, emerged in the United States in the second half of the

27 Of the few plantations that did exist, in the wake of the Civil War they were divided up and the pieces sold. (Proctor, “Prelude to the New Florida, 1877-1919,” 268.)

28 Jerrell H. Shofner, “The Legacy of Racial Slavery: Free Enterprise and Forced Labor in Florida in the 1940s.” Journal of Southern History, Vol 47, No. 3 (Aug. 1981), 412.

29 Sharecropping and tenancy declined in the 1930s (Proctor, “Prelude to the New Florida, 1877-1919,” 268) and peonage in the 1940s (Pete Daniel, Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901-1969. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972), 184.)

nineteenth century. It grew rapidly in scope and scale along the East Coast. Originally local workers provided the bulk of the labor during harvest seasons. However, World War I altered this trend, eventually resulting in the familiar migratory flow of workers beginning in Florida, moving up the East Coast, and ending around New Jersey.30 East Coast truck farmers further north, losing labor to military service or war industries, looked to places like Florida with its surplus of African American farm laborers. Although the origins of the Atlantic migratory flow were rooted in World War I, the number of participants burgeoned in the two subsequent decades. Florida established itself as a significant agricultural producer at the same time many of workers throughout the United States suffered displacement due to the long agricultural depression of the 1920s and the subsequent Great Depression of the 1930s.31 As a result, thousands of people flocked to the Sunshine state in search of work. “Day by day, the hordes of workers poured in,” some limping from walking, many more “in truck loads from east, west, north, and south…permanent transients with no attachments.”32 They worked the muck, but when the season closed, “people went away like they had come—in droves.”33 However, some— like Zora Neale Hurston’s fictional Janie & Tea Cake—decided not to migrate. Staying behind provided them with the opportunity to get to know Bahamians inhabiting the local community.34

30 Digest of Testimony Before Tolan Committee; John Beecher, Supervisor, Florida Migratory Labor Camps, FSA. RG 233 (U.S. House of Representatives), Subcommittee to Investigate National Defense Migration, Box 36: Hearings in Montgomery & Huntsville, AL. (Ala., Dept. of Public Welfare to Dunn), Folder: John Beecher, Supervisor Migrant Labor Camps, FSA, FL. NAB. (IMG_6665)

31 Much like other agricultural producers, like California with the “Okies,” displaced people squatted on Florida’s marginal lands. (Jack Temple Kirby. Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920-1960 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 129.

32 Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (New York: Harper Perennial, 1937), Kindle book Location 2195.

33 Ibid., Location 2289.

34 Ibid.

Prior to the draining of the Everglades, much of the state’s southern inland areas were unavailable or unusable for agricultural production. The first efforts to drain the region began in

1905, but it took until about 1920 to make significant headway in harnessing and reshaping the environment. To make the region truly profitable, engineers had to find a way to control Lake

Okeechobee, which constantly threatened to overflow its banks and flood the coveted lands and emergent communities to its south.35 Although engineers eventually learned to manage the region’s water flow under average weather conditions, doing so did not ensure a smooth transition to large-scale crop agriculture.

Florida appealed to farmers because of its warm climate, frequent rains and rich-looking soil. However, most growers misjudged the fertility of the soil and this proved a major obstacle in the state’s agricultural development. The early history of agriculture in the Everglades is littered with failed attempts to make the land yield adequate crops for the market place.

Frequently growers would take one step forward, and two steps back, in their efforts to reshape the landscape to support industrial farming. Sugar producers were the first investors to see the full potential of the region, but their success or failure depended on their ability to adequately alter the environment to meet their needs. Some of the earliest companies included the Malabar

Sugar Company and the Pennsylvania Sugar Company (also known as Pennusco.)36 These companies were small players in the costly sugar business and their endeavors were short lived, largely because they underestimated the fertility of the soil. They erroneously assumed that the

35 Efforts to control Lake Okeechobee yielded mixed results. When men mastered the environment, agriculture flourished; but, the stakes were high and when they failed the consequences were dire. The devastating hurricane of 1928 illustrates this point. Growers’ desire to rebuild and the state’s willingness to assist in the process in the wake of the storm illustrate agriculture’s increasing importance in the twentieth century.

36 Malabar, led by Bernard Crafton, moved into Brevard County in 1919. Pennusco set up shop in the areas of Moore Haven and Canal Point, located near Lake Okeechobee . (John A. Heitmann, “The Beginnings of Big Sugar in Florida, 1920-1945.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 1 (Summer 1998), 45-46.)

black “muck” was an even more nutrient-rich composition than the blackest and best topsoil. The muck would eventually prove conducive to crop agriculture, but only after the proper quantities and varieties of fertilizer were applied. These early companies failed to identify and apply the needed fertilizers. Consequently, Malabar faded away and Pennusco switched to non-sugar crops and then quit agriculture altogether with the start of the Great Depression. However, around that time, a new player—the Southern Sugar Company—moved into the Everglades area and forever altered the state’s environment and economy.37

In 1929 researchers at the Everglades Experiment Station made an important discovery.

As noted, contrary to popular belief and that of the Southern Sugar Corporation scientists, the muck was not inherently nutrient rich. In fact, below the first nine inches of soil, it became increasingly nutrient-poor, and therefore, crops often needed large quantities of fertilizers to survive.38 Although Southern Sugar had some initial success after it learned which fertilizers to apply, like its predecessors, it too fell on hard times. Eventually, Charles Steward Mott, the millionaire president of the General Motors Corporation, took control of the company. Mott restructured and renamed it the United States Sugar Corporation.39 This was a pivotal moment in

Florida’s agricultural history. Clarence Bitting became president of the company, guided its growth into a multi-million dollar enterprise, and introduced modern agribusiness to Florida. By learning to harness the warm climate, plentiful rains, and the correct fertilizer cocktail, U.S.

37 Bror G. Dahlberg led the Chicago based company, which was originally named the Celotex Corporation.

38 In addition to needing significant quantities of fertilizers, scientists discovered extensive regional variation in soil quality, which meant that when fertilizers were applied across large swaths of land some crops suffered a fertilizer deficiency while others were burned from too much fertilizer. (Heitmann, “The Beginnings of Big Sugar in Florida, 1920-1945,” 52.)

39 The hurricanes of 1926 and 1928 proved especially challenging, as did finding a way to profitably harvest cane that successfully reached maturity. By 1930, the company was on its heels and struggling to survive. It went into receivership and talks began with Charles Steward Mott regarding the Clewiston area holdings. (Heitmann, “The Beginnings of Big Sugar in Florida, 1920-1945,” 50-51, 53.)

Sugar opened the door to other profitable types of agriculture. Fruit and vegetable farmers soon followed U.S. Sugar’s lead and purchased large tracts of land in the Everglades, hoping to turn the black muck into fields of gold. The rapid consolidation of vegetable truck farms under corporate ownership resulted in the rise of modern industrial farming.

Throughout the 1930s, Florida continued to develop its agricultural economy even though the country suffered from severe economic depression. Area growers capitalized on the influx of migrant workers coming into the state. The large number of available workers kept wages low.

This enabled farm owners to continue producing crops, even if most Americans could not afford to buy them. World War II, proved pivotal in reinvigorating the farming economy throughout the nation, and in Florida in particular. The war increased demand for foodstuffs to feed military personnel and civilians both at home and abroad, thus accelerating Florida’s development and identity as the nation’s winter garden. Increased production demands encouraged and incentivized growers, and state and federal government agencies, to build on earlier attempts to harness the state’s full environmental potential. As with earlier efforts, this included fundamentally altering the natural landscape.

Across the state, locations like the area around Lake Apopka, in central Florida, experienced agricultural booms. One of the largest freshwater lakes in the state, Lake Apopka supplied water for area citrus growers. During the war years, however, many people began to re- imagine the area’s potential as a site for vegetable production. Having witnessed successful ventures in the Everglades to turn the dark “muck” into productive soil, area developers began the monumental task of restructuring of the natural environment to support agriculture.

Beginning in 1941, farmers and agricultural advocates drained approximately 20,000 acres along

the lake’s northern shore to create “muckland” farms.40 These farms were specifically created to fuel the nation’s war efforts and would continue to supply the United States with fresh produce until the 1990s.41 Although truck farming would eventually decline in this area due to environmental concerns, the small community highlights how farm owners and the state reconstructed the physical landscape and labor regime.

An Accessible and Invisible Workforce

The most notorious coercive labor practices found throughout Florida in the early part of the twentieth century were debt peonage and convict labor. As the truck farming boom began in the 1920s, however, both of the systems on which the state’s employers for the management of the labor force were facing extensive public scrutiny that threatened their future utility. If debt peonage and convict leasing were no longer viable options, growers would have to find an alternative labor system that would allow them to hire the necessary labor during the harvest season, and avoid the burden of supporting those workers during the offseason. Consequently,

40 Much like the muck of the Everglades, the newly drained areas of Lake Apopka required potent fertilizer cocktails to make the land productive for agricultural production. This demand, coupled with the system of flooding and draining the fields with water from Lake Apopka during different parts of the cultivation cycle, eventually led to severe environmental contamination. When farmers flooded their fields, the land released toxic fertilizers and pesticides into the standing water. Farmers then drained this contaminated water back into Lake Apopka. This cycle of flooding and draining the land persisted for over fifty years. (St. John’s River Management District, http://www.sjrwmd.com/lakeapopka/history.html; Farmworker Association of Florida (FWAF), http://www.floridafarmworkers.org/; and oral history interviews with local Apopka residents. Jeannie Economos of the FWAF is a passionate advocate of environmental justice and community history. She played a pivotal role helping network with residents of Apopka so that students in the summer Introduction to Oral History course could interview people involved with and affected by farming in the area.)

41 Ibid., The practice of repeatedly flooding and draining the fields, paired with a major DDT spill by a local pesticide company, severely contaminated the lake. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared the site of the spill a Superfund cleanup site in 1981, and efforts to clean the lake began in the 1980s. The latter increased dramatically in 1996 when Governor Lawton Chiles signed the Lake Apopka Restoration Act. This act purchased the northern farmlands and brought them under state ownership, to prevent the farms from continuing to release toxins into the lake through traditional flooding process. State ownership alone, however, did not eliminate problems resulting from past practices. In the late 1990s an estimated 676 wading birds died while resting on Lake Apopka during their annual migration; this again raised serious questions about the possible health impacts suffered by workers who labored in the fields and were exposed to the same chemicals as the birds on the lake. The farm closures were an important step towards improving the natural environment, but the displacement of nearly 3000 local, largely African American, farmworkers was never properly addressed. Unemployment and health concerns remain a problem today.

mobility became an important attribute of the newly emerging labor regime, in marked contrast to the previous systems of labor control. For the new system to work, however, area farmers needed migrating workers to return for the next season. For this reason, farmers watched with consternation as thousands of unskilled local labors joined the East Coast migrant stream and headed out of Florida at the end of the harvest season.42 They feared workers heading north would stay there, and that the new migrant stream would eventually drain the state of workers. In the face of existing faltering labor systems, truck farmers advocated temporary importation of foreign workers to alleviate their labor concerns.

Expanding agricultural production and crop diversification required large numbers of workers in different areas as the harvest season progressed. Harvesting traditionally began in

October, continued throughout the winter months, peaked in March, and then began to wind down by spring, usually concluding by May or June.43 Farm owners benefited from African

Americans entering the agricultural workforce as a means to escape more deleterious labor conditions, such as those found in Florida industries like railroad construction, lumber mills, and turpentine. But, as black Floridians capitalized on opportunities to move north with harvest, seeking better wages and working conditions and to escape the state’s most coercive labor practices, farm owners quickly discovered they had a difficult time controlling workers’ movements, and therefore their labor.44

42 Some of the main routes beginning in Florida and heading north include: 1) the potato route (Florida, the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, Long Island); 2) the fruit route (Florida citrus, Georgia and California peaces, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York apples); 3) the strawberry route (Florida, Louisianna, Arkansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan). Digest of Testimony Before Tolan Committee; John Beecher, Supervisor, Florida Migratory Labor Camps, FSA. RG 233 (U.S. House of Representatives), Subcommittee to Investigate National Defense Migration, Box 36: Hearings in Montgomery & Huntsville, AL. (Ala., Dept. of Public Welfare to Dunn), Folder: John Beecher, Supervisor Migrant Labor Camps, FSA, FL. NAB.

43 Federal Writers' Project. The WPA Guide to Florida, 79-82, 84.

44 William H. Metzler, Migratory Farm Workers in the Atlantic Coast Stream: A Study in the Belle Glade area of Florida. Circular No. 966, (U.S. Department of Agriculture. Washington, D.C.,: U.S. Government Printing Office,

The Jacksonville branch of the National Colored Protective Association addressed the issue of outmigration by focusing on steps area employers could take to make local employment more appealing to African Americans in the community. In a wartime pamphlet entitled, “Do you Want to Check Colored Laborers Leaving the South for the North? If You Do, Here is Your

Chance,” the Association told employers they could stem the tide of workers leaving by two- thirds simply by securing appropriate wages and justice before the law.45 Although this percentage may have been somewhat arbitrary, the principles undergirding their plans were solid—improving wages and legal protections would have encouraged workers to remain in the area. However, employers were unwilling to take action because creating an economically independent and legally visible workforce was anathema to the decades-long goal of creating and maintaining a large pool of exploitable and invisible workers.

Similar concerns about an empowered and mobile domestic labor pool surfaced when the

Bureau of Home Economics, a sub-agency of the United States Employment Service, hired an

African American to “foster [the] welfare of all workers…following the exodus of black labor from the South during the war.”46 A local white businessman heard rumors that this new employee traveled throughout the state encouraging African Americans to join unions, and so the businessman contacted the Department of Labor (DOL) in a fury. The DOL responded by

January 1955), 5-6. After picking various crops as they move up the coast, migrants in New Jersey are often engaged in tomato harvesting for farmers contracted by the Campbell Soup Company. For a history of tomato truck farming in New Jersey, see Daniel Sidorick’s Condensed Capitalism: Campbell Soup and the Pursuit of Cheap Production in the Twentieth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009.)

45 Pamphlet from 1917 or 1918. RG 174 (DOL), NC-58 Entry 1: General Records, 1907-1942, Chief Clerk’s Files, Box 18: 9/92-8/102-C, Folder: 8/102, Migration of Negroes North and East, St. Louis Riots, 1917-1926. NACP.

46 4/16/19, Letter from Secretary to Governor Catts. RG 174 (DOL), NC-58 Entry 1: General Records, 1907-1942, Chief Clerk’s Files, Box 19: 8/102-D-9/245, Folder: 8/102 D Special Problems, Florida, 1919. NACP.

pointing out legally it could not encourage people to join unions, as that was a private decision.47

As communications later revealed, the real source of concern were negative newspaper editorials published in the North and West that railed against southern whites. Florida businessmen and local politicians were angered by the content and their inability to force the newspapers to change the articles. Consequently, rather than targeting the newspapers, they took their frustrations out on federal government policies and practices, particularly when they felt the latter were negatively affecting Florida’s labor supplies.

Governor Sidney Catts, concerned the editorials were “inflaming the minds of negroes against the white people of Florida,” suggested the new African American agent’s work be suspended “because the white people of the South had a great deal of trouble in the old

Reconstruction days with the scalawag negro officers and white carpet bagger officers, who came down to rule over them.”48 Catts proceeded to argue that the current representative of the

Bureau of Home Economics in Florida, Mr. Travis, did not understand Florida race relations.

Apparently, Catts believed the former representative, Mr. Walter A. Dopson, “a Florida cracker…who has the best wishes of the people at heart, both white and black” would be a better choice and should be reinstated.49 Secretary of Labor Wilson acknowledged Catts’ concerns and although he could not remove Travis and replace him with Dopson, or put an end to the newspaper editorials, he did follow Catts’ advice in suspending the work of their “Negro advisory service there.”50 In light of this charged racial atmosphere, it should come as no surprise

47 Ibid., 3/7/19, Letter from George E. Hanes, Director of Negro Economics to MJ Scanlon, President of Brooks Scanlon Corporation.

48 4/7/19 Letter from Governor Catts to Secretary Wilson. RG 174 (DOL), NC-58 Entry 1: General Records, 1907- 1942, Chief Clerk’s Files, Box 19: 8/102-D-9/245, Folder: 8/102 D Special Problems, Florida, 1919. NACP.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid., 4/16/19 Letter from Secretary Wilson to Governor Catts.

that many local African Americans looked to migratory work as a means to escape local social and economic woes.

Some employers, fully aware that workers were on the move seeking better employment opportunities, attempted to restrict other industries from recruiting “their” workers.

Communications between the U.S. Department of Labor and Florida’s Extension Service in 1917 explain the farm labor issue in a nutshell. The area labor specialist reported that a local grower had enough workers to cultivate his crops, but that he would face a shortage come harvest time.

However, when he attempted to secure workers from other areas of the state, he “met resistance.”51 According to Specialist Dopson, the problem was that prior to this time no attempts had ever been made to assist the farmers in securing necessary labor. Consequently, he found that the men who controlled labor in the past were “most vigorously opposed to a man carrying labor from one part of the State to another” and that “This has so affected labor conditions that turpentine and lumber operators have resorted to the courts to protect them against this movement of labor.”52 These industries would find mixed results in the courts’ ability to prevent the movement of laborers and perpetuate the old coercive labor regime.

Employers themselves never used the rhetoric of accessibility and invisibility, but it was precisely the type of workforce they sought to maintain. In many cases, workers in early twentieth-century Florida were invisible both literally and conceptually. As prisoners or peons, they frequently lived in closed camps in isolated areas, literally undetectable to local residents and passersby. Employers exercised nearly, if not absolute control, over their daily lives. The

51 8/23/17, Letter to W.J. Spillman, Chief of Office of Farm Management, From Farm Help Specialist Dopson of the State Cooperative Extension, Chief of Farm Management. RG 174 (DOL), NC-58 Entry 18: Office of the Secretary, Secretary William B. Wilson, General Subject Files, 1913-1921, Box 6: 20/42—20/113, Folder: 20/60 Importing Foreign Nationals for Agriculture labor, 1917-1920. NACP.

52 Ibid.

dual notions of accessibility and invisibility overlapped, resulting in the conceptual invisibility of thousands of workers. At the turn of the century, Florida employers relied heavily on people living on the margins of society. They easily exploited these workers, many of whom were immigrants and African Americans regularly denied legal protections and recourse.

Communities reliant on this labor willingly turned a blind-eye to the plight of abused workers.

Furthermore, as demonstrated by the Martin Tabert case, corrupt law enforcement and government officials often ensnared individuals and perpetuated their abuse.53 The system rendered workers invisible before the law.

Congress formally banned slavery throughout the United States in the wake of the Civil

War, yet forced labor practices persisted well into the twentieth century.54 Shortly after passing the Thirteenth Amendment, Congress passed more legislation banning peonage, or involuntary servitude based on one’s debts. In reality these laws did little to remedy to the situation, as thousands of predominantly African American and immigrant workers throughout the South were caught up in debt-labor systems. The brazen attitudes and practices common throughout the

53 The death of Martin Tabert in 1921, and the subsequent investigation in 1923 resulted in massive public attention and exposed these corrupt practices. The Leon County sheriff who picked Tabert up for vagrancy, and brought him before the local judge was later removed from office. However, he was never charged with any crimes, even though investigators found that he arrested people on vagrancy charges simply to fill quota agreements he had made with the Putnam Lumber Company to supply workers. (Jerrell H. Shofner, “Postscript to the Martin Tabert Case: Peonage as Usual in the Florida Turpentine Camps.” The Florida Historical Quarterly. Vol. 60, No. 2 (Oct., 1981), 162.) Shofner’s article contains several other examples of corrupt officials from different parts of the state, including Calhoun, Jackson, Putnam, and Alachua Counties.

54 The Thirteenth Amendment banned slavery in 1865. A sampling of works on forced labor include: Pete Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901-1969 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972); John Bowe, Nobodies : Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy, 1st ed. (New York: Random House, 2007), 304.; Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by another Name : The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II / Douglas A. Blackmon, 1st ed. ed. (New York: Doubleday, 2008); Seyla Benhabib and Judith Resnik, Migrations and Mobilities : Citizenship, Borders, and Gender (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 505. For examples of modern day slavery cases see: U.S. vs. Flores (1997); U.S. vs. Cuello (1999); U.S. vs. Tecum (2001); U.S. vs. Lee (2001); U.S. vs. Ramos (2004); U.S. v.s Ronald Evans (2007); U.S. vs. Navarrete (2008); U.S. vs Bontemps (2010); U.S. vs. Global Horizons (2010) (http://www.ciw-online.org/slavery.html)

South meant that peonage and other forms of involuntary servitude flourished and that these problems extended into the twentieth century.55

The rise of convict labor illustrates this web of deception and mistreatment. Many black southern “criminals” caught up in forced- and convict-labor regimes were men who defaulted on a loan, were falsely accused of committing a crime, or were picked up on trumped-up vagrancy charges. (Figure 2-4) These individuals typically faced two choices. One, they could avoid conviction by entering into a labor contract directly, often with the accuser. Or two, they could try to refute the charges before a local magistrate. However, more often than not, the two paths ended in the same place—the accused would be hired out under a labor contract to an employer to work off his supposed or incurred debt.56 Unfortunately, in both situations, these poor men were often held long beyond the original tenure indicated in the “contract.” They lacked legal recourse to secure their freedom, and often since they accrued debts while working, the system allowed them to remain legally bound to their employer.

In 1921, a young man by the name of Martin Tabert entered Florida, but he would never leave. (Figure 2-5) His death epitomized the physical and conceptual invisibility suffered by many of the state’s workers. However, his experiences differed significantly because his disappearance garnered considerable attention. Tabert was a twenty-two year old white man from North Dakota. He had set out as a young man to see the United States. Running out of money in Florida and unable to secure a job, he tried to hitch a ride out of the state on a departing

55 As Daniel notes, by 1901 throughout much of the South, “a debt-labor system characterized by violence and the corruption or acquiescence of local police officers was openly tolerated.” (Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery, 11.)

56 The opening vignette of Armstrong’s article, “Florida Peonage Stirs Nation: Men Sold as Chattels; Conditions Worse than Before the Civil War” (The Chicago Defender, Nov. 11, 1929, p. 1.) illustrates this point. Three black men escape the truck of a man hauling African Americans to a local turpentine farm. The white man transporting the men asks the local judge who sees the men dashing away to provide a warrant for the three men. The judge, A.C. Johnson, asks why, and the truck driver responds because the men were running away, and the judges from his local community would sign warrants so he could get them back.

train. Arrested for vagrancy and brought before a judge in Leon County, the judge said he could either pay a $25 fine or work 90 days. Lacking the necessary funds to secure his release, the judge sent Tabert to one of Putnam Lumber Company’s turpentine camps.57 With stroke of the pen, Martin Tabert joined the ranks of Florida’s invisible workers.

Although he wired his parents requesting financial help before leaving for the camp, it was too late. Martin’s fate was sealed. His parents sent the funds, but the local sheriff returned the letter marking it “unclaimed.” Shortly thereafter, the family received word from the Putnam

Company that Martin died from malaria. The Taberts had tried to send money, which could have prevented their son from being placed in harm’s way, yet their efforts failed. Concerned by their son’s death, and confused by the situation in general, the family began inquiring into the details surrounding their son’s disappearance and sudden demise. The Leon County Sheriff claimed that he received notice about the wired money, but had been unable to access the funds necessary to free Martin because the draft was in Martin’s name, and Martin was no longer present to claim the funds.58 Physically isolated, Martin had ceased to legally exist. When transferred to the

Putnam labor camp, he became invisible. Running into excuses and dead ends, the Taberts eventually accepted the explanations various officials’ provided them about Martin’s death. In

1922, however, they received a letter from Glen Thompson who felt they needed to know the true cause of their son’s death.59

Thompson provided the Taberts with the names of other eyewitnesses, who corroborated his story, and together they revealed a horrible truth. Martin had not died of malaria. He died

57 Gene M. Burnett, Florida’s Past, Vol. 3 (Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 1988): p. 122-125. (http://thewhitehouseboysonline.com/ARTICLE-MARTIN-TABERT-COLLIER.html.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid.

from over exposure, gross neglect, and a brutal beating received at the hands of Thomas Walter

Higginbotham. Martin’s physical health was already compromised, and a beating with the

“Black Aunty,” a seven-and-a-half pound whip, five feet long, and four inches wide, left Martin with horrific wounds from which he would never recover.60 Upon hearing about the grotesque beatings, and true cause of death for their son, the Taberts contacted the North Dakota State

Attorney General. Concerned, the Attorney General traveled to Florida to investigate.61 The

Martin Tabert case cracked an enormous fissure in the façade of Florida’s coercive labor regime, garnering national attention and shining a spotlight on the state’s darkest labor practices. It exposed a brutal system rampant with corruption. Progressive Americans began questioning such egregious labor abuses. Although coercive labor practices continued in Florida, they faced stiffer opposition and examination.

Martin Tabert’s experiences, appalling as they might be, were far from shocking to many

Southerners. His story was not especially noteworthy because of the violence he suffered.

Rather, it garnered national attention because Martin was a young white man from North Dakota, and his family had the financial resources and appropriate claims to citizenship, with all the rights it entailed, to demand justice on behalf of their son. Martin’s case brought to light the plight of thousands of invisible people just like him. Countless African Americans and poor immigrants suffered injustices equal to Tabert; but, more often than not, their misery and deaths passed without fanfare. Perhaps family or friends wrote letters to agencies like the Department of

Justice begging it to investigate a loved one’s disappearance. But, in many cases, victims and

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid.

their families did not write those letters. Illiteracy, ignorance, or lack of faith prevented them from contacting the Justice Department.

Involuntary servitude spread southward, snaking its way into the state’s citrus groves, sugar cane fields, and winter vegetable gardens.62 (Figure 2-6) In 1927, when forced labor was under stricter scrutiny and the public was increasingly aware of its prevalence, a concerned resident of New Smyrna wrote to federal officials at the Department of Justice requesting they investigate the area. The writer expressed apprehension that city office holders and the local police were shanghaiing men “to secure free labor, not only for the city, but to work them in there [sic] orange groves and their private property.”63 For many “free” African Americans, the line between sharecropper and debt-peon was a fine one since croppers accumulated heavy debts that they could not pay off at year’s end. Legally, peonage in agriculture existed “only when the planter forbade the cropper to leave the plantation because of debt.”64 Based on this very specific definition, it was difficult to prevent peonage or prove when it did exist.

Florida’s turpentine, lumber, and railroad construction industries were notoriously nasty businesses that misused their workers and often used involuntary servitude and debt-peonage to secure and sustain a constant workforce.65 For example, in 1929, the Chicago Defender reprinted

62 Shofner, “The Legacy of Racial Slavery,” 414.

63 11/3/27, Letter to the DOJ. (DOJ, Criminal Division, 50-18-8-4, 001610_010_0528, page 2 of 7.)

64 Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery, 24.

65 The turpentine and lumber belt ran through the counties about 75 miles south of Jacksonville, north and west along the Gulf Coast beyond Tallahassee. (Orlando Kay Armstrong, “Florida Peonage Stirs Nation: Men Sold as Chattels; Conditions Worse than Before the Civil War.” The Chicago Defender. (National Edition) (1921-1967), Nov. 30, 1929, p. 1 and 13. Accessed via ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Defender (1910-1975.)) See David Tegeder’s 1996 Ph.D. dissertation “Prisoners of the Pines: Debt Peonage in the Southern Turpentine Industry, 1900-1930” (University of Florida, 1996) for a thorough discussion of the turpentine industry. Pete Daniel discusses peonage cases filed against Flagler’s East Coast Railroad Company in The Shadow of Slavery, chapter 5. National attention focused on the issue at the turn of the century when the Department of Justice began actively investigating accusations of peonage. In Florida, the issue emerged when Fred Cubberly, the U.S. Commissioner for the northern district of Florida, sent a test case of the federal peonage law to U.S. Attorney General John Eagan in 1901 after

an article entitled “Florida Peonage Stirs Nation: Men Sold as Chattels; Conditions Worse than

Before the Civil War,” by Orlando Kay Armstrong. Armstrong was a white professor of journalism at Drury College, and wrote the piece following his travels in Florida.66 Armstrong began his investigation of peonage in turpentine and lumber after picking up Burk Johnson, a twenty-year old black man, hitchhiking about twenty miles north of Perry, Florida, to escape a turpentine camp.67 Johnson told Armstrong that if men left employment without permission, and were caught, they would be put on a chain gang for six months.68 The Burk story clearly and concisely identifies the central issue—although debt peonage, convict labor, and chain gangs were technically different, for all intents and purposes, the results were the same. Corrupt and coercive laws and labor practices led to the involuntary servitude of thousands of workers, thus rendering them invisible to local communities and legal protections.

Armstrong noted imprisonment & placement on a chain gang was illegal under federal and state law. So, following Johnson’s suggestion, he began his investigation to find out if this actually occurred, and if it did, how it was legally sanctioned. He discovered states like Florida technically conformed to national standards by banning the leasing of state prisoners to private companies. Counties, however, could still run chain gangs.69 Additionally, in the same year

Florida banned the leasing of state prisoners, 1919, it also approved a law “empowering

witnessing the recapture of a black man who supposedly fled his turpentine employer. (Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery, 3-4.)

66 The piece was originally published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch and The New York World. Orlando Kay Armstrong, “Florida Peonage Stirs Nation: Men Sold as Chattels; Conditions Worse than Before the Civil War.” The Chicago Defender. (National Edition) (1921-1967), Nov. 30, 1929, p. 1 and 13. Accessed via ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Defender (1910-1975.)

67 Ibid.

68 Ibid., 13.

69 Ibid., 13.

employers to hold workers for debt.”70 The existing law allowed authorities to fine workers $500 or imprison them on chain gangs for six months if the worker was thought to be defrauding an employer or reneging on a promise to complete a contract.71 The law also stipulated that failure or refusal to pay the fine was considered “prima facie evidence of the intent to injure or defraud.”72 Thus, victims’ attempts to fight the charges were used as evidence they were committing fraud. The law’s phrasing allowed states to circumvent bans on debt peonage by claiming men were imprisoned for “fraud,” rather than “debt.”73

It was exceptionally difficult to protect victims and prosecute those guilty of the crime.

The law itself favored employers and authorities; and often law enforcement officers, justices of the peace, and sometimes even federal officials participated in the creation and perpetuation of debt-labor schemes. Armstrong’s Perry, Florida, investigation again illustrates how the system worked, and the fact that people openly acknowledged the corrupt practices. Armstrong interviewed County Judge John O. Culpepper regarding the legally questionable forced labor/peonage issue. As noted, since Florida law allowed for a man who jumped his contract to be imprisoned and placed on a chain gang for six months, Armstrong asked how that differed from “imprisonment for debt,” which would be a violation of federal law. Culpepper responded,

“What? For debt? The law plainly says that it’s fraud when they jump their contract. Not debt— fraud!” Following up, Armstrong asked about an indicted individual’s right to a trial. Culpepper

70 Florida banned the leasing of state prisoners to private companies in 1919. (Shofner, “Postscript to the Martin Tabert Case,” 161.) Counties were banned from the practice following the Martin Tabert case in 1923.

71 The law was entitled, “An Act to Provide a Penalty to be Imposed Upon Any Person in This State Who Shall, With Intent to Injure and Defraud, Obtain or Procure Money or Other thing of Value on a Contract or Promise to Perform Labor or Service and Prescribing a Rule of Evidence Governing Same.” (Ibid., 163.) Section 7300 of the Compiled General Laws of Florida, page 3509. (Armstrong, “Florida Peonage Stirs Nation: Men Sold as Chattels; Conditions Worse than Before the Civil War.” The Chicago Defender, p. 13.)

72 Ibid., Section 7304.

73 Armstrong, “Florida Peonage Stirs Nation,” 13.

nonchalantly provided the damning evidence: “Of course. But the turpentine men catch ‘em, they’re turned over to the sheriff, and they plead guilty. I send a lot of Niggers to the gang that way.”74 Culpepper made no attempt to claim that the trials were fair and impartial hearings.

In the face of such a corrupt and violent system, in which those responsible for protecting the public often had a hand in exploiting the weakest members, many African Americans were profoundly wary of local employers and officials and actively tried to avoid the worst offenders.

In response to the African American community’s reticence to work for them, labor-intensive industries sometimes sought workers from outside the state who were not familiar with Florida’s sordid labor history. The Department of Justice’s Peonage Files contain invaluable correspondences about peonage cases, and letters from individuals or family members with loved ones missing, thought to be enslaved. One of the most notorious perpetrators of involuntary servitude in Florida at the turn of the century was Henry Flagler’s East Coast Railroad

Company.75 Peonage cases involving the railroad were particularly relevant because they brought together Florida employers’ quests for easily exploited and marginalized workers, the subsequent racialization of the work force, and the intersection of these two in immigration policy and practice.

With South Florida advocate Julia Tuttle’s encouragement, Henry Flagler decided to extend his East Coast line from Jacksonville to Miami in 1896. When the United States took over construction of the Panama Canal in 1904, Flagler chose to extend his railway to Key West

74 Armstrong, “Florida Peonage Stirs Nation: Men Sold as Chattels; Conditions Worse than Before the Civil War.” The Chicago Defender, Nov. 11, 1929, p. 13.

75 Another notorious company engaged in peonage was the Jackson Lumber Company, which owned numerous lumber and turpentine operations on the Alabama-Florida border. The Jackson Lumber Company case is noteworthy not only for its detailed accounts of violence and bondage, but also for the fact that the perpetrators were actually found guilty. Furthermore, the case illustrates the pervasiveness of forced labor in Florida and how both domestic and immigrant workers became ensnared in this web of deception and exploitation. African Americans typically dominated the industry to such an extent that in government studies of turpentine production writers used the words “negro” and “worker” interchangeably. (Tegeder, “Prisoners of the Pines, 71.)

because of its proximity to such an important trading route. The undertaking was monumental and few engineers were qualified to manage such a project. Who better to handle the behemoth venture than J.C. Meredith, a former Panama Canal engineer? Meredith’s connections to the

Panama Canal illustrate the interconnectedness of Florida with its Caribbean and Latin American neighbors, and a common willingness to import a desirable workforce when an employer felt local labor supplies were inadequate. Following in the footsteps of countless other area employers, Meredith recruited immigrant workers in New York and sent them south to Miami on the existing railroad.76 Upon arrival foremen herded workers onto boats and sent them down to the Keys. Flagler’s railroad construction managers, like those in other Florida industries, relied on forced laborers, many of whom were immigrants with limited claims or access to legal protections.77

Along similar lines, a case from 1910 focused on fifty Greek immigrants held in bondage in Ferguson, South Carolina. The investigators found that the perpetrator, a steamship agent acting as a labor negotiator, recruited workers in Greece and then transported them to locations in the United States where they were then turned over to an employer in exchange for a small fee. The steamship agent’s involvement drew authorities’ attention because he was also known to conduct similar business in the Jacksonville, Florida area.78 Usually, destitute men accrued more

76 European immigrants joined the ranks of Florida’s forced laborers because they were particularly easy to exploit. Immigrants were usually poor, spoke only their native languages, and were willing to take risks looking for opportunities to improve their circumstances. (Pete Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery, 82. For more information on the Jackson Lumber case, see pages 90-94.)

77 Life in the Keys was far from a sunny paradise. In some cases, workers were housed in “camps” on desolate islands without shelter, adequate food, or protections of any kinds. The stories of those who survived are astounding in their depiction of a lawless area where coercion and violence ruled. The Justice Department Peonage files are chalked full of cases and vignettes that detail the brutality of the Florida East Coast Railroad Company and its employees. (Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery, 95-99.)

78 DOJ Peonage Files, 2/11/10, Letter from Attorney Mary Grace Quackenbos, People’s Law Firm to the DOJ Assistant Attorney General, William R. Harr, Washington, D.C. 001610_017_0970, pages 7-8. Page 10 contains an excerpt from a plea for food from Greeks suffering a similar fate in Jacksonville at the hands of Voicly. Quakenbos

debt while serving their contracts, and were forced to continue working to pay off the balance. If they ran away and were caught they would be convicted of breaking their contract and returned to hard labor.79 The system ensnared thousands in an endless cycle of debt; the most unfortunate of which died as peons.80

The first few decades of the twentieth century highlight Florida employers’ largely successful implementation of an accessible yet invisible domestic workforce. Debt peons and convict laborers were marginalized by the world they lived in. They had little legal recourse for abuse, and the communities their labor helped sustain had few incentives to change conditions because doing so would only weaken the power of ruling elites. However, investigations like

Orlando Armstrong’s, coupled with prosecutions by the U.S. Department of Justice, eventually undermined employers’ abilities to engage in the most egregious labor practices. Terrible exploitation and constant risk of involuntary servitude, in addition to rigid Jim Crow segregation, led many black Floridians to look for alternative employment then the occasion arose. This movement precipitated a labor crisis of sorts for truck farmers, as they struggled to find a stable source of controllable workers.

Florida employers, however, were not the only ones grappling with how to create and maintain a large pool of unskilled workers in areas with high labor demands. Construction of the

founded the People’s Law Firm to help immigrants and the working poor. In 1906 she began investigating peonage in the South. Her work eventually got her hired as a Special Assistant U.S. District Attorney in New York.

79 In 1907, Florida, following its neighboring states (Alabama and Georgia in 1903), amended contract-labor laws to make it even more difficult for laborers to escape convictions if they left a contract. The state was forced to temporarily strike its contract-labor laws from the books, but then it managed to pass an adapted form in 1919. This modified law lasted until the Supreme Court struck it down in 1944! (The Court struck down Georgia’s in 1942, and Alabama’s a little before that time.) (Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery, 67, 79, 80, 184.)

80 The extreme brutality of peonage mirrored that of slavery and often exceeded it, since employers had few if any) reasons to worry about the fate of their workers. Under slavery, masters made a substantial monetary investment, so the death of a slave meant the loss of that outlay of capital. In contrast, users of contract and convict labor had little to lose by treating their workers poorly since a replacement worker could easily be secured from local authorities.

Panama Canal during the first two decades of the twentieth century required the importation of massive numbers of foreign workers because the small country of Panama did not have enough men to meet the project’s labor demands. Studying the canal’s labor importation scheme illuminates the origins of a migratory labor regime Florida growers would soon embrace.

In order for U.S. officials to complete canal construction, they had to successfully facilitate the recruitment and transportation of hundreds of thousands of foreign workers.

Jamaicans and Barbadians provided the bulk of this foreign labor. The labor recruitment process was fairly straightforward. Recruiters and doctors examined potential workers at the port of embarkation. Approved workers received basic vaccines and the government shipped them to

Panama.81 This labor procurement plan mirrored the system that would emerge in Florida agriculture during World War II. Although the U.S. government was not formally involved in the recruitment and transportation of Caribbean workers to Florida until World War II, as the canal construction demonstrates, it was not because the United States lacked the capacity to accomplish that objective. Rather, it was because in Florida there was no need for the government to play an active role as a labor supplier prior to the war.

Labor practices during canal construction illuminate useful details beyond issues of state capacity. In Black Labor on a White Canal: Panama, 1904-1981, Michael Conniff applies what he calls the “third-country labor system” in Panama to describe the impact of foreign labor on a

81 Initially, most signed contracts included minimum wage guarantees, fringe benefits, and free repatriation at the end. However, by 1909 these contracts were abandoned because large numbers of men were migrating on their own and so active recruitment and transportation by the government was no longer necessary. Unsurprisingly, as larger numbers of men sought work without the guarantee of the minimum standards found in the original contracts, employment conditions declined. U.S. officials lowered the minimum wage by twenty-five percent, eliminated overtime, and deducted passage to Panama from workers’ wages. Barbadians eventually stopped coming in large numbers when wages dropped to approximately ten cents per hour. The U.S. government then renewed its recruiting efforts and eventually about 1,000 more migrated. However, this moment essentially marked the end of formal labor recruitment of West Indians until World War II. (Michael L. Conniff, Black Labor on a White Canal: Panama, 1904-1981. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985, 26-27.)

domestic market. As the name connotes, it was a system where nationals from a third country

(i.e. not the United States or Panama) provided the bulk of the workforce. Although not applicable to Florida’s agricultural system in the exact way Conniff describes, since there were only two official countries involved (the United States and the Bahamas), the model is useful for analyzing how access to offshore labor enabled growers to visualize a new labor system that would provide many of the same controls they felt they were losing as the old coercive regime declined. In the third-country system in Panama, the presence of workers from the Caribbean drove down wages by provoking competition between immigrants and local workers pursuing those positions.82 In the case of Florida, even though the actors were different, the goals and outcomes were similar. White employers sought access to large numbers of foreigners in order to create a surplus labor pool of workers, which would result in depressed wages and lower expectations about working conditions for both domestic and foreign workers.

Farmers in the nation’s newest winter garden inherited a labor regime that traditionally relied on invisible workers, and although they could not employ that exact system, they embraced its central tenants. World War I, increasing immigration restriction, and the Great

Migration also forced a re-structuring and re-imagining of the farm labor workforce. Reduced

European migration during World War I fundamentally altered U.S economic and labor trends.

Declining immigration and the expanding industrial economy in the North created hundreds of thousands of new, high-paying jobs in war industries for domestic workers. The Great Migration north of well over a million African Americans drastically altered Southern labor dynamics.83

Black Floridians saw wartime employment as a way to escape their current situation, even

82 Conniff, Black Labor on a White Canal, 5.

83 Cindy Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor, Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 80.

though employers, working with state and federal legislators worked hard to keep them in their place.84 In cases where workers did not move permanently, they often joined the East Coast migrant stream as a way to maximize employment opportunities.

Consequently, in the interwar years, the East Coast labor migration scheme became a staple of truck farming, as Florida growers came to embrace a labor system in which a highly mobile and transient labor force provided the critical work needed to harvest their crops. Florida growers never entirely overcame the worry, however, that this domestic migration would fail them, and so a few vocal growers began to push for an adaptation of this system that would, in their view, provide a more permanent and reliable solution. Reflecting on the Sunshine State’s long history of Bahamian migration, some farmers began calling for a formalized labor importation program that would be less susceptible to external pressures. Even the chairman of the Florida State Council for National Defense began working with the state’s elected federal officials to try and waive immigration laws so that Florida’s growers could import Bahamians to replace mobile African Americans.85

Although these early calls fell on deaf ears, the re-imagined regime they advocated for came to fruition in World War II. Arguing that a strictly controlled temporary foreign worker migration scheme would solve their burgeoning labor needs, growers sought to combine the traditional southern repression found in the coercive labor practices of the earlier period with the informal foreign labor system they had relied on for generations. Examining the informal

84 For example, in at attempt to maintain the traditional labor regime, in 1919 Florida passed a modified contract- labor law that broadened the description of what constituted a contract. This change made it even more difficult for workers to legally break these “contracts” without committing fraud. (Shofner, “The Legacy of Racial Slavery,” 413) In another instance, at the local level, Jacksonville city authorities first attempted to build bridges with black community leaders and use moral suasion to try and convince African Americans to remain in the area. When these attempts failed they passed a law requiring labor recruiters pay a $1000 licensing fee. (Jerrell H. Shofner, “Florida and the Black Migration,” The Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Jan., 1979), 267, 270.)

85 Shofner, “Florida and the Black Migration,” 274.

relationship between the Bahamas and Florida in the wake of World War I, especially in the context of Americans’ increasing wariness of foreigners, demonstrates how growers’ emerging vision of an invisible, exploitable, deportable labor force collided with the realities of a nation embracing restrictionist immigration laws. The result was a crisis in agricultural production and the struggle to import and manage seasonal Bahamian workers.

Figure 2-1. Post Card, “Truck Farming in Florida.” Image courtesy of Mark Stevens at http://www.postcardroundup.com/truck-farming-florida.

Figure 2-2. Florida Crops and When to Plant. New Series Bulletin—Florida State Department of Agriculture, 1. September 1953. Creator: Thomas Joseph Brooks. Page 40. University of Florida Archives, Special Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries. University Archives Photograph Collection. http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00088902/00001/43j?search=map+%3dcrops

Figure 2-3. Overview of celery crop and men in the field. 1930s. University of Florida Archives, Special Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries. Photograph 5253 from the University Archives Photograph Collection. http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00045516/00001/1j?search=agriculture

Figure 2-4. Convicts leased to harvest timber. 191-? Image Number RC12880. Reference Collection. State Archives of Florida, Memory Florida. http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/35256

Figure 2-5. Martin Tabert. December 1921. Image Number RC13599. Reference Collection. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/35907

Figure 2-6. Convicts at work on a privately owned farm. 192-? Image Number RC13384. Reference Collection. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/35719

CHAPTER 3 BOOM AND BUST: THE TRIALS OF BAHAMIAN FARM LABOR IN INTERWAR FLORIDA

World War I created a predicament for southern agriculture that persisted through the

Great Depression. During the war, the U.S. government asked farmers to increase food production to support troops, civilians, and allies. Although eager to comply and capitalize on the agricultural boom, growers felt the war itself undermined their ability to actually accomplish this task. It fundamentally altered a century-old labor system that generally relied on the exploitation of large numbers of poor, unskilled, immigrant or non-white workers. Increasingly restrictive immigration legislation complicated the situation by limiting the entrance of millions of people who typically filled the lowest rungs of the employment ladder. This labor shortage, in turn, provided millions of African Americans with job opportunities outside of the rural South.

Workers that remained in the South used the exodus as leverage to push for better wages and working conditions, a strategy farm owners deeply resented. Furthermore, the state’s traditional and blatantly coercive labor practices began declining in the 1920s due to greater public scrutiny.

Florida’s agricultural labor situation, then, reflected that of other farming regions found throughout the United States. Sunshine State growers felt they were losing control of the labor force and so they looked for alternative labor models to insulate their businesses from future labor uncertainties.

Growers turned to temporary foreign labor, tapping into Florida’s long-standing place in

Bahamian labor migration patterns. And, indeed, they were successful. Despite the hostility of restrictionists and nativists, ambivalence on the part of Bahamian authorities, and national legislation that ostensibly barred their entry, thousands of Bahamians continued to enter

Florida’s fields during the boom period of 1920s. This was a defeat for restrictionists, and a victory for growers. In some ways, the period was also a victory for islanders seeking work.

They continued to access Florida labor markets even in the face of adversity. However, the new regime came at a steep cost—an agricultural system that lived in the shadows of Florida’s public life. Toward the end of the decade, though, devastating hurricanes and the coming of the Great

Depression brought a temporary end to the Bahamian connection, returning the East Coast domestic migration to center stage.

Boom: Bahamian Migration and Florida Farming, 1890-1926

Between 1900 and 1920 approximately ten to twelve thousand Bahamians, or one-fifth of the entire population, left the islands for Florida, the majority of which were engaged in seasonal or “livelihood” migrations.1 These able-bodied individuals (often men) arrived in such large numbers that news reports described them as waves rushing the shore. Eyewitnesses said vessels traveling from the islands to Florida were so packed with people there was barely standing room on the decks.2 The large-scale movement of workers, built upon older patterns of temporary labor migrations between Florida and the Bahamas, provided critical support for burgeoning agricultural production. It thrived even in the face of growing restrictionist and nativist sentiment in the 1920s, and the prevalent racism that made both workers and the Bahamian government

1 Mohl, “Black Immigrants, 273, 275-277, 279. Mohl introduces the term “livelihood migration” to describe complex patterns of Caribbean migration that were firmly established by the early decades of the twentieth century. (Ibid., 276-277.) Beginning as early as the 1870s, inexpensive steam ship transportation between the Islands and Florida made temporary migration a viable lifestyle decision for many Bahamians. In 1878-79, there was weekly steamship service between Jacksonville and Nassau. Migration exploded in 1898 when Henry Flagler signed a ten- year contract with the Bahamas government to provide overnight steamship service to Miami. The intention was to boost tourism and encourage patrons to visit Flagler’s many hotels. However, working class Bahamians also took advantage of the increased schedule and decreasing cost of transportation. (Michael Craton and Gail Saunders, Islanders in the Stream, A History of the Bahamian People, Vol. 2: From the Ending of Slavery to the Twenty-First Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 80-82.) In a few instances, Americans contacted the U.S. Consulate in the Bahamas to find out about employment opportunities. The consulate tried to dissuade them from coming since there were few jobs and the pay low. His assessment lends further support for the theory of livelihood migration. (RG 84 Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Vol. 141, Consular Posts, Nassau Bahamas; Correspondence, 1919, Folder: 850.4 Labor. NACP. Ibid., Vol. 173, Consular Posts, Nassau Bahamas; Correspondence, 1923 Part V, 630-855, Folder: 850.4 Labor.)

2 Howard Johnson, “Bahamian Labor Migration to Florida in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” International Migration Review, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring 1988): 90, 93, quoting the Nassau Tribune, Dec. 2, 1911.

ambivalent about their relationship with the Sunshine State. Although the flow of Bahamian workers was temporarily interrupted by the onset of Florida’s long depression, the routes established prior to and during the 1920s were strong enough to form the bedrock of the more formal guestworker system begun during World War Two.

At the turn of the century, African Americans and Caribbean and European immigrants provided much of the labor for Florida’s flourishing industries. Many of the earliest migrants traveled and settled as family units, quickly establishing permanent communities and thus cementing Florida’s reputation as a multicultural state. Throughout the mid- and late-nineteenth century, Bahamians played an integral role founding communities like Coconut Grove and

Lemon City (present day Little Haiti) near Miami, whereas Greeks, Cubans, Spaniards, and

Italians came to dominate the burgeoning community of Ybor City near Tampa.3

Although these early immigrants were vital to the success of Florida, they entered and operated in communities fraught with racial tensions. Generally white elites throughout the state embraced southern racial ideologies and practices, and immigrants and African Americans alike struggled to navigate a system that relied on their labor yet often excluded them from local political, social, and economic opportunities. Analyzing immigrants’ impacts on Florida sheds light on their ever important, but evolving role in shaping the state’s emergent labor regime— one that increasingly saw foreign labor as the solution to its problems. Florida growers believed temporary foreign labor would provide a readily accessible and controllable workforce. As non- citizens, guestworkers could be imported during times of peak need, and repatriated when the

3 For more on Bahamian migration and settlement, see Melanie Shell-Weiss’s, Coming to Miami: A Social History (Gainesville, FL: The University of Gainesville Press, 2009), 23, and Raymond Mohl’s “Black Immigrants: Bahamians in Early Twentieth-Century Miami,” Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Jan. 1987): 271-297. Gary R. Mormino and George E. Pozzetta’s, The Immigrant World of Ybor City: Italians and their Latin Neighbors in Tampa, 1885-1985 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. p. 51), discusses immigrant communities near Tampa.

harvest season ended. Based on the firmly established Bahamas/Florida migratory pattern,

Florida’s farmers believed they could make state sanctioned foreign labor importation a reality.

For generations, people in both places considered the peninsula an extension of the island archipelago. (Figure 3-1) At the time of the American Revolution, Loyalists fled to the Bahamas with their slaves in order to protect their economic interests and way of life. For many though, this sojourn was fairly short lived. Migratory trends reversed in the mid-nineteenth century when these transplanted Southerners found the Bahamas to be ill suited to plantation agriculture.4 Over time, ecological disasters due to deforestation and soil erosion played a pivotal role in denying

Bahamians the ability to produce adequate food and secure employment opportunities necessary for individuals to feed their families. Migration emerged as a form of economic adaptation that enabled Bahamians and Caribbean alike people to survive.5

The first wave of Bahamians migrated to the Florida Keys seeking employment primarily in fishing, sponging and turtling in the 1830s. As Florida developed a variety of industries, including lumber, turpentine, and agriculture, employers hoped to take advantage of the influx of

European immigrants traveling to America in the last half of the nineteenth century. Their hopes were quickly dashed since most Europeans found Florida’s climate insufferable and left the region at the earliest opportunity. However, migrants from the Caribbean Basin did take advantage of the growing demand for foreign labor and many shifted from seasonal migration to

Central American countries to the lower east coast of Florida.6

4 Mohl, “Black Immigrants,” 272-273.

5 In the early nineteenth century most migrants were men traveling to the Florida Keys as fishermen, wreckers, seaman and traders. Interestingly, in the mid-1800s, British officials in the Bahamas tried recruiting black immigrants from the American South to come live and work in the Bahamas, but their efforts failed. (Ibid., 272- 276.)

6 Ibid., 272-273; Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 13.

Second wave migrants arriving in the 1890s played a pivotal role in developing the state.

As one South Floridian explained, “all of our heavy laborers were Bahamian negroes.”7 In addition to providing much-needed labor, Bahamians imparted knowledge about how to farm the land, and they physically reshaped the landscape by bringing with them from the islands trees, vegetables, and fruits that would flourish in Florida fields. These Bahamian laborers actively participated in circular migration. By the early twentieth century, steam ships reduced the amount of time and money needed to travel between the islands and the United States, thus increasing the flow of Bahamian migration to Florida.8 Many moved back and forth between the

Bahamas and Florida on a regular basis, though others became naturalized U.S. citizens.

Even in the early days of Florida agriculture, work was irregular and low paying.

Consequently, like many Bahamian migrants, domestic African American men looked for alternative employment in the booming construction industry at the turn of the century. Many native-born whites found the migration of the thousands of African American helping build

Flagler’s railroad, or moving in search of better paying jobs, disconcerting. Consequently, the evolving “negative perception of black laborers lay at the heart of Florida’s push to recruit foreign workers.”9 Florida farmers’ demands for foreign labor were often rooted in the real or perceived inability to control domestic black farmworkers. As a result, some growers increasingly advocated not only that offshore labor was the preferred solution, but truly the only solution to the state’s complicated labor needs. Familiar with Bahamian migration to the peninsula in pursuit of economic opportunities, few white Floridians initially took issue with the

7 Mohl, “Black Immigrants,” 273, 282.

8 Mohl, “Black Immigrants,” 279.

9 Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 12.

system. This circular migration pattern continued well into World War I, and only began to decline with more stringent immigration restriction.10

Inspector Isaac Smith of the Miami Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) office described this fluid Bahamian migration and the challenges it posed for INS officials in a 1909 report. In this document he argued that it was difficult for masters of vessels entering Florida to correctly identify the status of black Bahamians because some of those whom arrived with the intention of staying at least a full year, and would thus be classed as immigrants, would change their plans and depart within less time. Collecting the head tax was one of INS’s primary concerns during this largely open immigration period and Bahamians made this challenging because officials were unsure how and when to collect the tax when those entering the port so easily and frequently changed their status. 11 Smith also noted in his report that nearly all of the

Bahamian immigrants entering through his port were “negroes from the Bahamas, many of whom are very illiterate.”12 Although this observation was not a cause for concern in 1909, it foreshadowed how drastically the situation would change in the next decade as the United States attempted to restrict immigration of those it deemed less desirable. Federal policymakers clashed over national policies. Attempts to reduce migration faced opposition in places like Florida due to increased demands for food production during World War I.

10Mohl, “Black Immigrants,” 282.

11 12/12/09. No. 34/2 Report to Commissioner-General of Immigration from Immigrant Inspector Isaac Smith in Miami. RG 85 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Entry 9: Subject Correspondence Files, 1906-1939, Box 849, Folder 52866/31-B. National Archives Building, Washington, DC. NAB. In a report from October of 1909, immigration officials expressed concern over head tax collection issues from travelers from Nassau to Miami and Key West (10/14/09. No. 17/12 Report to Commissioner-General of Immigration. RG 85 (INS), Entry 9, Box 849, Folder 52866/31-B. NAB.

12 12/12/09. No. 34/2 Report to Commissioner-General of Immigration from Immigrant Inspector Isaac Smith in Miami. RG 85 (INS), Entry 9, Box 849, Folder 52866/31-B. NAB.

The war boosted European demand for American agricultural and industrial products, but at the same time these demands were increasing, European migration to the United States was decreasing. The dearth of unskilled, low-wage labor, particularly in the North, inspired many

African Americans to leave the South in search of new opportunities. Florida employers, fearing labor shortages, sought Bahamian, Caribbean, and Latin American immigrants to replenish local labor supplies.13 After evaluating the employment situation at home, in Florida, and in the United

States at large, migrants made careful decisions about when it was in their best interest to travel and when it was best to remain at home. Annual reports from the governor of the Bahamas to the

British Colonial Office highlight the fluid nature of Bahamian travel. In 1915 immigration officials saw more Bahamians returning to the islands than they did migrating to Florida because of the “decreased rates of wages in Florida.”14 However, many more in the subsequent years chose to migrate.

The emerging foreign farm labor model depended not only on individual Bahamian decision-making, but also the willingness of sending nations to allow their citizens to migrate. In the early 1910s, the Bahamian government had a few reasons to limit islanders’ ability to move in search of work. Drawing on recent experiences of other Caribbean nations, the Bahamian government saw that foreign governments and private companies were not always responsible employers. For example, when the French were constructing the Panama Canal they went bankrupt and failed to adequately compensate the Jamaican workers they had imported to work on the project. Consequently, even after the United States took over the project, Jamaican officials remained reluctant to send workers there because of fears their workers would

13 Aristide Zolberg, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 238; Raymond Mohl, “Black Immigrants,” 286, 290.

14 British Colonial Office records, cited in Mohl, “Black Immigrants,” 285.

experience similar remuneration problems.15 Barbados, another important sending nation during

U.S. canal construction, took an even more drastic measure. Following the U.S. elimination of contracts, overtime pay, and decreased minimum wages, Barbadian officials refused to allow workers to legally migrate to do work on the canal. They eventually relented, but only allowed one thousand men to go. The situation involving Jamaicans and Barbadians was slightly different, since these were government-run programs. They are relevant to discussion of foreign labor programs since the reluctance of sending nations to support migration essentially “ended formal labor recruitment in the West Indies until World War II.”16 In light of this history, the

Bahamian government’s reluctance to embrace massive migration was well founded.

Although a minority viewpoint, some members of the Bahamian government also proved antagonistic to the migration of large numbers of able-bodied men to Florida. Families may have thought of migration as a godsend, but a few colonial authorities, particularly those on the Out

Islands, argued it devastated local communities.17 In places where families traditionally relied on a combination of jobs and seafaring activities for survival, the mass exodus of men disrupted this system. Since the women left behind were primarily responsible for caring for children, they often could not do all the tasks traditionally required of both men and women. As a result, houses and boats fell into disrepair, which made it hard for retuning migrants to sustain a living once they returned home. Additionally, returnees were frequently blamed for the moral decay of the community, especially if they returned with communicable diseases that were scarcely found on the island prior to large-scale migration. In response to these problems, some island officials

15 Michael L. Conniff, Black Labor on a White Canal : Panama, 1904-1981 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985), 25.

16 Ibid.

17 de Albuquerque, Klaus and Jerome L. McElroy, "Bahamian Labor Migration, 1901-1963," New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 60, no. 2//4 Leiden (1986), 167.

welcomed U.S. immigration policies emerging in the 1910s and 1920s that were specifically designed to make made migration more challenging. Even though most Bahamian government representatives realized immigration restriction would initially cause personal hardship for families, some officials hoped it would benefit the Bahamas in the long run by improving and maintaining the physical and economic health of the populace.18 This limited opposition, however, fell on deaf ears

The labor vacuum created by World War I resulted in an uptick in migration between

1916 and 1920, as islanders sought new job opportunities.19 During this period, Bahamian and

West Indian Caribbean migration totaled almost five percent of all immigrants to the United

States.20 At the same time, however, anti-immigration advocates implemented policies designed to reduce migration into the country. Fear of immigrants and attempts to restrict their movement was certainly nothing new in U.S. history. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the 1907

Gentleman’s Agreement with Japan curtailed Asian migration. The Immigration Act of 1917, passed in response to the war, became the first measure to drastically increase the scope and scale of exclusion.21 The law sought to limit the entrance of destitute “undesirables” of all sorts, from all countries, through an increased head tax and a literacy test. Academics had first

18 Ibid.

19 Mohl, “Black Immigrants,” 286.

20 Ibid., 286.

21 Immigration Act of 1917 (39 Stat. 874, 1917.) Although primarily designed to limit the migration of potential radicals from Eastern Europe, Jewish organizations succeeded in somewhat mitigating the new measure by creating loopholes to protect those fleeing religious persecution. The immigration act stipulated several new requirements. The first was that entrants must be able to read in English or some other language or dialect. Supporters of the strictest immigration restriction originally wanted to use the U.S. Constitution to test literacy, however that was rejected in favor of some thirty to forty words in ordinary use. Exemptions were provided to elderly parents and grandparents, wives, and unmarried or widowed daughters, but not sons who were often considered the most potentially dangerous. Congress also created a loophole for skilled labor in certain fields, provided the country needed their skills. The law also increased the head tax to $8.00, which was considered a substantial increase. Although Asian exclusion expanded to include workers from India, efforts to restrict blacks from the West Indies failed. (Zolberg, A Nation by Design, 240.)

proposed literacy tests in the 1890s and although the measure gained currency with progressives and nativists alike, it took nearly thirty years to implement this seemingly popular measure. The chief reason for the holdup was the competing interests of labor demands and immigration restriction. The Florida/Bahamian relationship illustrates the conflict, since “the vagaries of the legislative process largely arose from the contest between the ‘visible hand’ seeking to maximize its labor supply and the defenders of the established boundaries of national identity.”22

Restrictionists eventually won the battle over controlling the nation’s borders and passed hostile immigration laws. In Florida, though, growers were able to temporarily fend off the harshest immigration policies.

The Immigration Act of 1917 further reduced Asian migration, but it had mixed results when applied to Bahamian migration. An agent from State Cooperative Extension for farm labor management found workers shortages along the East Coast of Florida, including areas formerly dependent on Bahamian labor. He argued this was because, “practically all of this [Bahamian] labor returned at the close of last harvesting season and now cannot come back on account of the literacy test."23 He noted that in response, “The growers of this section are pleading the Law be suspended.”24 While the report reflects the experiences of some Bahamians and their employers,

22 Zolberg, A Nation by Design, 201. In particular, Zolberg argues against John Higham’s classic account, which focused on hostilities being transferred from one object or group to another, and it relied on psychoanalytic theories popular in the 1950s.

23 8/23/17. Letter to WJ Spillman, Chief of Office of Farm Management, From Farm Help Specialist Dopson of the State Cooperative Extension, Chief of Farm Management; made a survey of labor conditions along Florida's East Coast. (RG 174 (DOL), NC-58 Entry 18: Office of the Secretary, Secretary William B. Wilson, General Subject Files, 1913-1921, Box 6: 20/42—20/113, Folder: 20/60 Importing Foreign Nationals for Agriculture labor, 1917- 1920. NACP. The territory he was alluding to was between West Palm Beach and Florida City.

24 Ibid., 2.

it was not indicative of the rest of the state. Many Bahamians received relatively high levels of education that enabled them to pass the new literacy component.25

Nativists hoped the new immigration legislation would eliminate black Bahamian and

Caribbean migration. It did not. Anti-immigration proponents succeeded in somewhat reducing access, but state and local pressures mitigated the worst restrictionist efforts. Florida civic leaders worked with British and Cuban consuls to prevent passage of immigration measures designed to specifically limit black immigration into the United States. Florida politicians realized that the State’s development required access to cheap labor, much of which was supplied by the very people federal officials hoped to ban from entering the country. If successful, restrictionist policies could produce dire economic consequences for South Florida.26

By lobbying local and state officials, Florida growers succeeded in creating a loophole that would exclude Bahamian/Caribbean workers from the harshest provisions of the 1917 act. If domestic labor supplies were deemed insufficient, the ninth proviso of Section 3 of the act allowed the Secretary of the Department of Labor to grant exemptions for unskilled foreign workers to enter the country. The proviso facilitated workers’ entrance by exempting them from literacy tests, head taxes, bonds, and the 1885 ban on contract workers.27

Inconsistencies arising from the intent and application of laws like the 1917 act illustrate the contested nature of policy in theory, and policy in practice. The law reflected national leaders’ ideological goal of denying entrance to people considered political extremists, or physically or economically undesirable. Proponents of the legislation, however, failed to account

25 Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 72.

26 Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 73.

27 Sixty-fourth Congress, Sess. II, Chapter 29, Section 3, 1917., p. 878. (http://library.uwb.edu/guides/usimmigration/39%20stat%20874.pdf)

for the value marginalized individuals could provide a receiving country. Poor migrants were precisely the labor supply Florida growers hoped to tap into. They believed workers’ economic instability would make them more docile; and, if workers proved to be intractable, they could easily be deported. Application of legislation like the 1917 act also highlight the central role individuals played in carrying out national policies on a local level.

Immigration and Naturalization Service agents tasked with upholding the law did so with varying degrees of severity or success. If Florida was anything like western agricultural states, officials with ties to the state’s commercial economy, or a familiarity with regional migratory patterns, were more lenient in enforcing the law whereas agents inclined to support immigration restriction were more vigorous in enforcing the new legislation.28 Communications with the

American Consulate in the Bahamas reveal the success some workers had in accessing the U.S. labor market, even during these periods of anti-immigration. For example, from March 2 to April

2, 1919, 465 laborers had arrived to work in the fields, and the Florida East Coast Growers

Association stated that at that time “laborers [were] coming in sufficient numbers to meet demands.”29

28 Kitty Calavita’s, Inside the State, articulates this point well with a thorough study of the Mexican/U.S. border. She demonstrates how the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol also had their own internal challenges to contend with, thus affecting how policy and enforcement protocols were conceptualized and played out on the ground. Often times they were left threading the needle of upholding federal law, while still supporting the economic interests of area farmers reliant on Mexican labor. Calavita discovered Border Patrol reports that “read like farm trade journals, with agricultural conditions traced in detail and the supply and demand for labor carefully calculated.” (Calavita, Inside the State, 82.) Unfortunately, Florida’s Border Patrol records did not remain intact, and so there is no smoking gun describing the relationship between law enforcement and farm labor migration. However, given the similarities regarding traditional migratory trends, economic development and labor demands, and political pressure to support the latter, it is likely border and immigration agents in Florida often acted in similar fashion to their western counterparts.

29 4/2/19, Letter to William Doty, Am. Consulate from Acting Sec. of State. RG 84 (Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State), Vol. 151, Consular Posts, Nassau Bahamas; Correspondence, 1919 Part V, 850 to 864, Folder: 850.4 Labor. NACP.

“Florida became Florida in the 1920s,” as a result of a massive land boom, the rise of a flourishing tourist industry, and increased settlement and agricultural production.30 Early investors’ success spurred further investment and speculation, leading to a peak in 1925. The growth of the automobile and new roads helped stimulate Florida’s development by opening the state to middle-class vacationers and investors.31 Railroad expansion fueled the movement of passengers and products throughout the state and northward to new markets.32 A tropical climate, low taxes, and easy money appealed to thousands of Americans.33 Florida’s close proximity to the Caribbean, a major supplier of booze to the United States between 1919 and 1933, also made the Sunshine State an appealing destination for Americans. Prohibition helped keep the state afloat, following the collapse of the banking industry. Close proximity and frequent contact with the Bahamas, then, undermined 1920s nativists’ efforts to limit Caribbean migration.

Nativists and U.S. officials may have believed they were successfully shaping America’s ethnic and racial identity through the use of restrictive immigration laws; however, they competed against elements that eventually undermined them. The United States’ embrace of prohibition in 1919, with the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, helped rejuvenate some

Caribbean economies—including the Bahamas—by making them important regional rum producers and transporters.34 Although some Bahamians, in light of these new economic

30 Quote from historian Gary Mormino. Harold Bubil, “From the Archives: Bankers and the 1920s Boom,” The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, August 1, 2013. First published January 27, 2008. Accessed Oct. 25, 2013, (http://realestate.heraldtribune.com/2013/08/01/from-the-archives-bankers-and-the-1920s-boom/)

31 Raymond Vickers, Panic in Paradise: Florida’s Banking Crash of 1926 (University of Alabama Press, 1994,) 18. Charlton W. Tebeau, A History of Florida (Miami: University of Miami Press, 1971), 379.

32 Tebeau, A History of Florida, 377.

33 Vickers, Panic in Paradise, 18

34 According to Charlton Tebeau, “the average annual import of liquor into the Bahamas rose from 50,000 gallons to 1,200,000 in 1922.” The vast majority of which entered the United States via Florida. (Tebeau, A History of Florida, 391.)

opportunities at home and the increasing racial hostility in Florida, decided to stay in the Islands and try to make a living there, many still opted to migrate. Bootlegging created a burgeoning market for smuggled alcohol as well as humans. The federal government found that local authorities “proved indifferent, if not outright hostile to enforcement” of prohibition and immigration policies because they felt federal authorities were overstepping their bounds, and potentially hurting Florida’s economy.35

The case of three Bahamian women deported by the Immigration and Naturalization

Service in 1920 for illegal entry further illustrates the competing and often conflicting interests at play in national policymaking.36 Although in this case rigorous enforcement of U.S. immigration laws successfully mitigated Bahamian’s access to Florida entrance, the story points to ways in which national policies could indirectly undermine one another. The legal prohibition of alcohol in 1920 complicated the situation, since its effects extended beyond the nation’s borders. Alien smuggling and the trafficking in bootlegged liquor often went hand-in-hand. The Rum-Running records of the Coast Guard contain countless newspaper clippings and reports from Florida officials describing the traffic in rum and humans from the Caribbean to Florida’s shores. Rum- runners first established networks simply to move their product; however, as U.S. immigration restriction increased, these traffickers expanded their business to include migrants seeking job opportunities in the United States.37 In a 1920 a member of a Bahamian Vigilant Committee wrote to inform Inspector Isaac Smith of the Miami INS office that individuals denied

35 Tebeau, A History of Florida, 390.

36 Ibid.,12/30/20, No. 137/45-3, Report to Commissioner-General of Immigration from Immigrant Inspector Isaac Smith, Miami. RG 85 (INS), Entry 9, Box 4026, Folder 54933/339. NAB. Most likely Willie Edwards smuggled the three women. Kitty Calavita’s Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the I.N.S. (New York: Routledge, 1992) examines competing interests and agendas within governmental policies and practices.

37 1924-1925 newspaper clippings, RG 26 US Coast Guard (USCG), Box 50: Alien Smuggling Information, 1924- 31, Folder: Alien Smuggling Information. NAB.

permission to leave the Bahamas were “carried over to West Palm Beach by Motor Boats run by

Negroes who also carry on a booze traffic, also sailing vessels from there carry over these people through the night and dump them on the Beach."38 In a follow-up letter he provided even greater detail noting that in the two weeks since his previous letter, John Russel (aka Tanner Rae), brought fifteen illiterate black men and women to West Palm via motorboat for a charge of $5 per head. In this letter, the author also noted that Russel was also a notorious booze runner.39

Bahamians exerted personal autonomy by engaging in migration, even if authorities sought to constrain their movements.

In 1921, restrictionists tried to further reduce migration of undesirable foreigners. The new immigration law closed many of the old loopholes, and it threatened to significantly crack down on Bahamian migration by introducing a quota system.40 But, restrictionists again faced opposition. Even though most white Floridians adopted the racial attitudes and practices of the

Deep South, employers continued to support unrestricted Caribbean migration knowing much of the state’s economic success had been borne of black labor. Nativists, though, were more focused on national identity than economic development. Consequently, there was a clash in interests—the groups nativists targeted were precisely the ones farmers hoped to import to do heavy agricultural work.

38 12/30/20. No. 137/45, Report: To Inspector in Charge in Jacksonville, from Isaac Smith, Inspector in Charge, Miami, FL. RG 85 (INS), Entry 9, Box 4026, Folder 54933/339. NAB.

39 1920. Letter to Isaac Smith, Inspector in Charge, Miami, From John Whitehead. RG 85 (INS), Entry 9, Box 4026, Folder 54933/339. NAB. Inspector Smith reported that Captain I.D. Hiscock made several trips to Grand Bahama Island in a motor vessel and brought back to West Palm between twenty and thirty individuals. Smith reported he arrested seventeen of them in West Palm and along the East Coast. (12/1/20. No. 137/45, Report from Isaac L. Smith, Inspector in Charge. RG 85 (INS), Box 4026, Folder 54933/339. NAB.)

40 The 1921 immigration act (42 Stat. 24. 1921) is also known as the Emergency Quota Act, the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921, the Percentum Act, and the Johnson Quota Act.

Florida farmers, whose business ventures were beginning to play an important role in the state’s economic development, flexed their burgeoning political muscles and redoubled their efforts in the face of the new quota act. Their lobbying paid off and Congress exempted

Caribbean and Latin American migrants from the proportion-based system. Employers, severed from much-needed European labor sources, looked to Caribbean and Mexican migrants.41 The result was that migration from Mexico and the Caribbean actually increased throughout the

United States during this period. During the boom years in Florida, economic interests outweighed ideological ones, and so Bahamians continued to reshape the labor market as they flowed in and out of the state. Bahamians’ presence antagonized nativists and so latter continued to push for the exclusion of black Caribbean migration.

Immigration decisions made in the 1920s both shaped and reflected American attitudes towards future immigration policy, immigrants themselves, and what it meant to be “American.”

Popularly known as the Johnson-Reed or the National Origins Act, Congress implemented the

Immigration Act of 1924 in order to try and close loopholes and carefully control who entered the country. The goal was to maximize Western European immigration and minimize it from regions deemed inferior (particularly Asia, Africa, and Southern and Eastern Europe.) To accomplish these goals, the legislation set a numerical cap at 150,000 with admissions apportioned according to the number of inhabitants of each “national origin” present in the continental United States as of 1890. This policy became known as the quota system and was scheduled to go into effect in 1927. The act favored family reunification and immigrants over the age of 21 who were skilled in agriculture, and accorded non-quota status to Latin American countries in the Western Hemisphere.

41 Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 74.

Supporters, like the aged Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, claimed the National Origins Act was designed to preserve American identity. Needless to say, it was a very WASP-ish American identity they sought to safeguard. While supporters succeeded in drastically reducing the migration of various ethnic and racial groups from around the world, Bahamians in the British

West Indies continued to circumvent the law in creative ways. The 1924 act removed the West

Indies from the Western Hemisphere provision, but Bahamians and other Caribbean migrants were still able to access the United States by using Great Britain’s substantial and unfilled quota, since Bahamians and many Caribbean peoples were subjects of the British Empire.42 In the case of Florida, Bahamians—nearly 6000 per year—migrated to the state throughout the 1920s.43

The Jacksonville District for Immigration and Border Patrol reported in December of

1924 that a major challenge for law enforcement was interdicting illegal Bahamians because

“Once landed, these are difficult classes of aliens to detect as they soon mingle with their countrymen in the various colonies along the lower East Coast."44 Although somewhat concerned about the illegal migrants, Border Patrol was not overly worried. First, their priority was the major flood of European immigrants passing through Cuba and moving illegally into the area around Tampa, Florida.45 Second, and most importantly, Bahamians entering illegally were

42 Ibid., 74.

43 Mohl, “Black Immigrants,” 290.

44 12/12/24, No. 2540 General; Report for the Commissioner-General of Immigration, DOL providing data relative to Immigration & Border Patrol work for Immigration District 10 (Jacksonville) for July 1-Nov. 15, 1923-24. RG 85 (INS), Entry 9, Subject Correspondence Files, 1906-1939, Box 5965, Folder: 55396/10. NAB.

45 Ibid., District Director Thomas Kirk of Jacksonville explained the reasons for this in his reports to the Commissioner-General of the Immigration Service. Kirk asserted that Cuba posed the greatest threat in terms of alien smuggling because it was used as a way station for European immigrants hoping to skirt the United States’ new quota system. Although many European Jews and impoverished Eastern Europeans had been able to circumvent prior immigration restrictions, many loopholes were closing in the 1920s. Many used Cuba as a staging area as they waited for legitimate paperwork to be processed so they could legally migrate. However, in many cases they could not secure formal approval and so many of them hired smugglers to get them into the United States illegally.

“mostly colored farm laborers coming for seasonable employment in the truck fields in and about

Miami” since “the additional restrictive features of the Act of 1924 follows further inducement for entering in violation of the immigration laws.”46 Director Kirk noted that prohibition directly affected illegal Bahamian migration since “the "runners" are now adding to their profit by bringing illiterates or otherwise inadmissible negroes [sic].”47

A second report published by the Jacksonville District only four days later highlights the complicated and contested nature of immigration restriction plans. Director Kirk noted that unless the base of operations shifted from Cuba to the Bahamas, illegal Bahamian migration would not be a pressing threat. He contended first of all, many black islanders were simply too poor to pay the smuggling fees. Whereas illiterate blacks had been able to pay $5 for illegal passage in the wake of the 1917 Immigration Act, by the 1920s the charge had increased to between $100 and $500, well above the income level of most working-class Bahamians.48 In carefully analyzing and comparing the two reports, a second reason emerges. The reports reveal an underlying assumption about who constitutes a tolerable type of illegal entrant. Black

Bahamians entering to work in Florida’s fields may be illegal, but provided they entered in small enough numbers, gained employment in the fields (and preferably returned home at the end of the season), they were not particularly problematic. Kirk’s report implicitly juxtaposes these black migrant workers with the large number of European Jews and impoverished refugees from

Eastern Europe seeking sanctuary in the United States. Like Bahamians, the latter illegal

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid.

48 12/16/24. No. 2501, Report to Commissioner-General of Immigration Service, DOL, From Thomas Kirk, District Director, Jacksonville. RG 85 (INS), Entry 9, Box 5965, Folder 55396/10. NAB.

immigrants also rapidly disappeared among their countrymen upon arrival. However, federal officials and American citizens found their presence much more concerning.

This seemingly contradictory distinction between Bahamian and European migrants makes more sense when examined in a broader historical context. The 1920s reflected increased national concerns about American identity. But, really those discussions were about a white

American identity, and fears that poor, undesirable migrants would undermine the racial purity nativists’ sought to cultivate. But in places like Florida and much of the South, black laborers were seen as a necessity, desirable or not. The Department of Labor published rough estimates on African American movement from 1922 to 1923, finding that nearly a half million “forsook their abodes and occupations in thirteen southern states.”49 According to their findings, Georgia lost the greatest number (120,600) and Florida tied with Alabama for second with an estimated

90,000 migrants. The percentages, however, tell a different story. While Georgia lost the largest number of African Americans, this was only 9.9% of their total black population. In Alabama’s case, their loss of ninety thousand workers also was approximately 9.9% of the African

American population.50 While these numbers are certainly significant, Florida lost almost three times that. In 1923, Florida’s African American population was only 329,487. Therefore, its loss of 90,000 African Americans meant that it lost roughly 27.3% of its population—a staggeringly large number.51

49 1923, Negro Migration Nears Half-Million Mark During Year. RG 174 (DOL), NC-58 Entry 1: General Records, 1907-1942, Chief Clerk’s Files, Box 18: 9/92-8/102-C, Folder: 8/102, Migration of Negroes North and East, St. Louis Riots, 1917-1926. NACP.

50 Ibid. Georgia’s population was approximately 1,206,365 and Alabama’s was 900,652. The population numbers used in the DOL chart are from the 1920 U.S. Census.

51 Ibid.

In light of the significant decline in unskilled domestic labor sources, it makes sense that

Immigration and Border Patrol agents in Florida were not overly concerned about poor black

Bahamians entering Florida to work. In the early 1920s, Florida’s booming economy demanded significant quantities of unskilled labor. Bahamians filled voids left by departing African

Americans, and proved to be an asset, rather than a problem, particularly if they returned to the

Islands during the slack season as they had done in the past. Shifting labor demographics explain why state growers and their elected officials were often able to successfully pressure local, state, and federal officials to mitigate the most severe restrictionist legislation targeting Caribbean migration. Although demands for Bahamian labor declined in the late 1920s and early 1930s due to economic depression, patterns established in the earlier boom years facilitated employers’ demand for access to foreign labor in the 1940s and beyond.

During the peak economic years, then, a certain level of migration from the Bahamas— provided it could be somewhat controlled through legislation or prohibitively expensive smuggling fees—was seen as less threatening to local residents. Some Floridians, given their familiarity with historical circular migratory patterns, believed Bahamian migration would not necessarily lead to unmitigated migration into mainstream America. Furthermore, as noted by

INS agents in Jacksonville, tightly controlling migrant movements was almost impossible. Given the prevalence of Florida’s (and Miami’s in particular) large Afro-Caribbean population, many undocumented individuals could easily blend into the existing population upon arrival.

Determining the legal status of poor, mobile, disenfranchised workers was unfeasible and impractical. And, since Florida’s existing labor system relied on access to large pools of marginalized workers, employers and local law enforcement officers were unlikely to bother trying to identify an individual’s legal immigration status if that person proved willing to work.

Still, although Bahamian migration continued as before, there is evidence of an increasingly hostile white community. Whereas some immigrants at the turn of the century had opted to settle more permanently and become U.S. citizens, in the 1910s and 1920s fewer chose to do so because white Americans made it clear they were not a welcome addition to the populace. In contrast to the preceding years when Bahamians were viewed as an asset to Miami and the rest of the state because of their manpower and agricultural know-how, citizens and the press began to describe recent immigrants as lazy and shiftless, and often referred to them as

“Nassau niggers.”52 Sometimes Bahamians were also called the “Saws,” in reference to some workers’ point of origin, Nassau, Bahamas. Zora Neale Hurston paints a picture of life in rural

Florida for Bahamians when she describes Janie and Tea Cake’s evolving relationship with the

“Saws.” Hurston writes about Janie hearing the Bahamian drummers and gravitating to the music and dancing. She explains Janie “did not laugh the ‘Saws’ to scorn as she had heard the people doing in the season.” Rather, Janie & Tea Cake formed friendships with the Bahamians, bringing the islanders and their culture out of the shadows and into the broader African American community.53 The lingering Bahamian presence in communities like Belle Glade demonstrate that accepted or not, they continued to play a central role in Florida’s labor regime.

Racism, though, was not the only challenge facing Bahamian migrants. As nationalism increased citizens targeted Bahamians as undesirable not only because they were black, but also because they were foreign. However, often Floridians had only themselves to blame for

Bahamians opting to maintain their foreign status. In the face of virulent racial hostility, larger numbers of Bahamians retained their British citizenship and increasingly relied on circular

52 Ibid., 287. Mohl refers to an interview with a Bahamian in the Miami Metropolis from 1909 to illustrate the racial hostility.

53 Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (New York: Harper Perennial, 1937), Kindle book Location 2289.

migration rather than permanent settlement and U.S citizenship. The vast majority typically returned home at the end of the harvest season, or after six or seven months of work in construction.54 Since Bahamians were increasingly choosing to retain their British citizenship, nativist Americans saw these migrants as even greater outsiders.55 For Bahamians, however, this was a pragmatic decision. While some would have liked to become U.S. citizens and settle permanently like their predecessors, they recognized that their foreign citizenship afforded them some protections denied domestic African Americans.56

54 Mohl, “Black Immigrants,” 290.

55 Based on data from Dillingham, Reports of the U.S. Immigration Commission, Melanie Shell-Weiss notes that “prior to 1917, at least half of Miami’s Bahamians sought to become naturalized U.S. citizens. But after 1920, most retained British citizenship.” She attributes this change in citizenship preferences to increased hostility towards blacks and immigrants. (Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 75.) Raymond Mohl makes the same point and argues that Bahamians’ retention of their foreign citizenship made them targets of further persecution by Floridians. (Mohl, “Black Immigrants,” 288.) Interestingly, Shell-Weiss notes that anti-Bahamian and West Indian sentiments were not limited to white Floridians. She argues that black Floridians were often somewhat hostile towards Bahamian migrants because they often secured the more skilled positions. Typically Bahamians received better educations than did African Americans, and they were more economically stable because of the opportunities migration provided (Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 79, 84, 93.)

56 Melanie Shell-Weiss describes the 1920 case of Herbert Brooks to illustrate this point. Brooks, a Bahamian residing in Miami’s black neighborhood of Overtown, was accused of assaulting a white woman in Coconut Gove (a Miami community first founded by Bahamians.) After being arrested and identified by the victim, authorities decided to move Brooks from the Miami jail to Jacksonville, fearing local vigilantism. Their fears were warranted. Believing Brooks guilty of rape, a lynch mob arrived at the jail and demanded the right to search for Brooks. The police consented and the mob did not find Brooks. When the sheriff refused to say where they had sent Brooks, white mobs in Ft. Lauderdale, Palm Beach, and Ft. Pierce began searching their local jails. It turned out white vigilantes from Miami discovered the police were moving Brooks northward, and so they harassed them for the first hundred miles. Supposedly Brooks committed suicide en route, by jumping headfirst through the train window. Bahamians in Miami were outraged by the events, and rallied on August 2 in Coconut Grove. Fearing violence, Miami officials called out the National Guard to keep the Bahamians in and white vigilantes out. Shell-Weiss notes that the Brooks case highlights not only contentious black/white issues, but also a divide between Bahamian blacks and African Americans. She points out that no: African Americans participated in the rally; some African American members of the American Legion pursued Brooks as the police heralded him out of the city; and some helped patrol the rally following Brooks’ death. Additionally, the Miami Colored Board of Trade issued a statement the night the attack was reported saying they supported all efforts to bring the guilty party to justice. Shell-Weiss argues that “In this increasingly southern city, challenging the culture and custom of racial separation came with high stakes,” and that African Americans faced greater risks that foreign blacks. African Americans could not rely on British officials to protect them from white vigilantism, nor could they easily go home (i.e. move to the Bahamas) if conditions continued to deteriorate. Consequently, African Americans opted to demonstrate solidarity with local whites, at the expense of black Bahamians, because that offered potentially greater protections in the long run. In contrast, black Bahamians, as demonstrated by the rally, and several subsequent days of demonstrations, refused to let the actions of white Floridians go unnoticed. (Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 82-84; 93.) Later immigrant groups have also expressed a desire to remain citizens of their native countries. For many migrants, their concern with citizenship rights were “detached from questions of identity.” Many want to participate in new country while retaining

A case from 1921 illustrates why Bahamians may have preferred to maintain their British citizenship. A Florida mob seized, carried away, stripped, severely beat, and then tarred and feathered Reverend Philip Irwin, an Irish missionary in Florida. Irwin began as a missionary in the Bahamas and then moved to Florida to continue his work.57 He described working in Nassau and then spending five years along the East Coast of Florida where his service came to an abrupt ended following the attack. Although the assault garnered local attention, Irwin doubted the U.S. government would do anything to “punish the lawless gang” that attacked him. Instead, he expressed hope that the British Government would “endeavor to see justice done, not merely on

[his] behalf, but for the sake of some 8000 British subjects in the vicinity of Miami.”58 Irwin went on to note that if the incident were to go unpunished, Bahamians’ “lot will be worse than ever, and in the future will lead to further difficulties.”59 Irwin’s fears were well founded. He alluded to the potential fate of black Bahamians who raised Floridians’ ire noting he was particularly “sorry to say that lynching is very prevalent in the Southern States, and has increased somewhat of late” and that “it is a horrible condition of things.”60 In light of this dire yet accurate assessment of the situation in Florida, it should come as no surprise that Bahamians sought to

citizenship to home country (Patrizia Nanz, “Mobility, Migrants, and Solidarity: Towards and Emerging European Citizenship Regime” in Migrations and Mobilities: Citizenship, Borders, and Gender, ed. Seyla Benhabib and Judith Resnik (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 426.)

57 BRJ Balfour, of the wealthy Balfour family that built Townley Hall in Droghedae [sic], Ireland, had previously visited the Bahamas twice and was interested in the colony because his father had been Lieutenant Governor in 1833-34. (1921 Letter from P. Sidney Irwin CO 289/104, Forwarded Letter of Rev. Philip Irwin about Ill-treatment, 1921, Sept. 7. The Department of Archives. Commonwealth of the Bahamas. PP. 613-614.

58 Ibid., 613.

59 Ibid., 613-14.

60 Ibid., 614.

retain their British citizenship in the hopes that it might protect them from such abominable abuses inflicted on the state’s unprotected African American population.61

Florida was a turbulent place in the interwar years, going through an unprecedented cycle of boom and bust. Although farmers encouraged and sought to formalize Bahamian migration, they had to contend with elements beyond their control such as immigration restriction and a hostile racial landscape. While the state’s rapid development in the early 1920s fueled support for foreign labor, the subsequent economic collapse dramatically changed the state’s financial promise and reduced its demands for accessible foreign labor.

Bust: Florida’s Long Depression and the (Temporary) Decline of Bahamian Farm Labor

Florida’s economic bubble burst in 1926. Rampant corruption, widespread bank fraud, and insider abuse left the economy in shambles.62 Since the state had minimal regulations, it was easy for corrupt business practices to flourish. Dishonest businessmen often duped investors looking for a slice of paradise. Reportedly, shady bankers, developers, and speculators sold, and resold for a small deposit, parcels of land many of which were “underwater or undeveloped.”63

By the mid-1920s, these fraudulent practices and subsequent bank failures brought the booming

Florida economy to its knees. Bank assets in the state fell more than $300 million in 1926, and

61 Shell-Weiss briefly addresses the Irwin case, as well as notes the disappearance of a black Bahamian reverend by the name of Reggie H. Higgs. Higgs was the pastor of the Coconut Grove St. James Baptist Church and became an active member of the local Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA.) After giving a rousing speech rebuffing white control and repression of black individuals, he drew the attention and ire of local whites. He was subsequently abducted, beaten repeatedly, and thrown out of car, with a noose around his neck, in downtown Coconut Grove. (Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 90-92.) Both Irwin and Higgs left Florida, and never returned to the state.

62 Bubil, “From the Archives: Bankers and the 1920s Boom.” The Herald-Tribune article content derives primarily from historian, lawyer, and former State Comptroller Raymond Vickers’ book, Panic in Paradise (University of Alabama Press, 1994.) Some historians, like Larry Schweikart, take issue with Vickers’ analysis of the business culture of the 1920s, citing a difference from present-day standards. He argues that “insider deals were the lifeblood of banks” during that era. Vickers dismisses this criticism arguing that bankers essentially stole from the banks for personal gain, and generally throughout time stealing has never been acceptable.

63 Bubil, “From the Archives: Bankers and the 1920s Boom.”

between 1926 and 1929, they declined by sixty percent, sliding from $943 million to $375 million.64

Transportation failures also crippled the local economy. A housing shortage had already left many prospective customers living in tent camps waiting for proper accommodations.

Transportation breakdowns slowed access to construction supplies and the building boom lost momentum.65 Railway clients were using freight cars as warehouses, which meant excessive numbers of cars were unavailable for transporting goods. In Miami alone there were 851 sidelined.66 Steamship service also failed to keep up with demand, since the Miami port was not yet fully developed. This meant ships had to wait offshore until it was their turn to enter the port.67 Environmental disasters soon compounded the state’s economic troubles.

Two catastrophic hurricanes barreled through the region, leaving a trail of devastation.

The 1926 storm, sometimes referred to as the Labor Day Hurricane or The Great Nassau

Hurricane, slammed into the Bahamas before moving onto Florida, where it caught most residents unawares. (Figure 3-2) Few of Florida’s newly transplanted residents had any knowledge or experience with hurricanes. After surviving the first wave of the storm, many ventured outdoors. Some tried to leave the area when the eye of the storm passed overhead, not

64 Ibid., Tebeau, A History of Florida, 384. Raymond Vickers, Panic in Paradise, 5. Vickers argues that Florida’s economic collapse was not solely the result of a bust in land speculation, but rather a result of corrupt banking practices coupled with land speculation. He examines the state’s many bank failures, identifying how regulatory failure created a climate conducive to unethical and illegitimate business practices.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid., 386.

67 Ibid.

knowing the backside would soon be upon them. About forty-five minutes later, they were engulfed by even stronger winds and flooding.68

In the end, the death toll and material damage from the 1926 storm can only be estimated, but the numbers were devastating. In Florida approximately four hundred people died and more than six thousand were injured.69 An estimated 800 people were reported missing following the storm. Given the highly transient nature of many people in Florida, it’s likely that the death toll numbers reported by the Red Cross were low.70 The storm also substantially damaged or destroyed the property of over eighteen thousand Floridians.71 (Figure 3-3) Communities were crippled, tourism declined, local businesses and infrastructure were ravaged, and farmers’ crops were completely ruined. At the time, it was said that every building in downtown Miami was badly damaged or destroyed.72 Two urban neighborhoods that could not otherwise have been more different, Miami Beach and Overtown, suffered the greatest damage.

Glamorous Miami Beach with its large luxury hotels formed the backbone of the area’s tourist industry, and the storm’s devastating floods nearly ended the “Magic City’s” hopeful dreams. The storm caused unprecedented property damage, shattering countless windows, flattening buildings, and flooding those that remained standing. According to some estimates, it

68 Stuart McIver, “1926 Miami: The Blow that Broke the Boom,” Special to the Ft. Lauderdale South Florida Sun- Sentinel, Sept. 19, 1993. Accessed Oct. 28, 2013, http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-1926- hurricane,0,5204136.story. The hurricane, also known as the Great Miami Hurricane, The Hurricane, or the Big Blow, struck September 18, 1926. It was estimated to have winds as high as 150 miles per hour, and the storm surge ranged from four to twelve feet.

69 Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 95.

70 Wayne Neely, The Major Hurricanes to Affect the Bahamas: Personal Recollections of Some of the Greatest Storms to Affect the Bahamas (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006), 58. Like the 1928 hurricane, Florida’s inland agricultural areas were hard hit. Since many of these individuals were migrant workers and few, if any, employment records existed, the storm’s victims were largely unknown and unaccounted for.

71 Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 95. Some estimate that it resulted in the deaths of as many as 650 people, and another 800 were never accounted for. (McIver, “1926 Miami: The Blow that Broke the Boom.”)

72 Neely, The Major Hurricanes to Affect the Bahamas, 58.

was the worst natural disaster in U.S. history to date by 1926.73 The storm’s impact went beyond simple physical and financial damage; psychologically, many of the state’s newest residents were severely shaken. Rocked by earlier banking scandals and economic collapse, the storm gave investors even further pause when deciding whether or not to reinvest in the area. Few had ever witnessed a hurricane and the 1926 one proved to be fierce introduction.

In contrast to newly created white-only Miami Beach, Overtown was one of city’s oldest black neighborhoods. Prior to the storm it had lacked even the most basic necessities. With unpaved roads, wooden buildings, and essentially no sewer system, the storm wreaked havoc on the area making it nearly uninhabitable.74 Needless to say, the popular press paid little attention to the plight of Overtown, as compared to Miami, Miami Beach, Ft. Lauderdale and other prominent, affluent, coastal communities. Although Overtown suffered severe destruction during the storm, it did not suffer the worst fate. Unparalleled tragedy befell Moore Haven, an inland agricultural community located on the banks of Lake Okeechobee. Levies built to hold back the lake in the event of a major storm proved inadequate as floodwaters ripped through this small farming community, claiming the lives of approximately 300 of the 400 storm victims.75 These numbers are even more staggering in light of the fact that at that time the town only had 900 people living there.76 Although a small community, the identities of many of the victims were never known, probably because, much like Overtown, it was predominately poor and black. As an agricultural center, those killed were migrant African American and Bahamian farmworkers.

73 Ibid. Property damage estimates were approximately $159 million, or roughly $1.26 billion in 1990 dollars. The San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 was considered the most devastating in U.S. history, prior to that time. (Neely, The Major Hurricanes to Affect the Bahamas, 58.)

74 Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 95.

75 McIver, “1926 Miami: The Blow that Broke the Boom.”

76 Ibid. A drought in 1927 exacerbated these problems.

The 1926 hurricane was one of the deadliest to ever hit the Bahamas, hence earning the name the Great Nassau Hurricane. Killing over 100 people, significantly destroying property, wiping out the sponging industry, and causing severe food shortages, the storm wreaked havoc on the national economy.77 Traditionally, economic troubles like these often spurred Bahamian migration to the United States in search of work. Responding to recent events, however, some

Bahamians opted to remain in the islands and try to eke out a living there. Knowing they were destined for communities like Overtown or Moore Haven, Florida held limited appeal. In addition to fears of deplorable living conditions, Bahamians also heard rumors—which turned out to be true—of forced labor practices emerging in the wake of the storm. Miami officials and local businessmen conscripted black men from Overtown, without compensation, to help clear dead bodies and remove debris.78 Few Bahamians felt moving to Florida would be an improvement over existing circumstances at home, so the number of foreign workers moving to the state declined temporarily following the storm.

Although Florida began rebuilding after the hurricane, there would be only a brief reprieve before another disaster struck. The great hurricane of 1928 tore across the peninsula smashing the state’s small inland communities. (Figure 3-4 and Figure 3-5) Unlike the hurricane two years earlier, which garnered national attention because of the catastrophic economic damage it wreaked on the state, the 1928 storm largely spared the wealthy coastal regions of

West Palm Beach County. But, the small farming communities along the southern shore of Lake

Okeechobee would suffer nearly incomprehensible losses. Torrential rains once again caused the lake to overflow its inadequate, man-made banks. But this time, crushing or washing away the

77 Wayne Neely, The Major Hurricanes to Affect the Bahamas: Personal Recollections of Some of the Greatest Storms to Affect the Bahamas (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006), 47.)

78 Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 102.

dwellings of countless migrant workers, the storm killed an estimated 2500 people.79 (Figure 3-

6) Of the estimated dead, approximately 1875 were non-white. Of the non-whites killed, three- quarters or more were thought to be Bahamian agricultural and railway workers.80 Just like in the aftermath of the 1926 storm, white Floridians rounded up “a small army” of black workers “to clear the wreckage in public places and bury the dead.”81 In addition to the overwhelming death toll, the waters also destroyed much of South Florida’s crops, dealing another harsh blow to the state’s already fragile economy and further undermining re-development efforts.

Agricultural producers faced another setback in 1929 with the appearance of the

Mediterranean fruit fly. Citrus dominated the central part of the state (north of Lake

Okeechobee), and although affected by the storms, the industry remained largely intact. But that too would change, with the arrival of a tiny insect that would inflict substantial harm. Feeding on the pulp of the host fruit, and turning it into an inedible, unmarketable, mess, the fly dealt a heavy blow to the Florida’s strongest agricultural industry. The State implemented quarantines to contain the outbreak, resulting in a sixty percent reduction in citrus production in Florida that year.82

As the winds and waters of the great hurricane died down, another storm of sorts was moving through the country. A crisis in agricultural production that began in the United States, even before the start of the Great Depression, displaced many thousands of domestic farmworkers, and this trend continued throughout the 1930s. Their desperate search for work led

79 See the Introduction for a more thorough discussion of the 1928 hurricane. Belle Glade was significantly affected, as were the other lakeside communities of Pelican Bay, Pahokee, Canal Point, and South Bay. Some estimate the death toll may be as high as 3000.

80 Neely, The Major Hurricanes to Affect the Bahamas, 63.

81 Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (New York: Harper Perennial, 1937), Kindle book Location 2726.

82 Florida Department of State (http://www.flheritage.com/facts/history/summary/)

many into Florida’s winter garden where, for a while at least, their numbers would obviate the need for foreign labor.

The 1920s and 1930s were a bleak period for farmers and farmworkers throughout the

United States. Florida farmers were still struggling to master the land, make it productive, and recover from the recent hurricanes. In the rest of the country, declining crop prices dramatically hurt local agricultural producers. Prices had soared during World War I and shortly thereafter, but by 1920 the market rate had fallen by 33 percent compared with the previous year.83 By July

1921, they dropped 85 percent.84 Many farm owners borrowed heavily from banks during the peak years to expand production. The precipitous drop in crop prices and the return to pre-war levels, meant growers often could not repay their loans. Increased mechanization, technology, and fertilization enabled more crops to be grown per acre with less manpower. These changes, combined with reduced availability of new farmland, displaced large numbers of white and black farmworkers.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, programs like the Agricultural Adjustment Act

(AAA) unintentionally dislodged thousands of farmworkers. Legislators hoped the AAA would help ease the agricultural crisis by helping financially strapped farmers and nutrient depleted soil by ending environmentally devastating land-use practices by paying landowners to stop cultivating certain lands. The program protected the land from overuse and padded the pockets of landowners, but it ended up harming sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Rather than receiving a portion of the relief money sent by the federal government to landowners, in many cases croppers and tenants were often unceremoniously kicked off the now-retired land and the farm

83 Reynold M. Wik, “Henry Ford and the Agricultural Depression of 1920-1923.” Agricultural History, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Jan., 1955), 15.

84 Ibid.

owners alone pocketed the relief funds.85 The confluence of these elements resulted in the uprooting of thousands of farm families. Joining the ranks of itinerant workers, they followed the harvests searching for work along migrant labor flows that had taken root and gained strength during World War I and the post-war years. The Great Depression cemented these paths so that today they seem a natural part of America’s agricultural landscape.

Timothy Farmer, a black farmworker from Georgia, heard of good wages picking beans and tomatoes in Belle Glade, Florida, so he moved there in 1937 with his family. He found housing in the grower’s quarters, free of rent. However, in return for the “free” housing, he had to work whenever his employer wanted him, at the grower’s price. Farmer estimated that rate was usually about five cents per hamper less than what independent workers earned.86

Furthermore, the housing provided to Mr. Farmer and his family, which included his wife and eight children, was one room with no running water.87 The surplus of available migrant labor drove down wages and working conditions. Frustrated, Farmer and his family joined the East

Coast migrant flow and spent the next few years searching for seasonal employment.

The family experienced mixed results in the migrant stream. The first season (1937-

1938), Farmer did well, earning about $1000. The second season, though, proved challenging. A poor crop yield and greater labor competition—since the number of workers in the stream doubled—meant a tighter labor market.88 In 1940, the Farmer family moved to the newly opened

85 Neil Foley, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 165-174.

86 8/10//40, Negro, Okeechobee Migratory Labor Camp (Belle Glade); Case history of Timothy Farmer, by James D. Simmons. RG 233 (U.S. House of Representatives), Subcommittee to Investigate National Defense Migration, Box 37: E to Grote, Folder: Timothy Farmer, Victim Witness. NAB.

87 Ibid. The family also had to purchase water in 55 gallon drums three times per week, for approximately ten cents per drum.

88 Ibid. In 1938 Farmer earned $600.

government-run Okeechobee Migratory Labor Camp in Belle Glade, Florida, which significantly improved their standard of living.89 (Figure 3-7 and Figure 3-8) The FSA camps expanded the attempts of the earlier Resettlement Administration to help tenant and migrant farmworkers improve their economic status by supplying thousands of people with food, shelter, and increased job security.90 The first two camps (one white, and one black) opened in Belle Glade,

Florida, in 1940.91

Thousands of Florida’s farmworkers suffered from the same terrible living conditions

Farmer and his family originally endured. Housing conditions provided by private growers were notoriously bad. A Florida State Board of Health representative noted one could not “begin to really describe the filth which was so obvious to the human eye.”92 The problem was that there was no “accredited county health department” in Palm Beach County, so privately owned camps often went unregulated.93 Reviewing the conditions in both a white and black camp, the health representative found deplorable, unsanitary conditions. The white camp lacked adequate washing facilities and had poorly maintained restrooms. The black camp had no system for garbage disposal, so trash was thrown out between the houses. Additionally, the toilets did not function and tenants who could not pay lost access to running water. This left many drinking non-potable

89 Ibid. The creation of the FSA Migrant Labor Camps is described in the next chapter.

90 As Cindy Hahamovitch explains, farmworkers in the camps used their relative job security to agitate for higher wages; and, as the U.S. economy recovered throughout the late 1930s and into the 1940s, farm laborers increasingly refused to work in the fields for Depression-era wages. This further increased tensions between farm owners and workers. (Cindy Hahamovitch, “Standing Idly By: “Organized” Farmworkers in South Florida during the Depression and World War II,” in The Human Cost of Food: Farmworkers’ Lives, Labor, and Advocacy, ed. Charles D. Thompson Jr. and Melinda F. Wiggins, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 99.)

91 Okeechobee was the African American camp, and Pahokee the white camp.

92 8/12/40, Letter to George Wolf from AM McCreary of the FL State Board of Health. RG 233 (U.S. House of Representatives), Subcommittee to Investigate National Defense Migration, Box 39: Huntsville hearing-interviews to Mobile, AL), Folder: M. NAB.

93 Ibid.

100

water from the nearby canal. Often two families occupied one room, and many migrants lived in tents, trailers, garages and other outbuildings scattered on the property.94 In cases where workers could not secure housing, Hoovervilles popped up along the banks of the Lake Okeechobee levee.95

Florida’s warm climate appealed to people on the move. An estimated 80 percent of the transient workers Florida supported in 1934 came from outside the state.96 Since there were few employment opportunities available, these workers taxed an already overburdened public assistance system. Their presence also undermined local workers by creating a labor glut that drove down already-low wages. Another element complicating Florida’s labor regime was the short-lived New Deal Civil Works Administration. CWA projects were designed to substitute work relief for direct cash payments.97 Under this program, CWA workers would receive twelve dollars a week or thirty cents an hour for a forty-hour week. However, citrus growers and turpentine operators took issue with the wage scale, since they typically paid nine dollars per week and twenty to twenty-five cents an hour. In the end, the private employers won a ruling that

“persons who refused employment in private industry could not be certified for relief work.”98

Consequently, many workers were trapped in their current jobs and state employers perpetuated their reliance on low-wage workers.

The Great Depression precipitated a chain reaction of worker displacement outside of agriculture as well. During Miami’s early heyday, and even in the subsequent years when

94 Ibid. When the inspection team returned a month later, they found that many employers were making efforts to improve conditions.

95 Ibid.

96 Tebeau, A History of Florida, 403.

97 Ibid. The CWA functioned in Florida in early 1934.

98 Ibid.

101

tourism still brought in significant numbers of visitors, male black Miamians (domestic or foreign) could earn some of the highest wages available as chefs in local hotels. As tourism significantly declined, unemployed white men began demanding these positions. By 1937 white workers replaced most black chefs.99 Displaced, these black workers looked for new employment wherever they could find it. Some secured scarce positions in industry, but many moved into the state’s farm fields. A large surplus of migrant labor helped farm owners and harmed farmworkers, thus changing the fortunes of both groups. During the long agricultural depression, farmers’ calls for imported labor declined because of increased access to destitute Americans.

The circular migration of thousands of Bahamian men fundamentally altered both

Florida’s and the Bahamas’ economies and societies. The large influx of seasonal migrants in the

1910s through the 1920s “strengthened informal, as well as formal, economic ties.”100 These connections resulted from Bahamian dependence on better paying job opportunities in Florida, and Florida farmers’ reliance on economically unstable foreign workers to help fulfill their vision of an docile and deportable workforce. These early informal circular migration networks established the foundations of later formal arrangements.101

99 Shell-Weiss, Coming To Miami, 111.

100 Melanie Shell-Weiss is referring to formal economic ties resulting from the appeal and increased consumption of American consumer goods in the Bahamas. Although the context is different in my study, the central point remains applicable. (Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 50-52.) Raymond Mohl makes a similar point about how migrants’ return with material goods reinforced islanders’ beliefs, hopes, and dreams that Florida truly was a land of economic opportunity, even if socially it wasn’t the most desirable destination (Mohl, “Black Immigrants,” 275-277.) Shell- Weiss also examines the impact on gender dynamics in sending nations. However, that point is less applicable to this particular study. (Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami: A Social History, 50-52.)

101 Seth Garfield describes a similar trend within Brazil around World War II as people from the Amazon region traveled to the northeast where “sizeable migration…had existed for nearly a century.” (Garfield, “The Environment of Wartime Migration: Labor Transfers from the Brazilian Northeast to the Amazon During World War II.” Journal of Social History, Vol. 43 Issue 4 (Summer2010), 990.) Garfield’s article speaks to the importance of examining migration in a longer context in order to understand how formal patterns take shape.

102

Large quantities of accessible labor and workers’ subsequent inability to demand improved conditions temporarily suspended discussions within Florida agriculture regarding the need for imported temporary workers. World War II, however, would once again disrupt the domestic labor supply, and spark a renewed sense of crisis. As farmworkers joined the service or took better paying positions in the war industries, the state’s growers once more looked to foreign labor. In spite of the many challenges foreign labor advocates faced, or perhaps because of them, by the mid-1940s they had firmly established the ideological and practical foundations of a formal guestworker program. Rather than being something totally new and a “break with past policy” as some scholars would suggest, the new guestworker program was the result of ongoing modifications to existing labor practices present since the end of the Civil War.102 The long, hard-fought struggle between workers, growers, restrictionists, and state and federal agencies and individuals in both the United States and the Bahamas, resulted in the formally sanctioned British West Indian Temporary Labor Program of World War II.

102 Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens & the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 137.

103

Figure 3-1. A New Map of Part of the United States of North America Containing the Carolinas and Georgia. Also the Floridas and Part of the Bahama Islands &c. From the Latest Authorities. By John Cary, Engraver, 1811. University of Florida Archives, Special Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries. Photograph 9758 from the University Archives Photograph Collection. http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00026161/00001/1j

Figure 3-2. Hurricane action shot in Miami Beach, Florida. 1926. Image Number N045921. General Collection. State Archives of Florida, Memory Florida. http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/153868

104

Figure 3-3. Miami After 1926 Hurricane. 1926. Image Number N031939. General Collection. State Archives of Florida, Memory Florida. http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/141447

105

Figure 3-4. Map showing flood damage to the Lake Okeechobee area by the hurricanes of 1926 and 1928. 1948. Image Number RC07802. Reference Collection. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/30863

106

Figure 3-5. Belle Glade, Florida, after the 1928 Hurricane. 1928. University of Florida Archives, Special Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries. Photograph 8205 from the University Archives Photograph Collection. http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00034361/00001/citation?search=1928+%3dhurricane

Figure 3-6. Coffins stacked along the bank of a canal, after the hurricane of 1928-Belle Glade, Florida. 1928. Image Number RC04344. Reference Collection. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/27848

107

Figure 3-7. Dwellings for migrant workers—Belle Glade, Florida. June 1940. Image Number RC18520. Reference Collection. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/39806

Figure 3-8. Migrant workers relaxing outside labor camp shelters—Belle Glade, Florida. February 1941. Reference Collection. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/26420

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CHAPTER 4 CREATING A NEW AGRICULTURAL LABOR REGIME: FLORIDA AND THE BAHAMIAN/BRITISH WEST INDIAN TEMPORARY FOREIGN LABOR PROGRAM, 1942 TO 1947

The United States began importing thousands of unskilled laborers during World War II to support the war effort by working in America’s fields. Two programs emerged, the Bracero and the Bahamian/British West Indian (BWI) Temporary Foreign Labor Programs. Although technically not part of the British West Indies, often employers and U.S. government officials included Bahamians under the “BWI” label.1 Mexican braceros were employed in large numbers primarily in the West and Midwest, and Bahamian and BWI laborers were typically found along the East Coast. Florida provides an excellent setting in which to examine the country’s evolving wartime immigration and labor policies, and how local problems facilitated changes in these areas. The U.S. government took an active role in organizing and importing labor to the mainland, a task previously handled by private employers. The development of the

Bahamian/BWI Labor Program is noteworthy because once codified, it led to the emergence of a new agricultural labor regime—the modern H-2 guestworker program, and the increased reliance on undocumented or falsely documented foreign workers when H-2 workers were not available.

The Bahamian/British West Indian aspect of the American farm labor story is comparatively understudied. Extensive scholarship exists on the larger Bracero program, but only a few historical works explore the BWI program.2 Scholars have typically written less about

1 Likewise, I sometimes will do the same. British Hondurans were also included under the BWI umbrella.

2 For a sample of works on the Bracero Program see: Cindy Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Kathleen Mapes, Sweet Tyranny: Migrant Labor, Industrial Agriculture, and Imperial Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009); Jim Norris, North for the Harvest: Mexican Workers, Growers, and the Sugar Beet Industry St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2009); Richard B. Craig, The Bracero Program: Interest Groups and Foreign Policy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971); and Ernesto Galarza, Merchants of Labor: The Mexican Bracero Story (Charlotte: McNally & Loftin, 1964.) For works on the BWI Program, see: Cindy Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor and No Man’s Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and Global Deportable Labor, the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011);

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the BWI Program because as an offshoot of the Bracero Program there were fewer records detailing its emergence and development. During much of the program’s lifespan it operated under private rather than governmental contracts. The number of workers involved was also significantly less than the Bracero Program, so it garnered minimal public scrutiny. The Bracero

Program, between 1942 and 1947, saw West Coast growers import approximately 219, 546

Mexicans to the United States. The Bahamian/BWI Program, in contrast, started in 1943 and imported just under 70,000 by 1947.3

Although small in scale, exploring the adoption and implementation of a formal foreign labor program in Florida between 1943 and 1947 illuminates the process of federal labor policy creation. Identifying and analyzing the conditions in Florida agriculture that led to the creation of the BWI Program lays a solid foundation for investigating how Florida growers made a concerted effort to perpetuate a labor system based on nearly absolute control of its workforce in order to promote their own economic interests.4 It was a system premised on allowing thousands

Vernon Briggs, Jr., “The ‘Albatross’ of Immigration Reform: Temporary Worker Policy in the United States,” International Migration Review, Vol. 20, No. 4, Special Issue: Temporary Worker Programs: Mechanisms, Conditions, and Consequences (Winter 1986): 995-1019; and David Griffith, “Peasants in Reserve: Temporary West Indian Labor in the U.S. Farm Labor Market” in International Migration Review. Vol. 20, No. 4, Special Issue: Temporary Worker Programs: Mechanisms, Conditions, Consequences (Winter 1986): 875-898 and American Guestworkers: Jamaicans and Mexicans in the U.S. Labor Market. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. Hahamovitch’s No Man’s Land specifically focuses on the Jamaican guestworker experience following the war and the emergence of global guestworker programs, but it does not fully examine the moment of policy creation that resulted in the development of the BWI guestworker program in the United States.

3 Wayne D. Rasmussen, A History of the Emergency Farm Labor Supply Program, 1943-1947, Agricultural Monograph No. 13 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, 1951), 199. Of the nearly 70,000 BWI workers, 15,241 were from the Bahamas, 3,995 from Barbados, and 50, 598 from Jamaica. A negligible number from British Honduras also worked in the United States as part of the BWI program.

4 A brief note on terminology will facilitate a clearer understanding of the issues discussed. Farmers and growers are used interchangeably to describe those who employed fieldworkers. The size of the farming operation (acreage or number of field hands hired) has no bearing here on their identity as farmers, farm owners, or growers. Farmworkers, farm laborers or workers, fieldworkers, and guestworkers are all used to describe the thousands of individuals who toiled in the fields. Migrant labor has long been a feature of American agriculture, but some complications in terminology arise when employing the term “migrant labor.” It was applied to anyone who moved between farms in search of labor, be it white, black, domestic, or foreign individuals. This study will differentiate between foreign and domestic when necessary by employing these terms. The term “immigrant” is reserved for people whom entered the United States with the intent and opportunity to settle permanently.

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of individuals to enter temporarily to work, yet completely denying them access to citizenship and the rights associated with it. World War II upset the balance of power between farmers and workers by providing many African Americans the opportunity to demand better pay for agricultural work or in rare cases to leave the fields for higher-paying industrial jobs. Growers, consequently, employed the rhetoric of labor scarcity and greater production demands—both of which were affected by the war—to push Congress to approve, organize, and execute a foreign labor importation program that effectively granted growers complete control over their labor supply.

Examining policymaking dynamics in Florida illustrates how the state’s labor supply and labor control issues both responded to and helped shape national policy from the turn of the century through 1947. Illuminating the contentious relationship between Florida growers and workers demonstrates not only why the idea of importing British West Indian workers gained momentum among growers, but how these farm owners eventually came to believe it was the only solution to Florida’s labor problems. A thorough examination of these issues fosters a critical understanding of the importance of the Bahamian/BWI program to America’s agricultural labor relations, and insight into the emergence of the modern labor system.

Back Door Immigration Policy

Since inception, the United States embraced somewhat restrictionist immigration policies. However, decisions made in the 1920s were pivotal in shaping American attitudes towards immigration policy, immigrants themselves, and what it meant to be an American.

Congress implemented the Immigration Act of 1924 in order to carefully control who was entering the country.5 The introduction of the quota system created the most rigorous limitations,

5 The goal was to maximize Western European immigration and minimize it from those regions deemed inferior (in particular, Asia, Africa, Southern and Eastern Europe.) To accomplish these goals, the legislation set a numerical

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but this formal immigration policy applied only to those entering through the nation’s main gates. Non-immigrant guestworkers were granted essentially unregulated entrance through the nation’s back door.6 By allowing this alternative arrangement to develop, national leaders created and institutionalized a system where “agricultural employers ruled supreme” and federal officials pursued policies that clearly benefited their economic interests above all else. The main gate/back door distinction succinctly identifies how the politics surrounding each entrance were distinct. Economic pressures enabled the U.S. government to allow hundreds of thousands of foreigners to enter the country through the back door as temporary laborers, while simultaneously passing increasingly restrictive immigration laws to appease a public concerned with issues ranging from job opportunity to American identity.

Among historians there is a broad consensus about back door immigration policy, and a study of Florida’s agricultural landscape supports important aspects of that consensus. First, there clearly was a momentous break from past immigration policy and practice, since large- scale foreign labor importation began in an age typically characterized by immigration restriction. Not only did farmers’ labor-importation scheme face little political opposition, but they also succeeded in convincing the U.S. government to play an active role in recruiting, transporting, and housing foreign labor. Essentially, Florida farm owners used the U.S. government to create a system that granted them nearly absolute control of their labor force.

Growers were able to influence the political system because their power increased with the rise cap at 150,000 with admissions apportioned according to the number of inhabitants of each “national origin” present in the continental United States as of 1890. This policy became known as the quota system. (Aristide Zolberg, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 262.)

6 Zolberg identifies three entrances available to foreigners, the “front gate,” the “side-entrance,” and the “back door.” The 1924 act ensured the continuation of the U.S.’s “Nordic character” through rigorous front gate restriction. The “side entrance” provided immigration access to refuges, which otherwise would have been termed “populations of concern” and denied entrance through the main-gate. Since most laborers moved in and out the informal “back door,” that entrance is the central focus of this study. (Zolberg, A Nation by Design, 10, 22, 245.)

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7 of industrial agriculture. Second, a “passive nativism” emerged in many communities that saw a large increase in immigrant labor.8 Florida grappled not only with issues relating to the mere presence of foreigners, but it also had to find a way to fit those individuals into the South’s rigid racial hierarchy. Southern racism played a pivotal role in shaping relations between Florida growers and their workers.

The issue of labor control, not scarcity, lay at the heart of the conflict between employers and farmworkers in the Arkansas and Mississippi Deltas in the 1940s.9 Local growers often failed to pay decent wages and this led many workers to embrace alternative employment opportunities presented by the war. Consequently, regional farmers began to lose the iron grip they had held over the workforce since the days of slavery. Fundamentally, the issue was no different for agricultural workers in Florida than it was for those of the Delta region—the debate over adequate local labor centered on concerns regarding the wages and terms of employment.

Florida growers petitioned the government to intercede on their behalf and create legislation that would enable farmers to dictate the terms of employment and force workers to accept them. In some cases this did occur, as seen with the use of vagrancy laws and convict labor, but the majority of the time growers felt they were unable to muster sufficient control of local labor.

7 Industrial farming, or agribusiness, resulted from the consolidation of small farms, and these new industrial farms depended on a massive work force of migrant labor. (Zolberg, A Nation by Design, 296.) Kathleen Mapes, citing the findings of historians David Montgomery and Gunther Peck, also argues the importance of understanding the role modern corporations played in fostering and directing migrant labor flows. (Mapes, Sweet Tyranny, 77.)

8 Mapes, Sweet Tyranny, 83.

9 Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, “Pick or Fight: The Emergency Farm Labor Program in the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta during World War II.” Agricultural History, Vol. 64. No 2, The United States Department of Agriculture in Historical Perspective (Spring, 1990), 76. For a full history, see Woodruff’s book, American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta (University of North Carolina Press, 2012.)

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However, Florida growers did secure some measure of power during this period to break strikes and depress wages.10

A thorough examination of employment control issues is vital to understanding agricultural labor relations during World War II because it calls into question the widely accepted belief that the war led to major labor insufficiencies. In many cases throughout the country, the war did create genuine shortages as men left to join the military. The resulting dearth of industrial workers led some field hands to embrace this opportunity to move into higher paying industrial jobs. But, most often these were white migrants, displaced by the Great

Depression. Large numbers of African Americans remained in the fields, and even in cases where adequate numbers of workers were available, growers’ inability to exercise strict control over them left many employers feeling frustrated.11 Therefore, in order to make their complaints sound more credible, growers talked of “labor shortages” even though they were really talking about loss of labor control. This tactic proved effective, and farmers faced little opposition during the war years since there were real scarcities throughout much of the country. A closer inspection of the labor tensions during World War II highlights how these growers were able to persuade the U.S. government to create labor importation policies and programs that would guarantee them nearly absolute control of their workforce.

10 Hahamovtich, The Fruits of Their Labor, 176. This sentiment is repeated throughout the literature and primary sources. For example, Zolberg’s Nation by Design, and Jim Norris’ North for the Harvest, and in countless government documents regarding concerns of organized labor, etc.

11 For example, vegetable growers in Pompano, Florida put up a fight when sugar producers tried to recruit black workers from the “Colored section of Pompano.” The growers argued there would be insufficient labor available if sugar recruited any of their workers. Adopting a more paternalistic and racist justification for exerting greater economic control over area workers, growers supported implementing a wage-rate ceiling for beans because otherwise African Americans would not work and harvest the full crop. Instead, they would only do the minimum to earn as much as they did the last time. In the latter assessment, the growers garnered the support of the War Manpower Commission Field Supervisor authoring the report. (1942, Weekly Agricultural Report. RG 211 (WMC), Series 2: Region VII Central Correspondence Files, Box 4, Folder C 530.1 General. NARA-Southeast Region (Atlanta.)

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In the West and Midwest, the rise of passive nativism resulted from the importation of temporary foreign workers because the policy sanctioned a “racialized labor program,” which essentially segmented Mexicans as workers and did not identify them as immigrants or people capable of becoming citizens.12 The same categorization applied to Caribbean workers who began entering the United States as guestworkers in 1943. Skin color and conceptions of race dominated the discourses of both immigration and agriculture throughout much of early twentieth century. In the case of Mexican workers, farmers selected lighter skinned Mexicans over those with darker skin in an effort to avoid antagonizing immigration restrictionists.13

Florida farmers took a markedly different approach in selecting their foreign agricultural workers.

In contrast to preferring light-skinned laborers, Florida growers demanded black

Bahamian workers because they fit better within the “racial structure” of the state. Luther L.

Chandler, President of the Goulds Grower Association in Florida, argued that it was better to get black Bahamians rather than lighter skinned Puerto Ricans because the latter viewed themselves as white. However, whites in the United States did not see Puerto Ricans as “white,” nor did they think they were exactly “black” like African Americans. Therefore, Chandler felt it was better to import workers who were clearly “black” since they could be housed with African Americans.14

Chandler believed this was the best solution because it would prevent imported laborers from posing a threat to Jim Crow segregation in Florida by creating a third group of people, which could not be clearly categorized as black or white.

12 Mapes, Sweet Tyranny, 10, 129.

13 Ibid., 162.

14 L.L. Chandler, President of Gould Growers, Inc., to Governor Spessard Holland, Dec. 9, 1942, RG 102 (Office of the Governor), Series 406, Box 66, Folder 2: Gov. Holland Labor Problems (con’t) 1942, Florida Department of State (FDS), State Archives of Florida.

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A critical study of the policymaking aspects of the British West Indian Program illuminates the relationship between immigration, economics, and labor, and highlights recurrent trends resulting from interactions between these interests. Florida is an ideal state in which to examine these intersections because of its large agricultural economy. Although programs like the Bracero and BWI were federally mandated, they were executed at the state level. A state- level study, therefore, breaks down national patterns and highlights the program’s complex organization and the numerous competing interests and varied perspectives of those involved.15

Additionally, it reminds us that state institutions are actors in the policymaking process, rather than simply conduits for certain self-interested individuals or groups.16 These agencies and institutions have their own histories, biases, and goals.17 Understanding these diverse interests enables us to contextualize and understand the processes resulting in the codification of a foreign farm labor program. However, in order to fully comprehend why Florida fruit, vegetable, citrus, and sugar growers requested and promoted the importation of foreigners to work their fields, and why the state eventually embraced their demands, requires an examination of agricultural labor shifts during World War II.

World War II and Agricultural Labor Demands

Thanks to full engagement in the war, the U.S. wartime economy expanded in 1942, finally snapping the country out of the Great Depression. Agricultural production was integral to this growth. Compared to its allies and enemies, the United States’ unparalleled access to raw

15 Kathleen Mapes aptly notes that studies of a particular locale are important when examining national and international policy issues because they reveal “the ways that class identities were created and contested, the ways that race played out in abstract debates and face-to-face interactions; and the ways that the power of capitalism and the state transformed” communities and individual’s lives ranging locally to globally. (Mapes, Sweet Tyranny, 12.)

16 Stephen Skowronek, “Order and Change,” Polity, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Autumn, 1995): 94.

17 These agencies and institutions have their own histories, biases, and goals. Kitty Calavita does an exceptional job fleshing out these often competing interests in her book, Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration and the I.N.S. (New York: Routledge, 1992.)

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materials allowed it to divert spare resources to farm machinery, fertilizers, and other chemical products that allowed for massive food production.18 The war’s voracious appetite for U.S. farm goods pulled agriculture out of the economic depression it had been suffering since the 1920s, increasing farm owners’ incomes by 156 percent.19

The Debate Over Labor Shortages and Efforts to Control Domestic Workers

There is no doubt that World War II caused genuine labor shortages in the United States.

Men entered military service, and the vacancies left by these individuals triggered a chain reaction in which workers from lower paying sectors like agriculture would shift into higher paying industrial ones. However, more often than not, field workers moving into industrial jobs were white.20 Traditionally, African Americans and Mexican Americans had trouble finding industrial employment and they were excluded from increasing wartime wages.21

Communities with labor shortages often called upon local women, children, the elderly, and the disabled to fill voids left by departing men. In areas professing consistent deficiencies, the federal government decided to boost its efforts locating and placing labor by expanding the

Farm Security Administration (FSA) Migrant Camp program. First, however, it had to locate a

18 Lizzie Collingham, The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food (New York: Penguin Books, 2012), 75.

19 Ibid., 75, 78.

20 Ibid., 426. According to 1940 U.S. Census estimates, in Miami, just over 14% of black men worked as factory operatives. Thirty percent did janitorial or other menial labor, and another thirty percent worked on construction sites or did similar work. Sixty-six percent of African Amerian women were employed in domestic service. (Melanie Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami: A Social History (Gainesville, FL: The University of Gainesville Press, 2009), 112.) During this same period, the state’s Latino population also began increasing and they took many of the better-paying jobs. Most were Puerto Ricans or Cubans coming to Florida from the nation’s northeast, not directly from the islands. (Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 113-114.)

21 Ibid., 426. Collingham also notes that in addition to employment discrimination, African Americans garnered the least protection when it came to wartime inflation. Consequently, they continued to make substandard wages and spend a greater portion of their income on items like food. The Florida Industrial Commission also concluded that “Groups comprising the major part of the seasonal migratory labor supply, including large numbers of Mexicans and Negroes, have been less affected by defense employment than other segments of the farm population,” as opposed to displaced whites like the “Okies.” (Report, page 5. RG 389 (FIC), Series 1476, Box 3, Folder 5: Farm Labor Market Conditions. FDS. State Archives of Florida.

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new, mobile labor source.22 Understanding the U.S.’s agricultural climate, and how and why

Florida farmers failed to control local labor, explains how growers succeeded in securing a foreign labor program. The U.S. War Food Administration argued food was a “‘weapon of war.

As such, it ranks with ships, airplanes, tanks, and guns.’”23 Since the United States had the greatest access to resources, it capitalized on this advantage by identifying food production as a way to gain greater power in the world. Food’s unprecedented significance during World War II meant that WFA administrators sought to maximize U.S. production at all costs. In so doing, they often privileged the demands of farmers over workers.

Contestations over labor availability highlight the divergent forces at work in both state and federal agencies. Some government workers believed the war could be leveraged to promote better wages and working conditions for farm laborers. Others used it as a means to perpetuate racist practices that had plagued Florida’s employment practices for decades. In February of

1942, the United States Employment Service (USES, a sub-agency of the FSA) decided to conduct a survey of farm labor market conditions in South Florida (Dade, Broward, and Palm

Beach Counties) in order to determine farm labor demands. Dade County tomato growers were already claiming labor shortages and petitioning for admittance of Bahamian laborers. However,

L.S. Rickard, Director of the Florida Employment Service, commissioned the studies because he did not think growers’ claims were accurate. Demonstrating this skepticism was well warranted in crops like beans, the Dade County Employment Service representative pointed out that there were no shortages due to sufficiently high wages. He noted that bean growers could draw on

22 The FSA Migratory Camp Program, in addition to establishing permanent camps, also created temporary mobile camps that followed migrants as they traveled from job to job. A similar program was attempted during World War I by the Departments of Labor and Agriculture, but “unwilling to abandon subsistence wages and their accustomed forms of labor relations, southern employers scuttled the farm labor supply effort.” Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor, 92.

23 Collingham, The Taste of War, 88.

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Miami residents, because these workers would travel from the city to the fields when it was financially worth it. In contrast, he argued that tomato fields were further away, and therefore needed workers willing to live near the fields. However, because wages were insufficient they failed to entice Miamians to leave the city for tomato harvesting.24

In an effort to force workers that could not be enticed into the fields, some officials fell back on traditional southern labor employment strategies. The leader of the USES delegation visiting the West Palm Beach Employment Service office reported that the staff there intended to

“cut off Unemployment Compensation benefits' for these [black construction] workers…in an effort to get the workers to accept agricultural jobs."25 A member of the Dade County Land Use

Planning Committee, the group responsible for issuing the county’s unemployment compensation, advocated and employed the same tactic. Additionally, the committee member expressed concern over the twenty-three black workers employed on a Works Progress

Administration project. He wanted the program closed and the workers released into the agricultural labor pool. Although he acknowledged that this would essentially do nothing to improve the labor situation, he was against their employment on principle because they were

“employed on an 8-hour day at 40 cents per hour, a wage in excess of prevailing agricultural wages" and he felt that if other workers in the area saw this, they would be “encouraged to demand higher wages." Demonstrating a classic coercive southern employment tactic, he also wanted the sheriff to begin arresting black Miamians for vagrancy if they refused agricultural

24 2/14/42, Florida-Report on Visit on Jan. 14-Jan 26 to USES in Connection with the Introduction of a Farm Labor Reporting Program, p. 2, 9, RG 183 United States Employment Service (USES), UD Entry 89 Area Labor Market Survey Reports, 1940-49, Box 68, Folder: Reports Field Visits Florida. NARA College Park (NACP.) The issue of worker fluidity persisted into 1943. In December of that year, USES reported that problems could arise over labor supplies when truck farming and industry were close to each other, since people would drift back and forth between the two in search of better wages. (RG 183 (USES), UD/Entry 88, Labor Market Survey Reports, Box 5: Florida, 1943. [no folder] NACP.)

25 Ibid., 7.

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employment.26 Agricultural labor supply reports are spotty for much of 1942, but those available for Dade County for October and November offer some useful insight. They noted domestic black workers had “never been completely satisfactory to the farmers in this area” and that growers’ recent “efforts to get local workers to go on the farms have met with no results."27

Reading the reports illuminates an essential truth—if a real labor shortage existed, it was because area laborers were unwilling to work for the wages being offered.

Sometimes government agents and growers shared similar labor recruiting philosophies, as demonstrated by the West Palm Beach and Dade County Employment Service offices. At other times, however, office personnel had to follow their department’s mandates regardless of if they—or the farmers they serviced—agreed with the policies or not. For example, Miami farmers wanted experienced workers that would live on their farms, and they rejected the FSA plan to recruit workers from elsewhere in the United States and import them to Florida. Worker transportation was a sticking point because under the new plan, laborers that would have previously traveled to the area at their own expense were now awaiting free government transportation. Consequently, there were fewer workers in the area than in years past. Although area farmers were not convinced the new program was in their best interest, USES officials moved forward with the program because they thought it provided the best opportunity to increase employment for domestic workers. Farmers, less enthusiastic about domestic migrant workers, still believed “that the sound practical solution of the shortage of farm help in this area is to import farm negroes from the Bahama Islands.”28

26 Ibid., 9.

27 ES-274, Labor Market Report for Miami, 10/15/42, RG 183 (USES), Entry 88 Labor Market Survey Reports, Box 62 Florida, Folder: Jacksonville, Miami (2nd folder), NACP.

28 Ibid., 11/15/42

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Farm owners in places like Florida struggled to control local labor; their failure to accomplish this task often manifested itself as complaints of labor shortages. Actual farm labor numbers were nearly impossible to quantify for several reasons. Few employers kept detailed records of their laborers. There was no reason to keep records, and the migratory practices of many workers made it challenging to track their movements in a given year.29 Consequently, a seemingly endless debate ensued about when and where “real” shortages existed. In the context of policy implementation, the difference did not matter. Farm owners’ perceptions became their reality, and they pressured elected officials to legislate according to those perceptions. Therefore,

Florida producers—like farmers throughout much of the South—sought (and secured) legal measures that would enable them to tightly control their workers and extract the most labor possible.

In the past, Florida growers had expressed widespread fear that laws like the Immigration

Acts of 1917 and 1924 would reduce the number of Bahamian workers entering Florida. This time, when the available pool of workers appeared in danger of shrinking because of wartime exigencies, growers once again embraced the rhetoric of labor crisis. Government studies concluded paying higher wages would remedy the situation, but this was not the solution growers wanted to hear. Rather, they preferred to maintain a large surplus of underpaid workers

29 Although from a later period, the Florida Extension Service reported in 1947 that were “no estimates of the number of migrants who winter in Florida." For the Atlantic Coast migration, estimates ranged from 10,000 to 40,000 over a 6 year period. They estimated the 1946 season at approximately 35,000. (1/3/47, Letter to Margaret J. Harris, FL Supervisor of the Ministry to Migrants; From CWE Pittman, Southeastern Area Director, Recruitment & Placement Division of Extension Farm Labor Program. RG 33 (Extension Service), NC-117, Entry 3A, General Correspondence 1945 to 1949, Box 35: 1946-1947, Farm Labor 10-1, NM, NY to Farm Labor, MA, Folder: Farm Labor Florida. NARA Southeastern Region (Atlanta.)) The Extension Service recognized the need to create a new labor need calculation. Unfortunately, no one trusted the data to make the new calculation any more accurate than previous figures. (1/24/47. RG 33 (Extension Service), NC-117, Entry 3A, General Correspondence 1945 to 1949, Box 35: 1946-1947, Farm Labor 10-1, NM, NY to Farm Labor, MA, Folder: Farm Labor Florida. NARA Southeastern Region (Atlanta.))

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ready and willing to work at a moment’s notice. Thus, when this supply of domestic workers became less reliable, growers advocated vociferously for importing foreign workers.

Florida farmers feared insufficient labor supplies would drive up unskilled worker wages and so they sought foreign labor as alternative means to access cheap labor.30 A 1941 statewide

Farm Labor Market Conditions Report cited low wages as the primary reason for the current labor shortage.31 As previously mentioned, Luther L. Chandler, President of Goulds Growers,

Inc., and Chairman of both the Dade County Defense Council and the USDA War Board, was one of Florida’s most vocal advocates of Bahamian labor usage. In response to his persistent efforts to import islanders, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) conducted interviews to verify Chandler’s labor shortage claims. While Chandler was out of town, INS officials talked to a neighbor of his—an independent 200-acre farmer. This particular grower, noting he was speaking only for himself, declared that “As far as he was concerned he was not alarmed about the labor shortage and that he did not anticipate any great shortage, inasmuch as he had always maintained favorable working conditions and always paid the prevailing wage.”32

The neighbor’s claims were backed up by subsequent interviews in which farmers reported that

30 Raymond A Mohl, “Black Immigrants: Bahamians in Early Twentieth-Century Miami.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Jan., 1987), 290.

31 1/8/41. Report. RG 389 Florida Industrial Commission (FIC), Series 1476 (Unemployment Compensation Files), Box 3, Folder 5: Farm Labor Market Conditions, Jan.-Aug. 1941. FDS, State Archives of Florida. Other factors listed as causing labor “shortages” included the draft, local housing shortages, and lack of transportation. Interestingly, Public Law 45, which would eventually authorize the Bahamian/BWI program prohibited building labor camps for domestic workers. (10/21/43, Meeting of the State Defense Council’s Committee on Agriculture and Processing Labor. RG 191 (Florida State Defense Council), Series .419; Box 3, Folder: USDA (1941-1944.))

32 12/12/41, Letter to Inspector in Charge, INS, from WA Summerson, Immigrant Inspector. RG 85 (INS), Entry 9: Subject Correspondence Files, 1906-1939, Box: 21402, Folder: 56078/477. NAB. Although Blake did acknowledge that if they had a maximum crop yield (unlike the last two years when flooding and freezing limited production), there could be labor shortages. Interestingly, a study conducted by the Office of Labor in 1946 found that Chandler still paid below the prevailing wage rate. Whereas most area growers paid $0.50 per hour for men (and $0.45 per hour for women), Chandler only paid $0.45. Perhaps he should not have been surprised he had trouble securing workers at the wages he wanted to pay. (12/1946, Narrative Reports, Goulds. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 8 General Correspondence 1945-1945. Box 24: 1946 Camps 12-1 thru 1946 Camps 12-1. Folder: Camps 12-1, Florida, Goulds FLSC. NACP.)

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those with "good quarters for their help, pay the prevailing wage and do not have too large an acreage under cultivation are not greatly alarmed."33

In addition to wage issues, local housing scarcities, limited transportation, and better job opportunities in the Florida’s cities and outside the South entirely, enticed some of the state’s workers to leave the fields. In response, as early as 1941 some Florida growers claimed labor shortages.34 In that year, the United States Sugar Corporation, located in Clewiston, Florida, found that African Americans in the area were “unwilling to accept this work, since wages and working conditions offered for other types of farm labor were more satisfactory.”35 Additionally, while FSA programs like the migrant camps helped workers, employers often felt threatened by them since the programs undermined farmers’ ability to manipulate local labor supplies.

Testifying before Congress, Florida State Defense Council Chairman, James E. Beardsley, reported that the sugar industry anticipated a labor shortage because black workers living in the

FSA migrant camps were able to earn enough money to support their families by working for the camp itself (doing jobs like mowing the lawn). He contended that nothing could compel them to go out and work harder elsewhere.36 Furthermore, the testimony of Luther Jones, a farmer, realtor, and owner of the Belle Glade Herald, reveals the blatantly racist attitudes many growers felt towards the local black population. Jones claimed that African Americans were also

33 Ibid.

34 1/8/41. Report, p. 1. RG 389 (FIC), Series 1476, Box 3, Folder 5: Farm Labor Market Conditions, January 1941- August 1941. FDS, State Archives of Florida; RG 96 (Farm Home Administration), Entry 93: Office of the Director, General Correspondence, 1934-1942, Box 3, Folder: 500-Rehabilitation and Resettlement; Migrant Labor Camps- Request for Camp-South Broward Co., Fla. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Southeast Region (Atlanta).

35 Report, p. 4. RG 389 (FIC), Series 1476, Box 3, Folder: Farm Labor Market Conditions, Dec. 15, 1941-Jan. 15, 1942, Report. FDS, State Archives of Florida.

36 U.S. Congress. House. Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration. Hearings. 77th Cong., 2nd Sess., Part 33. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943), 12,566.

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unreliable workers because if they earned additional wages above those necessary to survive, they would quit working and squander the supplementary funds on gambling.37

Accusations of black indolence continued throughout the war years and were often used as justifications for the enforcement of vagrancy laws.38 In 1943 the Brevard County Agricultural

Extension Service Agent, Thomas Cain, issued his annual report indicating that large numbers of local black and white workers existed but that they were “loafing.”39 Similar to Jones’s assessment, Cain stated that because the prevailing wage rate allowed them to maintain their standard of living by only working four days, they could not be persuaded to work more. He believed that if authorities could find some way to induce local laborers to work full time, then there would be no need for outside labor to be brought in to the region.40 Throughout Florida, especially as World War II progressed and more men left the fields to pursue jobs in the military or industrial sectors, vagrancy laws and campaigns such as “Work or Fight” or “Work or Go to

Jail,” became the primary means of forcing local African Americans to work longer hours and

37 Ibid.

38 This paper addresses vagrancy issues during the war years only. For more information on Florida’s long and deeply disturbing history of debt peonage and the employment of vagrancy laws to force local African Americans to work under harsh conditions see the following: David Tegeder, “Prisoners of the Pines: Debt Peonage in the Southern Turpentine Industry, 1900-1930,” (Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Florida, 1996); U.S. House. Oversight Hearing on Peonage Among Agricultural Workers: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Labor Standards of the Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives, 89th Congress, 1st Sess., Hearing Held in Washington, D.C., on September 22, 1983 (Washington: U.S. G.P.O., 1984); Randolph Boehm, August Meier, and Mark Fox, eds., Papers of the NAACP, Black Studies Research Sources (Frederick, Md: University Publications of America, 1982.)

39 Narrative Report of the Agricultural Extension Work in Brevard County, FL for the period Dec. 1, 1942 to Nov. 30, 1943, p. 22. University of Florida Special & Area Studies Collections (UF Archives), P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Public Records Collection: Series 91a (Florida Cooperative Extension Service), Box 12, Folder: Brevard. Similar accusations were found in: 3/1944, Miami War Manpower Area Report, p. 6. RG 389, Series 1475, Box 2, Folder 19: Miami-Operating Report. FDS, State Archives of Florida. 7/1944, Miami War Manpower Area Report, p. 7. RG 389, Series 1475, Box 2, Folder 23: Miami-Operating Report. FDS, State Archives of Florida

40 Narrative Report of the Agricultural Extension Work in Brevard County, FL for the period Dec. 1, 1942 to Nov. 30, 1943, p. 22. UF Archives, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Public Records Collection: Series 91a, Box 12, Folder Brevard. For further examples of supposed “unreliability” of black labor and the subsequent application of vagrancy laws, see Narrative Report of the Agricultural Extension Work in Lee County, FL for the period Dec. 1, 1943 to Nov. 30, 1944, p. 17. Ibid., Folder: Lee.

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more days per week.41 In 1945, the Franklin County Sheriff conducted a “vagrancy drive” in an effort to replace foreign workers with domestic.42 Growers like Jones argued that rigid enforcement of vagrancy laws, coupled with mandatory savings programs, would not only provide farmers with a large number of local black workers but also bring about “a more healthy situation and a more permanent stability.”43 In addition to perceived problems with worker motivation, pecuniary issues dominated much of the discourse.

Although claims of labor deficiencies began in 1941, they continued throughout the war.

U.S. Sugar again found itself lacking the necessary manpower to cut cane in 1942. This time not only could the company not find enough labor locally, even USES, the agency responsible for locating and placing migrant labor nationally, could not secure enough workers.44 Sugar cane cutting was notoriously difficult, dangerous, low-paying work, so it was not unusual to have difficulty finding domestic workers. Other Florida farm producers made similar complaints to the Governor’s Office and the State’s regional Extension Service Offices. Complaints by

Brevard County farmers, however, highlight the difference in the two situations. The Brevard growers grumbled that fieldworkers (both white and black) were unwilling to work a full week because they were earning enough to maintain their standard of living by working only four days.45

41 Report, p. 1. RG 389, Series 1475, Box 18, Folder: Jacksonville-Operating Report, January 1945. FDS, State Archives of Florida.

42 Report, p. 1. RG 389, Series 1475, Box 4, Folder 14: Panama City-Operating Report, January 1945, Northwest Florida Area. FDS, State Archives of Florida.

43 Report of Meeting Held at Camp Osceola, Belle Glade, FL, Nov. 19, 1942, p 1, 6. RG 102, Series 406, Box 66, Folder 1: Gov. Holland Labor Problems 1942. FDS, State Archives of Florida,.

44 U.S. Congress. House. Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration. Hearings, 12,714.

45 Narrative Report of the Agricultural Extension Work in Brevard County, FL for the period Dec. 1, 1942 to Nov. 30, 1943. p. 22. UF Archives, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Public Records Collection: Series 91a, Box 12, Folder Brevard.

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Growers’ inability to compel domestic workers to labor in the fields was a common theme throughout the war years. The Miami Daily News reported on February 9,1943 that the

Dade County Commission sent a letter to Paul McNutt, Chairman of the War Manpower

Commission, asking him to visit the area and see for himself the crops wasting in the fields because of the labor shortage. The newspaper stated the Commission had recently endorsed a resolution calling for Bahamian labor only when domestic labor had proven insufficient. They argued that situation had come to pass. As evidence, one Commissioner cited the fact that bean harvesters would only do one picking, whereas in the past they would do three. The article failed to mention that with each consecutive picking, the price per hamper increased, but yields decreased, so it was more challenging to make a decent wage for a full day’s work. A county attorney noted Lake Okeechobee had “considerable labor” in the area, but that individuals refused to pick more than two days per week. He did not explain why workers were reluctant to harvest more often, but it makes sense they would opt not to spend countless days stooped in the fields for inadequate earnings. The Commission’s vice-chairman offered an alternative perspective. He argued that growers brought this upon themselves by “bidding against themselves to obtain labor.” He contended growers drove up wages, thus de-incentivizing workers to seek fulltime employment. The vice-chairman also argued African Americans traditionally employed in the fields were being hired for work in army camps.46

In April 1943, R.Y. Creech, of Belle Glade, Florida, engaged in a telegram exchange with

Senator Claude Pepper in which they discussed the need for labor. Creech explained there was a shortage for the harvest season because no one could induce the local labor to work at the offered

46 Miami Daily News, February 9, 1943, “Dade Will Invite McNutt To See Crop Waste Here, Commission Drafts Plea Calling Attention of U.S. to Florida’s Labor Crisis,” page 1-B. RG 224 War Food Administration (WFA), General Correspondence. Mar-July 1943, Box 14: Farm Labor 2 thru Farm Labor 3-2, Folder: Farm Labor 3-1 Bahamas, NACP.

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wage rate, and he requested someone be sent there to make locals work.47 While Pepper expressed sympathy for Creech’s predicament, and that Pepper could not force the locals to work, he did point out that the workers could not legally leave farm employment in search of higher wages, according to the directives for the War Manpower Commission.48 Pepper then contacted Paul Vander Schouw, Chief of the Farm Labor Supply Section, stating that imported labor was the best solution to Creech’s problem because it would prevent him from having to deal with local bean workers’ demands for better wages.49 Although Creech experienced a shortage of people in the fields, it was not because the area physically lacked available workers.

Rather, it was because he could not adequately control local labor and force them to work for wages he thought were appropriate.

Wartime industrial mobilization could impact growers. In 1942, both Manatee and

Hillsborough counties indicated competition from shipbuilding as their primary reason for farmworker deficiencies.50 According to the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee

Investigating the National Defense Migration, gasoline rationing, tire shortages, and higher wages in the construction industry were the primary factors “adversely influencing the supply of agricultural labor.”51 Of the three, the greatest problem was workers leaving the fields for higher

47 Telegram from R.Y. Creech to FL Senator Claude Pepper, 1943. RG 211 War Manpower Commission (WMC), Series 11: Region VII, Central Files & Monthly MOPAC Reports, Box 3, Folder: Labor Mobilization and Utilization (10-2) [1 of 2]. NARA--Southeast Region (Atlanta.)

48 Telegram from FL Senator Claude Pepper to R.Y. Creech, April 28, 1943, RG 211, Series 11: Region VII, Central Files & Monthly MOPAC Reports, Box 3, Folder: Labor Mobilization and Utilization (10-2) [1 of 2], NARA-- Southeast Region (Atlanta.)

49 Telegram from FL Senator Claude Pepper to Paul Vander Schouw, Farm Labor Supply Section Chief, April 24, 1943, RG 211, Series 11: Region VII, Central Files & Monthly MOPAC Reports, Box 3, Folder: Labor Mobilization and Utilization (10-2) [1 of 2], NARA--Southeast Region (Atlanta.)

50 Annual Report of Work of Central Florida District, p.15. UF Archives, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Public Records Collection: Series 91a, Box 3, Folder: Extension Service: District Supervisors (#1-3) Annual Narrative Reports, 1941-1947.

51 U.S. Congress. House. Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration. Hearings, 12,500.

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paying jobs elsewhere or pushing for higher wages. Even as the war came to a close, counties around Florida continued to report labor shortages due to former agricultural workers refusing to return to low-wage field positions.52 Growers in 1944 continued to claim that African Americans were available but their “unwillingness to accept regular employment” and supposedly inherent laziness prevented them from being a useable labor supply.53

South Florida growers repeatedly complained in 1943 that local African American workers refused to work without a pay raise. Field workers were able to do this because the

Bahamian labor had not yet arrived and growers needed workers to begin the harvest, thus providing farmhands with significant bargaining power.54 Workers were somewhat successful in negotiating higher wages. After Bahamians started arriving on a regular basis, the local

Agricultural Extension Service Agent in St. Johns County stated that new Bahamian arrivals were better than those coming up from South Florida, because the ones from there were used to working for “unreasonably high wages.”55 U.S. Sugar again anticipated most of its labor would leave the fields when bean picking began, since bean work was considered significantly less

52 Agricultural Extension Reports for Hillsborough County, 1944. Box 16; Broward County, 1946, Box 12; Dade County, 1946, Box 13; Seminole County, 1946, and Box 22, UF Archives, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History Public Records Collection: Series 91a.

53 Report, p. 5. RG 389, Series 1475, Box 1, Folder 12: Jacksonville-Operating Report, April 1944. FDS, State Archives of Florida; Report, p. 5. RG 389, Series 1475, Box 2, Folder 19: Miami-Operating Report, March 1944. FDS, State Archives of Florida; Report, p. 7. RG 389, Series 1475, Box 2, Folder 23: Miami-Operating Report, June 1944. FDS, State Archives of Florida.

54 L.S. Rickard (Director) to B.F. Ashe, Regional Director (WMC), April 10, 1943, p.2. RG 211 (WMC), Series 11: Region VII, Central Files & Monthly MOPAC Reports, Box 15, Folders: Reports; Florida-13, NARA--Southeast Region (Atlanta.)

55 County Agent Report, week of May 22, 1943, p.15. UF Archives, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Public Records Collection: Series 91a, Box 21a, Folder: Seminole.

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strenuous than cane cutting and workers had made some gains in securing better wages.

Consequently, U.S. Sugar requested 2000 new Bahamians to ease labor concerns.56

Alternative Labor Supplies

Some farm owners did actively try to recruit American labor first, technically a requirement under federal law. However, many expressed concern and frustration over the types of workers they received through FSA contracts. USES reported Miami growers in particular

“want no more of the ‘lazy, indolent, shiftless white workers’” that were sometimes included in

FSA contract groups.57 These accusations of white worker laziness often mirrored critiques of local African American workers, thus creating and reinforcing the idea that foreign laborers were the only acceptable labor supply because of their supposed inherent willingness to work harder than domestic workers.

In contrast to the many growers who preferred non-white workers, the citrus industry preferred white workers. Citrus growers claimed that most blacks were bean pickers and therefore not familiar with citrus harvesting. In response to growers’ demands for white workers, the State Supervisor of the Emergency Farm Labor program reported they were building eight to ten labor camps for white workers. However, the supervisor noted that once the camps were

56 L.S. Rickard (Director) to B.F. Ashe, Regional Director (WMC), April 10, 1943, p.2. RG 211 (WMC), Series 11: Region VII, Central Files & Monthly MOPAC Reports, Box 15, Folders: Reports; Florida-13, NARA--Southeast Region (Atlanta.)

57 ES-274 Labor Market Report for Miami, Feb. 15-Mar. 15, p. 3, RG 183 (USES), UD Entry 89, Box 62, Folder: Jacksonville, Miami (2nd folder), NACP. Lake County also brought in white workers from Tennessee, Kentucky and North Carolina, and Seminole County recruited black laborers from Mississippi. Both counties reported the laborers to be “unsatisfactory” and requested foreign labor instead of domestic. (Annual Narrative Report of R.E. Norris, County Agent, Agricultural Extension, Tavares, FL, for the period Dec. 1, 1943 to Nov. 30, 1944, , p. 22-23. UF Archives, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Public Records Collection: Series 91a, Box 12, Folder: Lake. Annual Narrative Report Agricultural Extension Work, C.R. Dawson, Sanford, FL 1944. , p. 22. UF Archives, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Public Records Collection: Series 91a, Box 12, Folder: Seminole.)

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built, they could only be used for white workers because of segregated housing policies.58

Although the labor situation appeared dire enough that growers agreed to use government agencies to help them locate and house workers, they were not so desperate as to break down racial barriers. Along similar lines, unused to providing adequate facilities for black workers,

Dade County, which chronically claimed labor shortages, found itself scrambling in 1944 to find housing for the imported Bahamians they had finally secured.59 This begs the question, was sufficient housing available for farmworkers of all racial backgrounds, would growers have had an easier time securing adequate local labor?

When efforts to recruit domestic workers from neighboring states failed, many communities began looking for new local sources of labor. Women and children often formed the next line of defense against labor shortages, and paid “volunteers,” such as teachers frequently assisted them during breaks. Similarly, soldiers training in Florida could earn extra money, as well as further demonstrate their dedication to the country, by working in the fields during furloughs. As Governor Spessard Holland told Floridians in a November 1943 speech, not only could they improve their finances by helping during harvest time, it was their patriotic duty,

58 Letter from E.F. DeBusk, State Supervisor, Emergency Farm Labor, Cooperative Extension Work in Agriculture & Home Economics to C.W.E. Pittman of the Extension Service in Washington, D.C. 11/19/43, RG 33 Extension Service, PI-83 Entry 46: Records Concerning the Farm Labor Program, General and Other Correspondence and Related Records, 1943-48, Box 14: State Corr., 2nd Service, 1943-46, AL-KY, Folder: label missing, but probably Florida 1943-1946, NACP. Similarly, employment agents located white workers in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee to transport to Florida, however, the state lacked sufficient quantities of white housing since historically most of Florida’s farm laborers were black. (1/11/43, Bowman F. Ashe, Regional Director WMC., to Arthur S. Flemming, Commissioner and Acting Executive Director, WMC. RG 211 (WMC), Box 15, Folder: Reports- General, NARA--Southeast Region (Atlanta.)

59 Demand-Supply Supplements for Miami Labor Market, January 1944, RG 183 (USES), UD Entry 89, Box 62, Folder: Jacksonville-Miami (2nd Folder), NACP.

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and their endeavors were vital to the war effort.60 Even these extraordinary efforts by average citizens, though, could not meet the demands of industrial agriculture.

While Holland acknowledged citizen war efforts, he ignored the many foreigners helping fuel the war machine through their labor in the fields. By this time, U.S. agriculture relied on

Mexican, Bahamian, and British West Indians workers, as well as thousands of German prisoners of war that were being held in the United States.61 Reports from 1944 show authorities placed approximately 1200 POWs in Florida counties to perform fieldwork.62 POWs enter

Florida’s agricultural historical record most significantly in 1944 but demand for them began earlier. Jackson County growers met in 1943 to discuss their labor deficiencies and they talked about all options ranging from out-of-county, to out-of state, to foreign labor. Interestingly, the committee voted that it did “not want Mexican, Bahamian, or Jamaican labor,” but did vote that it “could use 1000 war prisoners.”63 A few hundred men helped fill U.S. Sugar’s labor gap during the cane harvest and afterwards they were shipped to north Florida to work the potato fields.64 In the postwar period, before they were returned home, some POWs continued to work

60 RG 191 Florida State Defense Council (FSDC), Series 419, Box 26, Folder: Holland, Gov. Spessard L. Speech on Farm and Food Processing Labor (1943.) FDS, State Archives of Florida.

61 Estimates vary, but according to Robert Billinger approximately 378,000 German POWs were imprisoned in 550 camps in forty-five of the forty-eight states. In Florida, a large number of those individuals were involved in agriculture. (Billinger, Jr. Hitler’s Soliders in the Sunshine State: German POWs in Florida (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), xiii.)

62 Emergency Farm Labor Report for April 15, 1943-June 30, 1944, p. 3. And Annual Report of Work Jackson County, p. 36. UF Archives, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Public Records Collection: Series 91a, Box 7, Folder: Farm Labor Reports 1946, 7 & Emergency Farm Labor Report 4/15/43-6/30/47.)

63 UF Archives, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Public Records Collection: Series 91a, Box 17, Folder: Jackson, 1942-44. Unfortunately the report does not elaborate on why POWs were preferred over foreign laborers.

64 RG 389, Series 1475, Box 1, Folder 1: State Director’s Monthly Report, 1944, page 5; RG 389, Series 1475, Box 2, Folder 20: Mimi-Operating Report, April 1945. Report, p. 7; RG 389, Series 1475, Box 2, Folder 27: Mimi- Operating Report, April 1944; RG 389, Series 1475, Box 2, Folder 31: Miami-Operating Report, March 1945. FDS, State Archives of Florida.

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in the fields. However, by 1946 no POW camps operated exclusively for agriculture.65 At that point in time, POW employment was no longer as necessary since Bahamian and British West

Indian workers dominated the labor force in many Florida fields.

The deficits resulting from domestic workers pursuing higher wages elsewhere, and the inability of women, children, volunteers, and POWs to fulfill farmers’ needs, highlights how growers were able to employ the language of labor scarcity to reach their goal of creating a controllable labor force. By vehemently arguing there was, or would soon be, a real labor shortage, they were able to manipulate Congress in two key ways. Farmers first convinced

Congress to issue draft deferments to agricultural workers well into the war years to ensure a larger local supply of labor. And then, when that local supply proved difficult to control, East

Coast growers leveraged their newfound power to persuade Congress that foreign laborers were essential to harvest crops needed to fuel the war effort.66

The Bahamian/BWI Solution

A few days following the February 1943 Miami Daily News article about Florida crops wasting in the fields, the Regional Administrator for the United States Department of Agriculture

(USDA) stated that, to date, attempts to alleviate labor shortages through the FSA had failed. He

65 1946 Report Florida Agricultural Extension Service, p. 17. UF Archives, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Public Records Collection: Series 91a, Box 1, Folder: Director of Extension. Annual Report 1941, 42, & 1946-47. District Report (NWFL.) 1949.

66 Florida agricultural producers gained significant political strength during the Second World War due to the premium placed on food production. (Collingham, Taste of War.) Charles D. Chamberlain, Victory at Home: Manpower and Race in the American South during World War II (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2003) examines how the war changed southern labor dynamics. He argues “the nuances of mobilization at the local and regional levels” placed southern workers “at the center of a political and economic struggle over the future of the region and the United States.” To illustrate this point, Chamberlain demonstrates “the role that the national labor shortage played in providing African Americans with political leverage on the home.” (Chamberlain, Victory at Home, 4-5.) Chamberlain’s arguments speak directly to Florida’s labor situation. Many workers refused Depression- era wages and working conditions. However, since agricultural producers possessed immense political power during the war, they were able to lobby Congress to import guestworkers, thereby diminishing African American bargaining power.

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claimed, however, that B.F. Ashe, Director of Region VII (Southeast) of the War Manpower

Commission, conceded that imported Bahamian labor was the only solution to this problem, but that Washington had taken no action on this suggestion.67 Within a month federal officials would change course and import over 3000 Bahamians to help with U.S. agricultural harvesting along the East Coast. This decision proved pivotal in reshaping Florida’s agricultural labor regime by commencing the formal guestworker labor importation system. The decision to import workers, a consequence of pressure by USDA officials to change course, highlights the contested nature of policy creation and the fact that government agencies often acted at cross-purposes in their attempts to solve the nation’s farm labor issues. USDA and its sub-agencies advocated on behalf of growers, while the Office of Labor/War Food Administration and its subsidiaries, like the

USES were dedicated to assisting workers.68

The British West Indian Labor Program was built upon a long history of labor migration and the system of informal, private contracts established between Florida growers and Bahamian laborers that emerged in the late nineteenth century. By working within established patterns, the

67 Letter from James Palmer, Regional Administrator, USDA to CW Kitchen, Deputy Director, Food Distribution Administration, USDA, 2/13/43, RG 224 Office of Labor (OL), PI 51 Entry 1-General Correspondence, Mar-July 1943, Box 14: Farm Labor 2 thru Farm Labor 3-1, Bahamas, NACP.

68 The USDA found that although initially there were shortages in crops including sugar cane, beans, tomatoes, potatoes, celery, and citrus, a late freeze reduced labor demands during the early part of the month. Of the identified crops, losses in sugar appeared to be greatest, followed by beans since workers continued to refuse to do third and fourth pickings. (3/1943, Farm Labor Report-Florida. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 1-General Correspondence, Mar- July 1943, Box 19: Farm Labor 11 thru Farm Labor 15, Folder: Farm Labor 11-1, USDA War Board Reports April 1943, NACP.) The USES, a sub-agency of the War Manpower Commission during the war years, provided an Agricultural Labor Report for Florida as of March 31, 1943. In contrast to the USDA report, this one provided mixed evidence regarding the need for imported labor. It supported earlier claims that sugar cane producers were hardest hit, noting that they were short just over 1,000 workers. But it then stated that Broward County had a farm labor surplus of 1,500 hands. Interestingly, there is no subsequent discussion about moving these surplus laborers into sugar cane cutting positions. The report then proceeds to say that the FSA signed contracts to import 3111 Bahamians to help with spring harvests of beans, tomatoes, potatoes, celery, and citrus in West Palm Beach. (Ibid., 3/31/43) Again it appears that although the greatest labor shortages were claimed, verified, and reported in sugar, USES did not plan to place Bahamians there. Perhaps growers engaged in crops other than sugar rode the coattails of sugar producers in securing foreign laborers, thus reinforcing the point that in many cases it did not matter whether or not labor scarcities were a reality or merely rhetoric. In the end, they often resulted in the same solution.

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program was able to garner widespread support and mute most opposition. Structurally the BWI

Program largely mimicked the Bracero Program.

Support for Foreign Labor in the 1940s:

Like most of the agricultural South, labor control rather than labor scarcity was the crux of the matter for Florida growers.69 However, farm owners rarely admitted this sentiment outright. Instead, they publicly highlighted more mundane and practical reasons why British

West Indian workers could solve their labor woes.70 East Coast growers, including those in

Florida in the 1940s, had relatively little sustained contact with Spanish-speaking people (unlike growers in the West who shared a long history with Mexicans and Mexican Americans.)

Consequently, when farmers requested labor, they identified the Caribbean as a much better option because the workers would be English-speakers.71 Furthermore, the islands (especially the

Bahamas) were geographically closer, and there was adequate labor immediately available and willing to work.72

As previously demonstrated, though, reasons for requesting Bahamian/BWI labor were not that benign. Racism shaped many growers’ attitudes and led them to support Caribbean

69 Woodruff, “Pick or Fight,” 76-77. Cindy Hahamovitch argues “What occurred in the South during World War II was less a dearth of labor than a seismic shift in the balance of power between growers and farm laborers,” and that in areas where labor supplies declined, farmworkers pushed for improved wages and working conditions. (Cindy Hahamovitch, No Man’s Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 23.)

70 L.L. Chandler was the most vocal proponent for foreign labor in Florida. Familiar with the long, informal migratory history between the Bahamas and Florida, Chandler saw World War II as an opportunity to reinvigorate the migratory flow. However, Chandler envisioned it with new conditions. Rather than returning to “the days when Bahamian men and women came and went at will, Chandler envisioned migrant Bahamians who could be immobilized and deported at growers’ will.” (Hahamovitch, No Man’s Land, 25.)

71 U.S. Congress. Senate. Subcommittee on Immigration of the Committee on the Judiciary. The West Indies (BWI) Temporary Alien Labor Program: 1943-1977. 95th Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington, D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978), p. 3.

72 Ibid., 3-4. This latter part was particularly true. Mexico refused to grant permission to enough men to fill West Coast demands; therefore, growers were correct in stating that Mexico could not fill East Coast demands.

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labor. Outspoken advocate Luther L. Chandler testified before the U.S. House of Representatives

Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration in 1942 that Bahamians were a much more reliable group of workers than African Americans. He argued that unlike local blacks, Bahamians were “of a lesser law breaking type.”73 L.L. Stuckey, Chairman of the

Vegetable Committee of the Florida Farm Bureau, stated in a 1942 letter to Governor Holland that Bahamian labor was preferable to other sources because it had been used for years in South

Florida communities and Bahamians easily assimilated into the community life of local African

Americans.74

In a December1942 letter to Governor Holland, Chandler relayed a similar sentiment to

Stuckey, though his language was slightly less ambiguous and his motives even more questionable. Chandler stated that in addition to linguistic similarity and geographic proximity,

Bahamians were preferable to Puerto Ricans on two grounds. First, Puerto Ricans were racially incompatible with Florida communities because although Puerto Rico was “negroid in its racial structure very largely” it “treats itself and insists on being recognized as white.”75 Chandler claimed that it would be impossible to house such workers since they did not see themselves as black, and yet clearly white Americans would not accept them as white.76 He then went on to add one of the most telling reasons why growers preferred British West Indians over Puerto Ricans—

73 U.S. House. Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration. Hearings, 12,817.

74 L.L. Stuckey, Chairman of the Vegetable Committee Florida Farm Bureau Federation, to Governor Spessard Holland, 1942. RG 102, Series 406, Box 66, Folder 2: Gov. Holland Labor Problems (con’t) 1942. FDS, State Archives of Florida. This assessment is questionable at best, since documentation from the period notes tensions between foreign Bahamian/Caribbean workers and African Americans. Often the roots of these conflicts were competition over women and work.

75 L.L. Chandler, President of Gould Growers, Inc., to Governor Spessard Holland, Dec. 9, 1942, RG 102, Series 406, Box 66, Folder 2: Gov. Holland Labor Problems (con’t) 1942. FDS, State Archives of Florida.

76 Chandler’s written testimony to Holland clearly supports the claim discussed earlier by Kathleen Mapes that agricultural labor policy created a form of passive nativism among Americans. In Chandler’s mind, although Puerto Ricans technically possessed American citizenship, they would never be Americans.

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Bahamians, he pointed out, “can be forced to work a regular work program or be deported” and he also added that Puerto Ricans were notoriously “shiftless.”77

L.L. Chandler was not the only grower hoping to capitalize on Bahamian workers’ inability to leave their employers without fear of repatriation. Numerous sources demonstrate that labor control was one of the primary reasons why farmers continuously requested foreign labor and resisted Congressional attempts to appease them with Puerto Rican workers. The records repeatedly show that growers wanted a source of labor that could be deported if it did not work according to their demands, and Puerto Ricans could not be repatriated because they were

U.S. citizens.78 However, like many Caribbean islands hard hit by the war, Puerto Rico contacted the United States in the hopes of easing its unemployment problems by sending workers to the mainland. Initially they proposed sending skilled labor, but when it proved difficult to place those workers they switched to offering unskilled labor like the British West Indies.79

In addition to fears that supposedly unreliable Puerto Rican workers could not be repatriated at will, a report from the meeting of the State Defense Council’s Committee on

Agriculture and Processing Labor found that Puerto Ricans tended to “scatter” upon arrival.80

The War Manpower Commission reported, “approximately 60 percent of the workers left their contract employment prior to expiration, 25 percent completed their contracts, and only 15

77 L.L. Chandler, President of Gould Growers, Inc., to Governor Spessard Holland, Dec. 9, 1942, p. 2. RG 102, Series 406, Box 66, Folder 2: Gov. Holland Labor Problems (con’t) 1942. FDS, State Archives of Florida.

78 This reason is cited in numerous sources including: Rasmussen, A History of the Emergency Farm Labor Supply Program, 1943-1947, 234.; 1942 letter from L.L. Chandler to the War Power Commission, RG 102, Series 406, Box 66, Folder 2: Gov. Holland Labor Problems (con’t) 1942. FDS, State Archives of Florida; and Edwin Maldonado, “Contract Labor and the Origins of Puerto Rican Communities in the United States.” International Migration Review, Vol. 13, No. 1, Special Issue: Caribbean Migration to New York (Spring, 1979), 110.

79 Santiago Iglesias Jr., Acting commissioner of Labor for the Government of Puerto Rico to USES, Dec. 30, 1942, RG 211 (WMC), Series 2: Region VII Central Correspondence Files, Box 4, Folder C 530.1 General, NARA-- Southeast Region (Atlanta.) The shift from skilled to unskilled labor is addressed in Maldonado, “Contract Labor and the Origins of Puerto Rican Communities in the United States,” 108-109.

80 RG 191 (FSDC), Series 419, Box 3, Folder: USDA (1941-1944). FDS, State Archives of Florida, p. 3.

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percent returned to Puerto Rico.”81 These types of findings played an important role in helping persuade lawmakers in 1944 to implement a mandatory savings program similar to that found in the Bahamian and BWI programs. Like the BWI system, a portion of workers’ paychecks was deposited directly into a bank account on the island, which was meant to motivate workers to return home since they could only access the funds upon returning to Puerto Rico.82 Eventually, the Congressional Appropriations Committee also responded by rewording the legislation funding labor importation so that eligible workers had to be foreigners rather than citizens.83

Consequently, the Emergency Farm Labor Supply Program providing Puerto Rican labor ended almost as soon as it began, and Florida agricultural producers succeeded in securing a deportable

Bahamian labor force.84

Florida growers’ interests converged with those of Bahamian officials’ in the years leading up to the war. In response to threats of labor unrest at home (and following intense prodding by L.L. Chandler), the Duke of Windsor, Governor of the Bahamas, approached the

U.S. government about creating a temporary labor program.85 Facing a collapse in the tourist industry in 1941, the Bahamas sought to export its unemployed population. It had a temporary reprieve in 1942 with the construction of two new airbases in New Providence, which provided employment to 2000 workers. However, those jobs would soon end so the government embraced

81 Maldonado, “Contract Labor and the Origins of Puerto Rican Communities in the United States,” 111.

82 Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor, 178.

83 Maldonado, “Contract Labor and the Origins of Puerto Rican Communities in the United States,” 112.

84 Hahamovitch, No Man’s Land, 25. Additionally, “The practice of marking a red “X” in the passports of any workers who returned home in less than six months, refused work, or committed a crime served as an informal blacklist.” (Hahamovitch, No Man’s Land, 43. See Note 64: David Greenberg, “The Contract, ‘The Project,’ and Work Experiences,” in Strangers No More: Anthropological Studies of Cat Island, the Bahamas, edited by Joel S. Savishinsky (Ithaca, NY: Ithaca College, 1978), 173.)

85 T.L. Thompson, “Remembering ‘The Contract’: Recollections of Bahamians,” The International Journal of Bahamian Studies (2012), 7.

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alternative employment options.86 Even with Bahamian governmental support, the proposed program still faced challenges.

Muted Opposition to Foreign Labor

While Florida farmers actively lobbied for imported labor from the Caribbean as the solution to the country’s labor crisis, a small number of Americans voiced opposition to foreign guestworkers. Unlike protests against the Bracero program in the 1960s, during the early years of the BWI program organized labor and social activists did not express many concerns about the treatment of foreign workers, but rather focused on the quality of workers, and the potential impacts guestworkers had on American society and its citizens. Some public officials and private citizens and groups echoed these concerns and raised general questions regarding the necessity of foreign labor.

Early discussions about a labor importation program highlighted potential problems. One detractor argued that skilled, ambitious Bahamians were already employed; therefore the program would target the unemployed. This focus, perhaps unfairly, raised questions about the quality of the potential workers. 87 If they were such good workers, why were they not already employed at home? Additionally, there were concerns that if workers could not make the minimum amount of money, and if a bond was not charged upon entrance guaranteeing their return home, a large number of destitute laborers could stay in America become public charges.88

86 Ibid., 8.

87 The issue of worker quality is explicitly addressed in the next chapter.

88 12/12/41, Letter to Inspector in Charge, INS, from WA Summerson, Immigrant Inspector. Interview with Captain Seeing, Master of the British MV “Betty K.” (RG 85 (INS), Entry 9: Subject Correspondence Files, 1906-1939, Box: 21402, Folder: 56078/477. NAB.) The issue of worker bonds was an ongoing debate, because the existing fee schedule made it prohibitively expensive for employers to even consider importing workers. However, the U.S. government did not want to completely abandon the fee, for fears that it would encourage workers to abscond and employers simply replace them with new workers, with no penalty.

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Organized labor also voiced concerns that foreign labor would drive down domestic wages.

Since Florida lacked a strong agricultural union, these anxieties were largely ignored.89

Social concerns of the era were particularly interesting because they had a more personal flavor and highlight individuals’ concerns. In yet another letter from L.L. Chandler to Governor

Holland, he explained that the local branch of the Ku Klux Klan opposed the program because they were concerned about more blacks moving into the area. However, Chandler states that he had requested an invitation to speak to them to see if he could overcome their opposition. He believed their assessment of the situation was incorrect given the fact the Bahamians would not be permanently residing in Florida. He contended once the KKK understood the program, they would not be opposed to it.90

One concerned citizen sent a letter to Governor Holland stating that the proposal suggesting the importation of twenty thousand Bahamians into the country “has frightened me more than Japs or Nazis.” While at first glance this fear appears to be based on a racist attitude similar to that of the KKK members of Chandler’s letter, in reality the writer’s concerns were the exact opposite. She felt the U.S. “hardly need go into the slave business again” and instead thought an alternative labor source could be identified.91 Another letter-writer to Governor

Holland expressed concern about the proposed importation of 20,000 Bahamians, but her

89 L.L. Chandler, President of Gould Growers, Inc., to Governor Spessard Holland, July 24, 1942, RG 102, Series 406, Box 66, Folder 1: Gov. Holland Labor Problems 1942. FDS, State Archives of Florida. L.L. Chandler, President of Gould Growers, Inc., to Governor Spessard Holland, Aug.11, 1942, RG 102, Series 406, Box 66, Folder 1: Gov. Holland Labor Problems 1942. FDS, State Archives of Florida. Furthermore, fieldworkers and domestics were excluded from the protections guaranteed to industrial workers under the 1935 Wagner Act. Consequently, it was significantly more difficult for farmworkers themselves to create a united front that would enable them to fight for worker rights in the face of grower demands.

90 L.L. Chandler, President of Gould Growers, Inc., to Governor Spessard Holland, July 24, 1942, RG 102, Series 406, Box 66, Folder 1: Gov. Holland Labor Problems 1942. FDS, State Archives of Florida.

91 Lulu May Eyre to Governor Spessard Holland, July 24, 1942, RG 102, Series 406, Box 66, Folder 1: Gov. Holland Labor Problems 1942. FDS, State Archives of Florida.

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solution was to form them into an army unit and make them fight in the war. She contended that if a labor shortage existed, it could be solved with Americans or Mexicans.92 These vignettes remind us that programs designed at the national level were carried out at the local level and intimately affected the lives of millions of Americans.

Bahamian/BWI Program Structure

West Coast farmers were the first to demand access to legal foreign labor to work in their fields, resulting in the Bracero Program from 1942 to 1964. World War II facilitated the passage of Public Law 45, legislation establishing the Emergency Farm Labor Program.93 Under this plan, the FSA Migrant Camps shifted to the War Manpower Commission (WMC) and the camps were renamed Farm Labor Supply Centers; an apt name change since the centers would “serve the needs of growers, not the welfare of migrant farmworkers.”94 Public Law 45 also encouraged the importation of foreign labor as a primary means of alleviating labor shortages, even though it technically stated that a State Extension Agent must first verify that local workers were not available.

Although East Coast growers had a long history of privately contracting small numbers of Bahamian labor, they quickly noted the vast amounts of cheap labor Mexico provided their counterparts in the West through the government-run program. As a result, in 1943 they sought and secured formal sanctioning of their own labor importation program. East Coast growers built

92 Mrs. Floyd Link to Governor Spessard Holland, July 2, 1942, RG 102, Series 406, Box 66, Folder 1: Gov. Holland Labor Problems 1942. FDS, State Archives of Florida.

93 Public Law 45 is also known as House Resolution 96. The American Farm Bureau Federation, a national growers association, authored it. (Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor, 173.) For more information on legislation from 1943 to 1947 that directly authorized or made appropriations for the farm-labor-supply program, see Chapter 3 in Rasmussen’s A History of the Emergency Farm Labor Supply Program, 1943-1947.

94 Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor, 174.

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upon their earlier informal Bahamian labor networks, but dramatically increased the number of workers entering under the new temporary labor program.

Prior to Public Law 45, the ninth proviso of section three of the Immigration Act of 1917 allowed some temporary foreign labor to enter the United States. If the Commissioner General of

Immigration, in accordance with the Secretary of Labor, found that there was indeed a labor shortage, he could set aside the literacy tests, head taxes, and the prohibition on contract labor in order to permit temporary workers to enter the country.95 However, it was not until Public Law

45 that the U.S. government officially began funding the recruitment, transportation, and placement of guestworkers to serve in the private sector. They accomplished this by following the earlier 1917 model in which the various restrictive provisions were suspended so that those normally denied entrance could now do so legally for a limited period of time.96

95 Otey M Scrugss, “The First Mexican Farm Labor Program,” Arizona and the West, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Winter, 1960), 320. In March of 1943, just prior to the arrival of the first Bahamians, Joseph Savoretti, Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Justice/Immigration and Naturalization Service, pointed out the complications of importing Bahamians under the 1917 Act. He noted the provisions designed to exclude them including citing inadmissibility under Section 3, which prohibited contract labor, and even more specifically the fourth proviso of Section 3, which excluded unskilled workers. Therefore, in order to gain legal entrance they had to use the loophole provision in Section 3, found in the ninth proviso, “which provides for the temporary admission of inadmissible aliens” with the approval of the Attorney General. At the time, the Attorney General invested the Board of Immigration Appeals with the power to consider admission of immigrants. But, Savoretti argued the ninth proviso did not actually allow for that delegation of authority. The Deputy Commissioner also contended that in addition to the ninth proviso simply being bad organizational practice, he felt the War Manpower Commission and the U.S. Employment Service had not made a strong case that foreign workers were even necessary. And finally, Savoretti argued that even if workers were legally imported under the ninth proviso of the 1917 act, their entrance would be a violation of Section 3(2) of the Immigration Act of 1924, unless they were granted an immigrant visa. Savoretti’s concerns highlight the often-contradictory nature of federal laws. Constituents pressured Congress to legislate in their favor, but usually lawmakers had to balance constituent desires with existing or proposed federal laws, which were often supported by other constituent groups. An in depth case study examining policy creation highlights how different interests played out in the public arena, and how agencies themselves negotiated with one another to find an acceptable balance. The eventual acceptance of the ninth proviso as a means for importing Bahamian/British West Indian labor in to Florida illustrates these complex negotiations between the USDA, WMC/USES, INS and DOJ. (3/24/43, Letter to Tom from Joseph Savoretti, Deputy Commissioner, DOJ/INS. RG 85 (INS), Entry 9: Subject Correspondence Files, 1906- 1939, Box: 21402, Folder: 56078/477. NAB.)

96 U.S. Congress. Senate. Subcommittee on Immigration of the Committee on the Judiciary. The West Indies (BWI) Temporary Alien Labor Program: 1943-1977, 6-7, Public Law 229 was passed Feb. 14, 1944 to reenact and extend Public Law 45.

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In many cases foreign governments, like colonial authorities in the Bahamas, embraced these labor programs.97 Various Caribbean island nations hoped to participate because the war devastated their local economies by reducing shipping and tourism. The proposed program provided new ways to deal with rampant unemployment.98 Jamaica in particular appeared to be a good match for U.S. labor demands since the island nation had relatively low wages and an unemployment rate of 25.6%.99 Barbados also faced major economic challenges during the war, and in 1943 the Island’s government contacted the United States, hoping to establish work contracts to alleviate its unemployment problems. However, unlike the Bahamas or Jamaica,

Barbados was a less-than-ideal temporary labor force given its great distance from the United

States. As a result, recruitment of Barbadian workers fluctuated during the war years. It commenced in 1943 and continued into 1944, but there was a hiatus in 1945 due to transportation difficulties. It resumed in 1946 but officially ended in 1947.100

Similarly, the Bahamas’ struggling economy, in conjunction with its long history of informal temporary labor migrations to Florida for the harvest season, made it a natural fit for the program.101 Partly in response to Bahamians’ economic struggles during the war, colonial officials requested that a portion of guestworkers’ pay be sent directly to the Islands. Accessing a

97 Foreign governments play a critical role in facilitating transnational labor flows. Although this paper only gives exporting countries cursory recognition, in the dissertation they would receive a much more thorough examination.

98 Rasmussen, A History of the Emergency Farm Labor Supply Program, 1943-1947, 233.

99 Rachel Powell, “Appendix: Unemployment the Context of Street-Boy Culture.” In Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, edited by Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson. 2nd Ed. (New York: Routledge, 2006), 154.

100 Rasmussen, A History of the Emergency Farm Labor Supply Program, 1943-1947, 276. Rasmussen estimated in his report for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1951 that just under 4000 Barbadians worked in the United States between 1943 and 1947, as compared to the more than 15,000 Bahamians and 50,000 Jamaicans. (Table 7, p. 199.)

101 Ibid., 234.

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portion of these funds enabled family members left behind to survive.102 The mandatory, automatic savings plans were also used to induce those working in the United States to return home at the end of their contracts, since that was the only way they could access the full balance of their savings account. Such policies help illuminate sending nations’ concerns about allowing their people to travel to the United States to work. They feared that laborers would not return and they were concerned about the dire economic conditions and high unemployment rates at home that necessitated the exportation of the country’s most able-bodied men to secure employment elsewhere so they could support their families.

The logistics of the BWI program were complicated and responsibilities cut across many agencies. USES (acting on behalf of the WMC) first assessed a request to determine if there was enough local labor available to fill demand. 103 If there was not, USES granted approval to the requesting individual or group. USES was also responsible for the recruiting and routing of temporary workers to the USDA Extension Service. The Extension Service would then place workers with area farms.104 In some cases the U.S. government contracted with private companies, like the United Fruit Company in Jamaica, to handle recruiting.105 The FSA, though, created and maintained the contracts with foreign workers.

102 Ibid., 236.

103 A memorandum (Aug. 7, 1943) from W.B. Kugh, the Regional Chief of Placement, to all of the directors of the USES, explained “The importation of foreign workers for farm employment is a responsibility of the War Food Administration. Under Directive XVII approval for the importation of such workers rests with the War Manpower Commission.” p. 4. RG 211 (WMC), Series 11: Region VII, Central Files & Monthly MOPAC Reports, Box 3, Folder: Labor Mobilization and Utilization (10-2) [1 of 2], NARA—Southeast Region (Atlanta.)

104 Report, p. 8-9. RG 191 (FSDC), Series 419, Box 2, Folder: Report on Agriculture & Labor—Harold Colee (1943). FDS, State Archives of Florida. The Labor Market, May 1943, p. 16. RG 389 (FIC), Series 1476, Box 3, Folder 26: Labor Market. FDS, State Archives of Florida. The BWI program mirrored the requirements of its predecessors, the POW and Bracero programs requiring USES certification that a community needed outside labor because local labor was insufficient. (Rasmussen, A History of the Emergency Farm Labor Supply Program, discusses POWs on page 97 and, Mexicans on page, 200.)

105 Rasmussen, A History of the Emergency Farm Labor Supply Program, 1943-1947, 254.

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The contracts guaranteed workers “prevailing wages,” in both hourly and piece-rate work, based on local conditions. In addition to addressing earnings, the contracts also stated that workers “shall have access to housing, feeding, and medical care facilities equivalent to those of national workers.”106 (A somewhat dubious promise since domestic workers were excluded from most legislation guaranteeing minimum standards in those areas.) And, as noted, portions of the workers’ salaries were sent directly to banks in the home country and those funds could be claimed upon arrival. The contracts also stipulated that the U.S. government would deduct some money for income tax purposes.107

Foreign labor agreements technically guaranteed workers would not be discriminated against “in wages, hours, and working conditions.”108 Interestingly the contract did not contain any type of social anti-discrimination clause since clearly this would have been impossible to enforce in the Jim Crow South where many workers would be placed. The Jamaican government initially responded to this limitation by forbidding the placement of their countrymen below the

Mason-Dixon Line. However, in October 1943, they relented since many men wanted to stay in the United States and continue working. Interestingly, the Jamaican government made a special exception allowing men to work in Florida for the U.S. Sugar Corporation.109 Although the work was generally considered exceptionally difficult and undesirable, Jamaican officials believed it was better to place laborers on the more isolated sugar plantations. The officials believed this

106 Julia Henderson, “Foreign Labour in the United States during the War,” International Labour Review, Vol. 52. Issue 6 (Dec. 1945), 612.

107 Ibid., 612. Workers, though, did not receive any state or federal benefits for the taxes they paid. They only received services stipulated in the contract, and often they had to pay for those.

108 Ibid.

109 Rasmussen, A History of the Emergency Farm Labor Supply Program, 1943-1947, 259.

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would shield workers from the worst racial abuses commonly found in areas with greater contact with local whites.

Worker Placement

It is generally impossible to track worker placements because they were housed in labor supply camps and sent to different farms as needed to complete the harvest season. Additionally, they shifted between labor camps within the state, and frequently between states, depending on the duration of their contracts and the season in which they arrived. Although the Emergency

Farm Labor Program was a federally mandated program, the USDA’s State Extension Service offices in each state executed its implementation. Record keeping at the local level meant that most were lost over time and never made it into the archives. Extension Service agents stationed throughout the state reported on local labor conditions. Archived materials show that while some agents proved to be thorough record keepers, providing detailed and useful data in their annual reports, others made vague assessments, broad summaries, or sweeping generalizations.110

Bahamian and British West Indian workers began arriving in 1943 and were dispersed throughout the state of Florida and along the East Coast.111 (Figure 4-1) The majority of the first group of 2200 Bahamians was placed around Lake Okeechobee to pick beans. A small group was sent to Ft. Pierce in St. Lucie County, and approximately 200 were sent immediately to

Delaware and Maryland.112 In states using guestworkers, they were responsible for harvesting

110 The University of Florida, in Gainesville, was the central office for the Extension Service, thus many of the county reports are located in the University Archives collection. However, the records are far from complete and it appears many state agents either failed to submit detailed records, or records were simply lost or destroyed over the years.

111 Bahamians arrived in March, Jamaicans in April, and Barbadians in early 1944. Rasmussen, A History of the Emergency Farm Labor Supply Program, 1943-1947, Ch. 10-12.

112 The Labor Market, May 1943, p. 15, 17. RG 389 (FIC), Series 1476, Box 3, Folder 26?: Labor Market. FDS, State Archives of Florida. Those in Palm Beach County were housed at Lion Camp. (Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor, 175.)

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approximately 42% of the sugar cane crop, 40% of the celery, 29% of the citrus, and 17% of the

Irish potatoes.113 Bahamians played a central role in vegetable harvesting and Jamaicans in the sugar cane industry. Foreign laborers were found throughout the state of Florida since they, like domestic fieldworkers, migrated to follow the harvests of different crops during their contract periods. Black and white labor camps were often built within a few miles of each other to facilitate the flow of migratory labor. Foreign laborers sometimes had their own camps, but often times they shared facilities with local blacks since, with the exception of large numbers of

Jamaicans working the sugar cane fields near Clewiston, FL, foreign labor tended to be quite dispersed throughout the state.

Farmers in a given county or region often banded together to create “growers associations” which collectively had more power than individual farmers.114 For example, in

Dade County, Florida, the “County Agriculture Farm Labor Association” had 109 member farmers and was able to import and place 750 Bahamians throughout the area.115 Growers associations enabled farmers of all sizes to benefit from the labor importation program. The associations were successful because they could request hundreds of workers at one time and then divide them among area employers as needed. In some cases large industrial agricultural

113 Henderson, “Foreign Labour in the United States during the War,” 610.

114 Letters from L.L. Chandler, President of Gould Growers, Inc., provide a clear example of how a grower association could flex its muscle and communicate directly with state and federal officials about its members desire for foreign labor. RG 102, Series 406, Box 66, Folder 2: Gov. Holland Labor Problems (con’t) 1942. (FDS), State Archives of Florida.

115 Report, UF Archives, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Public Records Collection: Series 91a, Box 13, Folder: Dade, 3.

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producers (like U.S. Sugar) would take hundreds of workers at a time while smaller area employers (such as Granger Brothers in Lake City) would take as few as 25.116

The Importance of the Bahamian/BWI Program

Overall there was little opposition to the Bahamian/BWI Labor Importation Program because most people, especially growers and consumers, benefited from the presence of foreign labor. By framing the labor debate in terms of scarcity East Coast growers succeeded in securing a labor force that they were better able to control. Foreign workers involved in the program were generally pleased to participate because it enabled them to earn money during a period characterized by widespread economic hardship throughout the Caribbean Basin. The many poor domestic workers who previously harvested the majority of Florida food crops suffered economically but were unable to remedy the situation since they lacked any sort of adequate farmworker unionization.

Examining farm labor politics at the state level illustrates how local interests could deeply affect national policymaking decisions and how those national policies are in turn implemented at the local level. The Bahamain/BWI Program is a useful case study because it demonstrates how the politics governing immigrant entrance through America’s back door were markedly different from those of the main gate. Whereas citizen concerns regarding the preservation of traditional American linguistic, religious, and ideological values often drove main gate immigration policy, businesses’ economic interests (both industrial and agricultural) dictated the politics of America’s back door. In the case of Bahamian and BWI workers during

116 U.S. Sugar use of Barbadians, RG 389 (FIC), Series 1475, Box 2, Folder 22: Miami Operating Report, 1944. FDS, State Archives of Florida; British Honduran laborers working for Granger Brothers: Report, 4. RG 389 FIC), Series 1475, Box 1, Folder 15: Jacksonville Operating Report, 1944. FDS, State Archives of Florida.

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the Second World War, industrial farming succeeded in pushing Congress to legislate temporary back door policies that would ensure growers access to inexpensive, controllable foreign labor.

The Program’s longevity does not mean that it persisted without controversy or problems.

One of the most common complaints was that the overall structure of the program served growers, not workers. Although it did provide economic opportunities to individuals who may have faced severely limited choices in their home communities, many opponents of the program cited the pigeonholing of foreign laborers in low-paying work that growers and food processors could not get Americans to do as one of the major concerns. In the waning years of the war, as real labor deficiencies persisted and spread among industrial operations. Congress granted approval to transfer surplus foreign labor to manufacturing positions if needed.117 However, after men began returning from the war, temporary laborers were moved back into low-paying agricultural positions. Program critics cited this as a point of concern because it kept workers in the lowest paying jobs and prevented them from moving up America’s economic and social ladders. Furthermore, the program was explicitly designed to prevent these individuals from gaining access to U.S. citizenship. The country could monitor the main gate, accepting and rejecting the people it deemed appropriate for citizenship, while simultaneously allowing guestworkers to enter through the back door to do difficult labor, with minimal risk that these individuals would affect American culture. Additionally, the inability of workers to change employers of their own volition without facing deportation created a system in which workers were treated as second-class citizens and forfeited the right to control their own labor.

117 Memorandum from R.A. Rasco, State Director, WMC, to Division Chiefs, Area Directors, Field Supervisors, Local Office Managers, WMC-FLA. No 88, April 10, 1944. RG 211 (WMC), Series 3-Periodic Progress Activity Reports from Regional Office, Box 7, Folder: Florida, 1944 [3 of 3], NARA--Southeast Region (Atlanta.); War Manpower Commission Field Instruction No. 251, Bureau of Placement No. 150, from Feb. 21, 1944. RG 211 (WMC) Series 3-Periodic Progress Activity Reports from Regional Office, Box 7, Folder: Florida, 1944 [3 of 3], NARA--Southeast Region (Atlanta.)

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Even with these criticisms the Bahamain/BWI Program continued. Originally it was approved under Public Law 45 (and then Public Law 229 which temporarily extended the former). Since PL 45 passed as emergency legislation, it expired on Dec. 31, 1947. But, this did not end the program. Following the expiration, the program simply returned to the ninth proviso of the Immigration Act of 1917, which had first granted permission to U.S. companies to import foreign labor.118 In 1952, the Immigration and Nationality Act formally codified the existing

Bahamian/BWI program in law. Section H-2 provided the modern legal grounding for the importation of nonimmigrant foreign labor for seasonal agricultural employment.119 By remaining separate from the Bracero Program, the BWI Program was able to carry on since the law sanctioning it was never repealed. The Bracero Program, in contrast, was re-authorized under a series of new public laws, and came to an end in 1964 in response to national uproar over concerns about low wages and human rights violations.120

118 U.S. Congress. Senate. Subcommittee on Immigration of the Committee on the Judiciary. The West Indies (BWI) Temporary Alien Labor Program: 1943-1977, p. 9.

119 Employers had to pay a bond for imported Bahamian/BWI workers, but it was substantially less than the amount they would have to pay for other agricultural workers, say from Canada, the Philippines, or Hawaii. (12/24/52, Operations Instructions I. Bond Schedules for nonimmigrants admitted under Section 101(a)(15)(H) of the Immigration and Nationality Act and 8 CFR 214h.2. RG 85 (INS), Entry 9, Subject Correspondence Files, 1906- 1939, Box: 21403, Folder: 5636/214H Pt. 1 [screened 2/2000] [Folder 3 of 3]. NAB.)

120 Public Law 78 authorized the Bracero Program following the expiration of the wartime emergency measure (Public Law 45), which had previously been extended through 1949. Bahamian/BWI users fought adamantly against re-authorization of their program under Public Law 78. Given the broader scope and scale of the Bracero Program, it garnered increased scrutiny. In 1951, FFVA representative LaMonte Graw, petitioned elected officials to rebuff efforts to fold the BWI program into Public Law 78. Graw and his contemporaries argued the BWI program was actually better than the Bracero program. First, noting Bahamian contracts had already been established for the 1952 season and that BWI contract negations were underway, Graw argued that changing the program’s authorization would actually disrupt the process, rather than help. He contended that negotiations were more direct, and therefore effective, because employers work directly with colonial governments. Furthermore, he argued that often times Bahamian/BWI contracts were better than those offered to Mexicans. Thus claiming the program now could actually harm Caribbean guestworkers. He then added the other reasons employers most likely preferred to run the program rather than having government officials do it. They claimed a government run program would cost more, and that private recruiters were better at "getting good workers, and in maintaining their morals." Finally, Graw concluded by arguing employers shouldn't be subjected to the "safeguards" Mexican users are because Caribbean labor employers had not had the same problems. He feared that if the Bahamian/BWI program was folded into Public Law 78, employers would be subject to penalty bonds, like employers of Mexican workers. The bonds were used to penalize employers whose workers absconded. (3/21/51, Letters between FFVA (LaMonte Graw), Holland, Poage &

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In many ways, the Bahamian/British West Indian Program’s smaller stature proved to be its saving grace. During this period of heightened attention the American public often overlooked the small program, instead focusing on the much larger and more controversial Bracero Program.

Employers highlighted the limited size of the former. They argued it allowed for closer monitoring of Bahamian and BWI movements so that few individuals were able to slip away from their contracts and enter the larger U.S. economy. They also claimed the program’s small size enabled government agents to better monitor it to prevent human rights abuses.121

Additionally, in contrast to the hostility demonstrated towards Mexican migrants in many communities, Bahamian/BWI workers were often overlooked or ignored. Whereas, Mexican communities attracted greater attention and scrutiny because their large numbers appeared to pose a threat to ideas about it meant to be American, Caribbean workers typically blended in with African American populations in the eyes of many whites.122

Tracing the conditions that led to the rise of an agricultural foreign labor importation program in Florida establishes the foundations upon which current and proposed H-2 guestworker programs are built. Considering this “pre-history” of the Bahamian/BWI program helps us better understand what was distinctively new about the emergent H-2 program, and what built upon a longer history. Self-consciously exploring Paul Pierson’s suggestion that

Ellender. MS 55 Spessard L. Holland Papers. Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, Box 259, Folder 61: Agriculture-Farm Labor, 1951.) Edward R. Murrow’s television documentary Harvest of Shame (1960) “mortified many urban Americans with its graphic depiction of the abject conditions in which migrant workers lived and toiled” and their plight increasingly attracted attention. Furthermore a Senate Subcommittee also found in 1960 that the Bracero Program “had a very negative effect on wages paid to other seasonal agricultural workers throughout the United States.” Mapes, Sweet Tyranny, 148-149.

121 Subsequent chapters of this work will counter those claims.

122 Local newspapers in Michigan mainly reported on the crimes and abuses found in migrant communities. Kathleen Mapes argues that “In this way, local newspapers act as a public forum in which proper definitions of behavior were established, insider/outsider identities were maintained, and community boundaries were continually constructed and reconstructed.” (Mapes, Sweet Tyranny, 88.)

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“focusing on dramatic moments of policy choice blinds us to two broad aspect of policy development: what happens before the moment of choice and what happens after” enables us to better understand the motivation, construction, and application of public policies.123 As products of state policy, guestworker programs raise two critical questions. First, how do we properly understand the role of the state in the emergence and development of a new farm labor regime and second, what was the program like operationally? This chapter traced the conditions that led to the rise in an agricultural foreign labor importation program in Florida in order to establish the foundations upon which today’s H-2 guestworker program is built. The next chapter examines how growers attempted to shape the farm labor program from 1943 to 1966.

123 Paul Pierson, “The Study of Policy Development,” Journal of Policy History, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2005): 36. Related to this idea is the notion of policy feedback, in which policies themselves create ripple effects of change and where one change sparks another. Consequently, we need to consider policies in a longer stream of time. Daniel Kryder (Divided Arsenal: Race and the American State During World War II (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000) shows how war mobilization starting in 1941 expanded industrial production into new areas, in turn affecting local labor sources and employment practices, and providing an additional impetus for a civil rights movement. Kimberly Johnson (Reforming Jim Crow: Southern Politics and State in the Age before Brown (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010)) and J. Douglas Smith (Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics, and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia (Chapel Hill The University of North Carolina Press, 2002)) make a similar point by illustrating how the classic Civil Rights Movement emerged in the wake of small reforms initially intended to perpetuate the southern racial order.

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Figure 4-1. Bahama natives arriving for work in U.S. fields—Miami, Florida. April 11, 1943. Image Number RC06162. Reference Collection. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/29468

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CHAPTER 5 EXPECTATION AND REALITY: GROWERS’ EFFORTS TO SHAPE THE FOREIGN FARM LABOR PROGRAM, 1943—1966

From the program’s inception in 1943, the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association (FFVA) and

U.S. Sugar Corporation (USSC) played pivotal roles in shaping the state’s evolving farm labor regime. American farmers had spent decades arguing access to foreign workers would solve their labor troubles, but they envisioned a particular kind of labor importation—an unlimited, unregulated supply of workers they could hire and dismiss at will. Bahamian and American authorities, however, fashioned a much more regulated system, and so in the absence of wholly unregulated labor importation, farm owners embraced the proposed program and set about shaping it to meet their needs.1

FFVA members immediately began accessing foreign labor during World War II, and when the U.S. government privatized the program in 1949, the organization became the sole user of Bahamian labor in Florida. Fred Sikes, the Vice President of U.S. Sugar personnel recalled that USSC and the FFVA reached a “gentleman’s agreement” in which U.S. Sugar would “stick to the recruitment of West Indian and other Caribbean area workers, leaving Bahamians to

1 Florida growers capitalized on their postwar political power to continue the farm labor program, and to try to constantly shape it to meet their needs. Gary Gerstle notes private entities’ ability “to use public power for their own purposes” illustrates a weakness of the American State. Gerstle uses the example of building the transcontinental railroad during the Gilded Age to illustrate this point. He argues private interests assisted the State in developing the nation and fostering industrialization and urbanization, but it came a cost. Those same entities took advantage of their increased power to exploit the nation’s natural resources and leverage their power to control the two major political parties, thus allowing them to direct the course of the nation’s policies. Gerstle contends that the American State’s Achilles’ heel remains its “a chronic inability or unwillingness to corral the inﬂuence of private money and private power on American politics.” (Gary Gerstle, “A State Both Strong and Weak,” in American Historical Review Exchange: “On the ‘Myth’ of the ‘Weak’ American State.” The American Historical Review, Vol. 115, No. 3 (June 2010): 784.) As this case study of Florida’s agricultural farm labor system demonstrates, Gerstle’s assessments remain valid. Growers were able to leverage their power to craft the labor system they envisioned. Although not perfect, it privileged grower interests over those of workers or the state more generally. As will be demonstrated, in cases where the program fell short of growers’ desires or expectations, it was generally because of challenges arising from foreign governments or the workers themselves.

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FFVA as a source of Labor.”2 The FFVA relied on these workers until the Bahamian government closed the program in 1966. U.S. Sugar led the state in the use of West Indian workers, most often hiring Jamaican men as cane cutters.3 While the focus of this study is on Bahamian workers, and the central role they played in shaping Florida farm labor practices, their story cannot be told in isolation. Jamaicans, Barbadians, Trinidadians, British Hondurans and others weave their way throughout the narrative. Their actions and experiences affected Bahamian workers, government officials, and growers, just as Bahamian workers affected other offshore laborers and their respective sending nations.

For growers, a successful farm labor importation program required a steady flow of qualified workers. For twenty-three years, the Bahamas provided Sunshine State growers with the seasonal labor they demanded.4 However, that labor flow was not always steady or smooth.

Sometimes Bahamian government officials encouraged the program; at other times, they expressed concern over its impacts on the island nation and its people. Bahamian businessmen articulated similar concerns about returning contract workers and their willingness to perform certain jobs at home. Individual workers also affected the labor supply by constantly assessing

2 Peter Kramer, The Offshores, St. Petersburg, August 1966, p. 9. RG 174 General Records of the Department of Labor (DOL), UD Entry 2: Records of the Secretary of Labor, W. Willard Wirtz, 1962-1969, Box 372: Farm Labor, July-December 1966, Folder: ES-2-6-1 Farm Labor, Aug. 11-20, 1966. NACP.

3 Following national independence from Great Britain, officials in both the United States and sending nations and growers referred to former BWI laborers as West Indian workers. See Cindy Hahamovitch, No Man's Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor: Princeton University Press, 2011), http://uf.catalog.fcla.edu/permalink.jsp?20UF005403239; http://www.myilibrary.com?id=316384 for a detailed look at Jamaican sugar cane workers’ experiences.

4 Throughout the program’s history, new terminology emerged to describe temporary foreign workers. U.S. entities and individuals often used the term “Offshores,” and Bahamians used “Contract Workers.” This chapter will utilize both those terms, in addition to the more modern term, “guestworker.”

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the costs and benefits of migration and making decisions accordingly.5 These various actors affected the flow of labor into Florida and its subsequent movement throughout the state.

Labor quality also varied greatly within the new farm labor program. Growers wanted skilled, efficient workers that would perform the necessary tasks with little complaint or disagreement. For farm owners, this meant a quality worker not only possessed the technical know-how needed to perform a given task, but that he also accepted his role in the South’s racial hierarchy. Rarely did workers possess these skills or act with such docility. Consequently,

Florida growers and U.S. government agents scrambled to figure out how to maximize worker efficiency and force laborers to conform to the type of behavior expected of farmworkers in the region.

Unpacking the story of growers’ efforts to define the emerging farm labor system enables us to analyze how policy and practice can coincide and collide.6 At times, actors were on the

5 Peter Kramer claimed Bahamian workers did not migrate to Florida because the wages were significantly better than what they could get in the Islands, or because they wanted to see the United States. Rather, they traveled if they thought they could earn money faster in the United States than they could in the Bahamas. (Kramer, The Offshores, 15.) Later interviews with Bahamian individuals reflecting on the program however, reveal that most participants joined the program because it offered an opportunity to improve their economic standing. The 1930s economic collapse following the end of prohibition and the domestic sponge industry left many in poverty. The Temporary Foreign labor program provided individuals the chance to financially improve their lives. (Interview with Cordell Thompson, 1990, and a speech by James Moss in 1993. The Bahamas Folklore Collection blog. Collection editor Cordell Thompson. http://gullahgeecheeconnection.wordpress.com/the-contract-2/) Like Kathleen Mapes and Jim Norris, Seth Garfield also notes the importance of examining the role of individual decision making, rather than treating migrants as victims, in studies about wartime labor movements. (Seth Garfield, “The Environment of Wartime Migration: Labor Transfers from the Brazilian Northeast to the Amazon During World War II.” Journal of Social History, Vol. 43 Issue 4 (Summer2010): 989.)

6 In his article, “Order and Change,” Steven Skowronek fleshes out how “politics is structured by persistent incongruities and frictions among institutional orderings.” He contends that institutions have their own histories and interests, and this means “institutions do not simply constrain or channel the actions of self-interested individuals, they prescribe actions, construct motives, and assert legitimacy.” Skowronek argues that taking institutions seriously helps us paint a complex and even contradictory history of American political and policy development. (Stephen Skowronek, “Order and Change,” Polity, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Autumn, 1995), 94-95.) Kitty Calavita’s Inside the State effectively demonstrates this theory in action. She explores how “a ‘state’” suffering from internal divisions and “fragmented across institutional lines” results in conflicting national policies and practices. She illustrates this by examining how policies promoted by the DOL conflicted with those of INS in the context of the Mexican Bracero program out West. (Kitty Calavita, Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the I.N.S. (New York: Routledge, 1992), 9-10.) This case study of Florida builds on Calavita’s analysis to demonstrate not only how

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same page and the program operated as intended. After all, Florida farmers formally imported

Bahamian workers for over twenty years. However, a closer look at this period demonstrates that even though a worker chose to participate in the program, this did not mean that he always conformed to the behaviors expected of him by an employer or a government representative, or that he was happy with his employment situation. 7 Investigating the discrepancies between expectation and reality improves our understanding of the challenges involved in policy implementation. A close analysis of Florida’s evolving labor regime also sheds light on the more abstract issues, such as the nature of citizenship and the rights of non-citizen workers arising when people cross borders to work and live in another country.8

Labor Supply: Managing the Flow of Bahamian Workers

To create and maintain a steady labor supply, program organizers had to navigate local business interests and Bahamian government policies, and then recruit and transport of thousands federal agencies often came to loggerheads over immigration and labor policies, but how actors at the state level also affected the implementation of national policies.

7 Michael Piore examines problems that arise in industries reliant on migrant labor when workers demanded better jobs, conditions, and greater rights. (Michael J. Piore, Birds of Passage: Migrant Labor and Industrial Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 2.) This study addresses these issues and demonstrates how workers challenged employers in shaping the temporary farm labor program.

8 Alice Kessler-Harris examines how certain groups were excluded from full citizenship in the twentieth century since1930s federal legislation tied social benefits and tax incentives to wage work. She contends that this change resulted in “demarcating different kinds of citizenship. Casual laborers, the unskilled and untrained, housewives, farm workers, mothers, and domestic servants all found themselves on one side of a barrier not of their own making.” Kessler-Harris explores how many of these Americans were excluded from citizenship because the United States “chose to distribute what British social theorist T.H. Marshall called the rights of ‘social citizenship’ on the basis of work rather than as a function of residence or citizenship.” (Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 4.) Kessler-Harris’s theory illuminates how and why domestic farmworkers often failed to reap the benefits of their legal status as citizens. Her theory also indirectly explains why guestworkers fell into a unique category where they lacked legal, economic, or social citizenship, and therefore the rights associated with any of those types of citizenship. This left workers largely unprotected while in the United States. Although Bahamians could theoretically rely on the British citizenship to protect them against the worst abuses, in reality this often meant they were simply deported if they protested their situation. Had they had some claim to economic or social citizenship, based on their working contributions to the United States, they could have secured better working and living conditions. Guestworkers contributed to the U.S.’s economic development. But because the type of work they did—farm work—fell beyond the purview of American labor law or the type of labor it valued, their contributions went unnoticed and unappreciated. Like domestic farmworkers, then, guestworkers were denied basic rights associated with citizenship.

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of workers. A thorough examination of the program’s many facets highlights the complicated reality program organizers faced in providing Florida growers with a steady labor flow of

Bahamian workers. Recruiters facilitated the process by traveling to the islands seeking out willing and able individuals. But, at times, their efforts were not enough to guarantee an adequate number of high quality workers. Sending nations expressed concerns over issues like the terms of employment or delivering the full number of laborers they originally promised Florida growers. Occasionally, local Bahamian businessmen also railed against the program arguing it would lead to domestic worker shortages.

Like many Caribbean nations participating in the temporary foreign farm labor importation program, the Bahamian government saw the system as a potential safety valve to release the pressure of large-scale domestic unemployment. However, the government did not blindly accept the program. Sometimes it readily consented to participate, and at other times it exhibited greater disinclination, thus reducing the flow of available workers. Bahamian reluctance hinged on concerns relating to three basic elements: the legitimacy and legality of the labor contract according to international standards; the impact the program would have on domestic workers employed in necessary wartime occupations; and the impact the international exposure would have on domestic labor’s expectations and behaviors upon returning from the program. The first two elements reflected Government concerns, and the latter represented fears of domestic Bahamian employers.

The formal temporary farm labor program emerged at the same time the world was grappling with questions pertaining to the rights of migrant workers. On multiple occasions,

Bahamian authorities expressed concern about a labor contract’s ability to withstand international scrutiny. Bahamian officials were concerned because the proposed 1939

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International Labor Organization (ILO) convention on migrant workers prevented the transfer of workers from one employer to another without the formers’ direct consent.9 Although the convention was not adopted in 1939, it shaped much of the discourse about migrant workers, and programs capitalizing on their labor, during this period.

The Treaty of Versailles created the ILO in 1919 following the end of the Great War.

Participants believed that lasting peace could only be accomplished through social justice.10

Samuel Gompers chaired the commission. The goal was to bring together government officials, employers, and workers to establish standard working conditions that benefitted all parties. The preamble of the ILO’s constitution reflected organizers’ keen awareness about the world’s growing interconnectedness and so they sought to create universal minimum working standards that would level the playing field between countries and improve work standards for all laborers.11 The ILO may have fallen short of its goal of protecting migrant workers in 1939, but the concerns they raised continued to shape international debates about migrant labor programs in subsequent years. The displacement of millions of people in Europe following the Second

World War prompted the ILO to revisit the issue of migrant labor in 1949.12 In that year it

9 CO66—Migration for Employment Convention, 1939. (http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO:12100:P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID:31221 1:NO)

10 http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/history/lang--en/index.htm

11 Ibid.

12 Although an important step, the convention focused mainly on permanent rather than temporary migrants. In response to increased temporary migration, and expanded guestworker programs, the ILO would continue to revisit migrant labor conditions and issue conventions. These include the Migration for Employment Recommendation (Revised), ILO Convention 143 Migrant Workers (Supplementary Provisions, 1975), and its accompanying recommendation, the Migrant Workers Recommendation, 1975, among others. (http://www.loc.gov/law/help/guestworker/internationallabourorganization.php)

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amended the original 1939 Migration for Employment Convention proposal and adopted it.

Enforcement began in 1952.13

Even before official adoption, Bahamian officials—aware that workers could easily be exploited—sought a labor agreement that would conform to the 1939.14 The United States government, largely representing employer interests during the program’s creation, often worked to minimize its obligations to workers in favor of doing what was best for employers. For example, one of the issues it sought to circumvent was the proposed restriction limiting worker transfers among employers. As noted, according to the proposed ILO convention, workers were not supposed to be transferred from one employer to another, without the workers’ explicit consent. But, the United States exploited a loophole in the provision by signing a government-to- government agreement with the Bahamas.15 This made the United States government—and more specifically the War Manpower Commission (WMC)—the official employer. However, since they immediately placed workers with private employers, the U.S. government essentially became a labor contractor.16 The structure of the agreement enabled the WMC to move workers, without their direct consent, between private employers at will to respond to changing labor demands. Although Bahamian officials agreed to this system, they feared it could lead to abuse.

Workers would either have to agree to work for all employers selected by the WMC, or risk being deported (and likely banned from future participation) if they expressed opposition to

13 CO 97, the revised Migration for Employment Convention, was adopted in 1949 and implemented in 1952. (http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO:12100:P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID:31224 2:NO)

14 Memo of Conversation: Importation of Agricultural Labor to Florida from the Bahamas; From the Department of State; 1/28/43. RG 43 Records of International Commissions (RIC), P Entry 14, Anglo-American Caribbean Commission, 1940-1946, Subject Files, Box 42: E2-1 to E12-4, Folder: E12-2 Labor-Bahamas 1940-6/43. NACP.

15 Ibid.

16 Cindy Hahamovitch, The Fruits of the Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 174.

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working for a particular farm owner. The Bahamian government also questioned the program’s ability to conform linguistically, and therefore legally, to the convention’s contract goals. In particular, there was an issue with the terms “person” and “employer.”17 The program used

“block recruiting with subsequent allocation,” which fundamentally went against the intended principles of the convention.18 The convention was created to protect individual workers, and the emergent labor regime in Florida collapsed the focus on the individual in favor of the group, by moving workers as units rather than individually.

Even with these concerns, Bahamian officials’ desire to formalize the program outweighed these potential problems. Many colonial officials argued that the arrangement had worked in the past and it should continue since “The Bahamians need this employment and we are in no position to object.”19 Even when program organizers succeeded in creating a legal, or at

17 CO 233/814, Importation of Labor to FL. National Archives of the Bahamas.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid. Beginning in 1947, the Bahamas Employer Committee took over management of the American side of the Program. The Committee included the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, Birds Eye, and the Green Giant Canning Company. (T.L. Thompson, “Remembering ‘The Contract’: Recollections of Bahamians,” The International Journal of Bahamian Studies (2012), 7.) The United States government expressed concern over the program’s ability to conform to the ILO conventions, particularly when the program switched from a government- to-government agreement, to a private employer-to-government agreement. A 1947 internal Memo of Conversation for the Records of the International Commission, a branch of the State Department, pointed out that although the United States was officially no longer responsible for the program, concerned foreign governments would hold them accountable if there were problems. The Commission went on to note that without direct government oversight, violations of working conditions would be hard to detect and impossible to punish. The Commission offered two possible options: 1) it could grant worker extensions, but make it clear the U.S. was no longer responsible for monitoring or running the program, or 2) refuse further approval of workers after the December deadline. However, they noted the latter seemed highly improbable under the circumstances, and they were correct. Growers refused to relinquish access to their new labor supply and so they succeeded in arguing for the program’s continuation. (8/28/47, Memo of Conversation: The Problem of BWI Laborers in the US. RG 43 Records of the International Commissions (RIC), P Entry 14: Anglo-American Caribbean Commission, 1940-1946, Subject Files, Box 42: E2-1 to E12-4, Folder: E12-Labor, General 1946. NACP. The U.S. State Department again reiterated its concerns about this new arrangement at the start of 1948. The central concern was that private employers would do what was best for them, with little (if any) regard for the United States at large. The State Department pointed out that this “inconsistent approach” to the program could jeopardize U.S. interests. Without having government-to-government agreements, there were “no safeguards for the foreign policy interests” of the U.S. government. (1/6/48, Memo of Conversation: Subject: Departmental Meeting Regarding Employment of West Indies Agricultural Workers in the US. RG 59 (Department of State) Decimal File 1940-1944, Box 4851: 811.504 BWI/1-147 to 811.504 Contracts/1- 149, Folder: 811.504 BWI/1-648 CS/V. NACP.)

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least semi-acceptable framework for the contract program, it did not ensure smooth implementation. The WMC secured greater flexibility in placing workers, but the Bahamian government then expressed concern over some tasks their people were hired to perform. In particular, as journalist Peter Kramer described in 1966, Bahamian officials did not support placing their people in sugar cane cutting, which they considered “demeaning” and “a form of slave labor.”20 Their reluctance to allow unmitigated worker placement meant that some employers, like those in sugar, would have to find an alternative labor supply. Throughout the life of the program, the Bahamian government embraced it with caution.

In order to maintain a strong domestic workforce, the Bahamian government exercised strict control over workers’ ability to leave the Bahamas on labor contracts. By capping the guestworker program at 5000, authorities felt they could relieve unemployment problems without negatively impacting their own essential wartime industries.21 However, in April of

1943—just one month after the program began—island officials and employers noticed an alarming trend. Nassau workers employed in “necessary occupations” in the city were volunteering for the U.S. program in large numbers. In response, the government denied some workers approval for transportation, resulting in domestic unrest. Dockworkers conducted a

20 Kramer, The Offshores, 88. At the close of the 1945 sugar cane season, the Jamaican government threatened to withdraw “permission for the use of it workers” in the state following the close of the harvest season in April. Jamaican authorities had initially been hesitant to allow workers in Florida because of the state’s segregation practices and notorious racial hostility. In the end they relented and allowed men to work for U.S. Sugar Corporation; but, that did not guarantee that the program ran smoothly. Issues continued to arise over race and labor conditions. (RG 43 (RIC), P Entry 14: Anglo-American Caribbean Commission, 1940-1946, Subject Files, Box 42: E2-1 to E12-4, Folder: E12-Labor, General 1946. NACP.) Michael Piore analyzed how people responded to employment opportunities in unpredictable ways, beyond simply analyzing possible income benefits. He argued “people are rooted a social context in ways that other commodities are not” and that “migrant behavior can be better understood in terms of the specific attributes of the jobs available to migrants and the meaning attached to those attributes in the social context in which that work is performed.” (Michael J. Piore, Birds of Passage, 8.)

21 Letter to the Honorable Pat Cannon, House of Representatives; From: Colonel Philip Bruton, Director of Labor, WFA. 10/13/43. RG 224 Office of Labor (OL), PI 51 Entry 6: General Correspondence, Aug. 1943-Dec. 1944, Box 9: 4-WP-R15 thru 6-C22, Folder: 6-R15 Florida, July-Dec. 1943. NACP.

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small strike to secure higher wages, and local laundry workers followed suit, demanding pay increases so that remaining in the Islands was economically beneficial for them.22 The Bahamian government’s refusal to grant passage to the 500-600 workers from “necessary occupations” reduced the supply of available workers.23 Although Nassau officials’ reluctance to release workers into the program frustrated U.S. recruiters, it did not deter them. Recognizing that only about 150 workers would be released from Nassau, recruiters turned to the Out Islands to fill the remaining vacancies. Generally the Out Islands had higher unemployment rates, so large numbers of men sought U.S. contract work.24 Recruiters estimated at least 600 workers could be easily obtained from islands other than New Providence, and so they pressured Nassau to allow expanded Out Island recruitment.25

Both American and Bahamian program supporters hailed the guestworker labor system as a solution to unemployment and a way to assist foreign nations without simply giving them money. However, the lure of earning better wages lured some gainfully employed Bahamians into quitting their jobs and signing guestworker contracts. In May of 1943, during the temporary suspension of worker recruitment, the Nassau Guardian suggested the Bahamian government use the time to try and sort out how best to distinguish genuinely unemployed workers from those who quit their jobs in order to participate in the program. The Guardian specifically noted that “domestic servants, mechanics, masons, gardeners, printers and others who have been in training for years have abandoned well paid jobs…and allowed to register as unemployed,”

22 Brief of Inspection Trip to Miami, 4/24/43. RG 224 (OL) PI 51 Entry 1, Box 14, Folder: Farm Labor 3-1-2 Reports. NARA College Park.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid. Most Bahamian contract workers came from the Out Islands, which suffered the highest unemployment rates. (Peter Kramer, The Offshores, 9.)

25 Brief of Inspection Trip to Miami, 4/24/43. RG 224 (OL) PI 51 Entry 1, Box 14, Folder: Farm Labor 3-1-2 Reports. NARA College Park.

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while the real “number of loafers” appears undiminished.26 The newspaper claimed that the program actually hurt the domestic Bahamian economy by funneling the most productive and industrious individuals to America, and leaving behind the least employable people, who also caused the greatest strain on the domestic economy.27 The paper also argued current policies were economically shortsighted. Efforts to “encourage individuals to go back to the land” in places like Andros Island (one of the Out Islands) failed when prospective Florida employment existed. Rather than building a stronger domestic economy by developing “a valuable export trade” in “fish, fibre, spices and vegetables,” the Bahamas was building an economy based on exporting its most industrious workers.28 The paper contended that in the long term, this would undermine national prosperity.

Some Bahamian businessmen also expressed concerns about the program’s effects noting

“Negroes recruited for work in the United States will forever be ruined for work at home by

‘pampering and the absorption of radical ideas in the United States.’”29 Many Bahamian businessmen were white, and their arguments and concerns mirrored those espoused by their

American counterparts in agriculture. Florida growers frequently expressed outrage over the fact that domestic farmworkers leveraged World War II, and the economic boom it stimulated, to

26 Copy of the Nassau Guardian, “The Employment Situation,” 5/25/43. RG 43 (RIC), P Entry 14, Anglo-American Caribbean Commission, 1940-1946, Subject Files, Box 42: E2-1 to E12-4, Folder: E12-2 Labor-Bahamas 1940- 6/43. NACP.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid., Report from Henry M. Wolcott, American Consul to the Secretary of State; Subject: Recruitment of Bahamian Workers for Farm Labor in the United States; May 27, 1943. Reflecting on Bahamians’ experiences as part of the program, Cordell Thompson noted that participants in the later years “brought back a profound African American exposure with them during a time period when Americans would just preparing themselves for the great civil rights confrontation that took place in the 60’s.” (The Bahamas Folklore Collection blog. Collection editor Cordell Thompson. http://gullahgeecheeconnection.wordpress.com/the-contract-2/) Thompson specifically addresses the cultural aspects of African American life Bahamians adopted, like clothing styles and dance, but he alludes to the social attitudes they also would have encountered and embraced.

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demand better wages and working conditions. Bahamian businessmen faced a similar situation— islanders also used the war and subsequent opportunities to improve their economic situation.

Some opted for contract work in the United States, and others, like the dock and laundry workers, pushed for increased domestic wages so they would not have to leave to earn a decent living.30 Bahamian businessmen also feared large-scale labor exportation would decrease the labor supply and drive up labor costs.

Even in the face of outright private-sector opposition, the program continued because of its potential to help improve Bahamian living standards, alleviate unemployment in the Islands, and because of Florida growers’ constant demand for a larger labor supply. In the later years when the program was well established and unlikely to end, Bahamian government and business leaders sometimes worked together to find common ground regarding the program. For example, in 1947 U.S. labor recruiters went to the Bahamas seeking new workers. The Bahamian government, responding to “complaints coming from the industrial people” about domestic labor shortages, capped new recruitment at 2000.31 (But, it would also allow 2600 existing workers to be held over from the previous year.32) In the end, though, businessmen succeeded in protecting their interests. The government amended its offer of 2000 workers by limiting the number that could be taken from Nassau to 1500 and requiring recruiters get additional workers in the Out

Islands, rather than recruiting in New Providence. 33 Once the various parties agreed on the

30 Ibid.

31 RG 43 (Records of the International Commissions), P Entry 14: Anglo-American Caribbean Commission, 1940- 1946, Subject Files, Box 42: E2-1 to E12-4, Folder: E12-Labor, General 1946. NACP.

32 Ibid.

33 Florida resolved the labor situation by utilizing labor from South Carolina—workers available due to inclement weather there. The archival record is full of similar stories. Florida employers utilized domestic workers (available due to unfortunate weather conditions elsewhere in the country) when foreign labor supplies were inadequate. Situations like these illustrate the central issue that growers sought a particular type of labor force, as opposed to suffering actual, insolvable domestic labor shortages. Eventually, a rebounding domestic economy and compromises

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contours of the program, organizers began implementing it. Recruiters headed out to the islands to find workers and a means to transport them to Florida.

Bahamian recruitment began with U.S. officials looking for healthy individuals, usually men.34 The temporary labor program’s contract technically allowed for the transportation of both male and female workers.35 The Agricultural Labor Administration (a branch of the USDA), however, planned only to import male workers at the beginning and said women would be brought in if necessary to meet future demands.36 The initial participants came from Nassau, but recruitment moved to the Out Islands when Nassau businessmen pressured officials to end local recruitment. Regardless of the workers’ place of origin, they received a physical exam, smallpox vaccine, and the first typhoid immunization while on the Island.

between Bahamian employers and government officials would “put a stop to the recruitment in the Bahamas— simply because they [U.S. recruiters] could not find suitable laborers in the Out Islands.”(Ibid.) In the final decade of its existence, from 1956 to 1966, the Bahamian government set the maximum number of available workers at 4200, but never actually reached that number. (Kramer, The Offshores, 9.)

34 The United States Employment Service (USES) reviewed and approved domestic requests for foreign labor, and then handled the recruitment and transportation of those workers. The USES was a sub-agency of the War Manpower Commission, which emerged out of the War Food Administration’s Office of Labor. (The Office of Labor operated the Farm Labor Supply Centers in Florida.) At the time, the WMC, USES, and OL were all sub- agencies of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). For more information on the Bahamian/BWI program structure and management, see Chapter 4.

35 The USDA established the Agricultural Labor Administration in 1943, and it assumed the responsibilities of several earlier departments including the Agricultural Labor Branch (formerly known as the Agricultural Manpower Branch), the Farm Security Administration, and the State Extension Service. The Farm Security Administration handled domestic migrant labor programs until its dissolution in 1943. After that, the ALA and the USES split up the responsibilities for handling contract labor, and the focus increasingly shifted from contracting domestic migrant workers to temporary foreign laborers. For more information on the agencies involved in managing the Bahamian/BWI guestworker program, see Chapter 4.

36 Letter from Wayne Darrow, Director Agricultural Labor Administration; to Earl Harrison, Commissioner, INS, 3/24/43. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 1, Box 14, Folder: Farm Labor 3-1, Bahamas. NACP. (IMG_5192) Tracing Bahamian female participation in the offshore program is complicated. Women rarely appear in the archival record and when they do, the information can appear contradictory because women’s status and relationship to the program changed frequently throughout the early years.

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These screening practices were not unique to the guestworker program. The new foreign labor program threaded the needle of America’s existing immigration laws.37 All immigrants, starting in 1917, had to undergo medical examinations by the ship’s doctor and port authorities prior to entrance. The act specifically barred people with tuberculosis or other contagious diseases.38 The law also prohibited the entrance of contract laborers, unless the Commissioner

General of Immigration and the Secretary of Labor together granted a waiver under the ninth proviso. If they determined a shortage existed, they could set aside the prohibition on contract labor, as well as the literacy tests and head taxes.39 Farm owners similarly succeeded in mitigating the worst impacts of the 1924 immigration quota legislation by seeking an exemption for the Western Hemisphere, and thus keeping the doors open to migrant farmworkers.

Upon arrival in Miami, program participants received chest x-rays, the second typhoid shot, and took a syphilis test. In accordance with U.S. immigration policy, agents screening the workers immediately repatriated recruits with tuberculosis.40 Unsurprisingly, though, worker

37 Mainly the Immigration Act of 1917 and 1924, which sought to restrict entrance of “undesirables” to the United States. The 1917 Act blocked entrance to “undesirables,” which included: “idiots, imbeciles, epileptics, alcoholics, poor, criminals, beggars, any person suffering attacks of insanity, those with tuberculosis, and those who have any form of dangerous contagious disease, aliens who have a physical disability that will restrict them from earning a living in the United States…polygamists and anarchists, those who were against the organized government or those who advocated the unlawful destruction of property and those who advocated the unlawful assault of killing of any officer.” It also denied entrance to prostitutes, those living with prostitutes, illiterate immigrants over the age of sixteen, and all people from the Asiatic Barred Zone. (http://library.uwb.edu/guides/usimmigration/1917_immigration_act.html) For a full text of the Act, see http://library.uwb.edu/guides/usimmigration/39%20stat%20874.pdf.

38 It also increased the head tax of immigrants to $8.00 per person and required a literacy test for those over the age of sixteen. Growers and government agents succeeded in getting the head tax and literacy test waived, so as to reduce the cost and challenge of importing workers. (Otey M Scrugss, “The First Mexican Farm Labor Program,” Arizona and the West, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Winter, 1960), 320.)

39 Ibid. This clause in the act proved extremely valuable in enabling Florida farmers to operate a temporary foreign labor importation program even after the similar Bracero program ended out west. This occurred because unlike the Bracero program, the Bahamian/British West Indian program remained under the auspice of the original act and its successor, Public Law 45. The Bracero Program was authorized under Public Law 78, and expired in 1964.

40 Memo To: Chief of Operations, Atlanta, Georgia; From: F.D. Mott, M.D., Chief, Health Services Branch; Subject: Bahamian Recruitment, 12/30/1944. RG 224 Office of Labor (OL), PI 51 Entry 6, Box 9, Folder: 6-A19 Agreements, Jan. 1944-. NACP.

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processing did not always proceed as smoothly as planned. For example, in June of 1944, the first load of workers arriving Miami could not get chest x-rays because the necessary equipment was in Jamaica. Agents made temporary plans to send the workers to a camp owned by a local grower for processing. However, after setting everything up there, the agents received word that the workers were taken to a different camp. It was too late to notify the proper authorities, and the agents quickly discovered that several groups of Bahamians had already been sent to various locations throughout the division without receiving their immunizations or the results from their syphilis tests.41

Although the Islands sit only a few hundred miles off the coast of Florida, and individuals had made the trip back and forth for generations, program coordinators faced significant logistical challenges in recruiting and transporting offshore workers. Simply moving large numbers of people across the open ocean during wartime created a multitude of logistical headaches. In the program’s early days, the Bahamian government delivered workers to Florida mainly using three small inter-island freighters, or “mailboats,” the Richard Campbell, Monarch of Nassau, and Betty K.42 Each could transport approximately one hundred workers at a time.43

The Richard Campbell was built in 1937, and served Abaco and Miami from Nassau from 1937

41 Memo to Philip G. Bruton, Brigadier General, U.S. Army, Director of Labor, WFA; From John Newdorp, M.D. Field Medical Officer, Operations Office II; Attention: Dr. F.D. Mott, Chief, Health Services Branch; Subject: Recruitment of farm labor in the Bahamas, 7/3/1944. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 6, Box 9, Folder: 6-A19 Agreements, Jan. 1944-. NACP.

42 Memo to: Colonel Philip Bruton, Director of Labor; From Hudson Wren, Chief of Operations, Field Operations, Office II, War Food Administration; Subject: Manifest Bahamian Workers, 3/27/44. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 6, Box 9, Folder: 6-R15 Bahamas 1944. NACP. Eric Wiberg, Mailboats Bahamas Blog, http://mailboatsbahamas.blogspot.com/2013/06/monarch-of-nassau-inter-island-twin.html

43 Letter from Wayne Darrow, Director Agricultural Labor Administration; to Earl Harrison, Commissioner, INS, 3/24/43. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 1, Box 14: Farm Labor 2 thru Farm Labor 3-2, Folder: Farm Labor 3-1, Bahamas. NACP.

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to at least 1947.44 The Monarch of Nassau was slightly older, and built in England in 1930 under the name Sir Charles Orr. However, it was then purchased and renamed by investors, and sent to the Bahamas to transport pineapples and other goods from Eleuthera to Florida. It served primarily as an inter-island trader from that year until 1947.45 The Betty K serviced the Nassau-

Miami route throughout the 1940s.46 The vessels were leased to the United States to transport

Bahamian workers beginning in 1943.47

By June of 1943, the U.S. government embraced a more active role in labor transportation as it ramped up the wartime economy. The War Food Administration created the

Office of Labor in that year to help facilitate the recruitment, movement, and placement of agricultural labor.48 A few months after the Bahamian temporary labor program started, the

WFA began transporting offshore workers by airplane with the assistance of the War Department and Pan American Airlines. Given the potential of a deadly U-Boat attack, American and

Bahamian authorities may have thought it best to transport workers by air, rather than by boat.49

The Army Transport Corp flew Bahamians into Florida once per day, and Pan Am conducted two to four flights depending on aircraft availability. Eventually, U.S. government agents had to

44 Wiberg, Mailboats Bahamas Blog.

45 Ibid. The Monarch gained fame in 1942 for saving 30 Greek sailors from a Greek ship that had been torpedoed and sunk off the coast of San Salvador.

46 Ibid.

47 Memo to: Colonel Philip Bruton, Director of Labor; From Hudson Wren, Chief of Operations, Field Operations, Office II, War Food Administration; Subject: Manifest Bahamian Workers, 3/27/44. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 6, Box 9, Folder: 6-R15 Bahamas 1944. NACP.

48 The overlapping existence of the Office of Labor and the War Food Administration (WFA) explains why the National Archives has dual files for Record Group 224. In some cases the documents are duplicates, but often they contain different records.

49 According to Gaylord Kelshall, the Germans began a second Caribbean U-Boat campaign in 1943. Kelshall argues that the Bahamas were “an area which proved to be good hunting ground for many U-Boats.” (Gaylord Kelshall, The U-Boat War in the Caribbean (Annapolis, Maryland: United States Naval Institute Press, 1994), xiv, 57.)

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marshal all of their resources to move these workers because by mid-April, hundreds of workers were waiting in Nassau to be transport to Florida. Desperate for transport vessels, USES agents even secured a British Navy supply ship to bring over 36 workers per trip.50

The U.S. government ceased its active role in recruiting and transporting offshore workers in 1947, when the program shifted from a government-to-government agreement to a private employer-to-government arrangement. Nationwide Air Transport Service won the new transportation contract.51 Interestingly, the company also took over labor recruitment in the islands. Nationwide, and the company it later merged with, Resort Air, recruited and transported

Caribbean workers to and from Florida for the next six years. However, by 1953, the airline had trouble getting its franchise renewed and employers again became concerned about potential availability of transport for workers.52 William H. Meranda, who had worked as a pilot for

Nationwide and Resort Air established his own company in 1953 to handle the new farm labor program’s recruitment and transportation needs. In addition to providing these services, Meranda also created a 140 bed “holding center” for in-transit workers to facilitate smoother labor flow.53

The center included a kitchen, small dining room, and shower and toilet facilities. A Grenadian employee of the British West Indian Central Labour Organisation (BWICLO) supervised the facility, and a cook handled the meals. Employers paid for the workers’ room and board,

50 Brief of Inspection Trip to Miami, 4/23/43. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 1, Box 14, Folder: Farm Labor 3-1-2 Reports. NACP.

51 The end of World War II led to the concurrent abolition of the Office of Labor and the War Food Administration in 1945. However, since Congress continued to authorize the Emergency Farm Labor Program until 1947, many of the OL/WFA responsibilities returned to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Peter Kramer describes the transition to private transportation contracting in, The Offshores. (p. 26)

52 Ibid., 26.

53 Ibid., 27

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approximately $2 per day, for the duration of their stay.54 Meranda, noting his extensive investment in the business and the unique nature of the facility and its services, colorfully pointed out that if the program ended he would probably have to turn his holding center “into the only 140-bed whorehouse in Miami.”55 Fortunately for him (and the more conservative residents of the city of Miami), his business flourished..

Meranda contracted Pan Am to transport the workers; and from 1956 until at least 1966,

Pan Am exclusively handled guestworker transportation to and from the Caribbean.56 The

Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association (FFVA) worked with Meranda and Pan Am to transport

Bahamians at a round-trip rate of $28.50, including a $0.50 head tax on travel to the United

States. The FFVA advanced workers the money for the arrival fare to the United States, and then deducted repayment for the cost of the trip from the contract laborer’s earnings once he began working. If he completed his contract, FFVA paid his return fair. The flights usually carried between 60 and 114 passengers, depending on the type of aircraft. Workers typically landed in

Miami or West Palm Beach and traveled inland via bus.57 Meranda Co. earned money indirectly, by keeping the difference from what the company charged employers to transport workers, and what the airline charged Meranda to physically move the men. This meant that employers did not pay direct charges for recruiting, and that workers footed that bill as part of their arrival transportation fees.58 Meranda never disclosed how much he earned on each flight, but he did

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid.

56 Ibid., p. 27-28. As previously noted, Kramer published his work in 1966.

57 Ibid., p. 12.

58 Ibid., 27.

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well enough to eventually own a “controlling interest” in the professional minor-league Miami

Marlins baseball team.59

Labor Quality: Expectations and Realities

Samuel Miller joined “The Contract,” as it was often referred to in the Islands, after being laid off by Bahamas Airways in 1950. Calvin Bethel “ran away from home in order to escape material hardship and what he saw as the lack of a future” in 1951.60 From the program’s inception, the typical Bahamian guestworker was a peasant from the Out Islands, more often than not a male in his twenties or thirties possessed of little education. He usually traveled to the

United States during periods of slack employment in the Bahamas, as a means to escape unemployment and general poverty.61

Beyond these basic demographic and economic features, American employers often pinned subjective attributes to the offshore workers. For example, growers claimed Bahamians were more “productive, conscientious, and well motivated” than other workers (domestic or foreign.)62 American employers embraced stereotypes that reflected what they hoped their workers would be like, rather than how they actually were. Growers maintained Bahamians’ were more committed to a stable family unit and more inclined to save large portions of their earnings while working under contract than were other laborers. Disputing this image, the

59 Ibid. 27. The Miami Marlins were a minor-league franchise that predates, and has no relation to, the current Florida Marlins professional baseball team.

60 Interviews with Contract workers, Miller (1991), Bethel (1992) (Thompson, “Remembering ‘The Contract,’ 9.)

61 Kramer, The Offshores, 11. According to Cordell Thompson, at the beginning of the program, Bahamians of “every class, color and educational status signed up to go” because “it was real money they were after and the Bahamas was in a severe depression following the end of prohibition and the collapse of the sponge industry.” Some workers remained, and others returned to the Islands. A few returnees rose to prominence, including Sir Clifford Darling, former Governor-General of the Bahamas from 1992-1995. (The Bahamas Folklore Collection blog. http://gullahgeecheeconnection.wordpress.com/the-contract-2/)

62 Ibid., 14.

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Bahamian Program’s Chief Liaison, M.E. Anderson, pointed out “the offshore is only a man, like any other. He’s no Boy Scout.”63 Rampant prostitution, adultery, and gambling undermined employers’ claims of Bahamian moral superiority. Many Offshores in Belle Glade were treated for syphilis, and Bahamian men were known to get into fights with local African American men after it was discovered the former were sleeping with local men’s wives.64 Gambling was also rampant, yet the police did little to end it (or the prostitution) since the officers were “under the thumb of the farmers.”65 From the beginning, then, labor quality fell short of employers’ expectations, both ideologically and in terms of actual skills.66

A 1943 letter from the manager of the Okeechobee Farm Labor Supply Center to the

USDA neatly sums up labor quality issue. The manager explained that not only were Bahamians less efficient workers than growers expected; the workers also vocally expressed their frustrations with the wage/piece rate system. The camp manager and growers found these complaints disconcerting, but they did make some small changes to accommodate the workers’ misgivings.67

Growers expected the new farm labor program to provide them with skilled agricultural workers that would conform to America’s southern racial and social norms. However, farmers

63 Ibid., 15.

64 Ibid., 15.

65 Ibid. Quote from M.E. Johnston, Chief Liaison Officer for the Bahamas office in Orlando, Florida.

66 One striking example of failed labor importation was white Bahamians brought in to work in the U.S. dairy industry. Reasons for the high attrition rates are not provided, a 1946 report from the Governor of the Bahamas to his Secretary of State noted that of the 90 imported workers, only 7 remained. The Governor’s office concluded “This enterprise must unquestionably be regarded as a failure." (6/27/46, page 7. CO 233/814, Importation of Labor to FL)

67 Report from the Okeechobee Farm Labor Supply Center; From: Charles T. Cline, Manager; To: W.W. Flenniken, USDA, 7/12/43, p.1. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 1, Box 14, Folder: Farm Labor 3-1, Bahamas. NACP. Farmers pressured police to allow vice activities to continue because they kept many workers occupied and somewhat content.

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quickly discovered their workers rarely matched their expectations in terms of physical ability or docility. Although the public often refers to farm work as “unskilled” labor, field hands require very particular set of skills in order to become deft harvesters of any given crop. African

Americans provided the majority of labor in the mid-twentieth century, and after years in the fields they developed the skills needed to be efficient workers. In contrast, many Bahamian contract workers lacked these skills. As the Okeechobee manager related in his letter, Bahamian workers consistently failed to reach maximum production in bean harvesting. Rather than earning the $2.50 to $3.00 per day as experienced American day laborers could, some of the first

Bahamians “hardly made more than the 75¢ deducted to be returned home.”68 The letter noted that eventually most gained the skills needed to become “profitable to both themselves and the farmer,” but this success was not immediate.69 In another instance, a report filed three months after the program’s inception declared Bahamians “were not the best farm workers,” but their willingness to work “every day possible” made them desirable to local employers.70 Growers adjusted their expectations and requested Bahamians return the following fall.71

Bahamians eventually improved their harvesting skills, but that did not mean they became the perfect workforce by growers’ standards. As Charles Cline, the Okeechobee camp manager pointed out, “the Bahamian mind was very strict in its interpretation of right and wrong.”72 Bahamians accused growers of unfair labor practices because, according to Cline, the

68 Ibid.

69 Ibid.

70 6/15/43, Narrative Report of Myron M. Varn County Agricultural Agent, Ft. Pierce, FL; St. Lucie County, Dec. 1, 1942-June 15, 1943. UF Archives, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Public Records Collection, Series 91a: Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Box 22, Folder: St. Lucie, 1942-48.

71 Ibid.

72 Report from the Okeechobee Farm Labor Supply Center; From: Charles T. Cline, Manager; To: W.W. Flenniken, USDA, 7/12/43, p.1. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 1, Box 14, Folder: Farm Labor 3-1, Bahamas. NACP.

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workers did not understand the “local customs and conditions controlling wage and piece rates.”73 Cline stated that the U.S. Employment Service placement agent and members of the

Camp staff responded to the concerns by making the “usual” adjustments necessary to remedy the situation. For example, they transferred harvesters who could not make the minimum daily wage to truck loading or other jobs. Some disputes arose from “cases of shortage in wages or errors in payrolls,” but Cline notes that farmers “made a satisfactory adjustment” once it was called to their attention.74 One cannot help but wonder, if domestic workers had possessed the benefit of someone advocating on their behalf, how would their labor situation have improved?

Cline, oblivious to this possibility, embraced the racist logic of the day. He argued that

Bahamians were more “clean and mentally alert” than African Americans and thus were better employees. But, he also contended that after spending time with black Americans, Bahamians were “becoming negligent and careless.”75

In an attempt to improve worker production, in 1943, the Extension Service partnered with the Agricultural Economics Department of the Experiment Station to conduct studies of workers doing various farm jobs in order to identify the best way to maximize the workforce.

They made short films of workers doing a job several ways and then studied the different methods in order determine the most efficient means. Researchers then used these videos to

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid.

75 Ibid., 2. The 1944 Annual Report by the Sanford camp reported similar claims, noting “Another difference is at first the Bahamians have a more serious attitude in general toward work, but soon after arrival he becomes educated by the locals and starts taking it easy and picks up habits of shiftlessness. But on the whole, the quality of his work compares favorably with locals and in many cases better." (11/30/43-12/1/44, Annual Narrative Report, C.R. Dawson, Sanford in Seminole County. Page 19. UF Archives, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Public Records Collection, Series 91a: Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Box 22, Folder: Seminole.)

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show workers how to accomplish the given task most efficiently.76 Although these studies and instructional videos were not aimed directly at foreign labor, they highlight the central fact that farmworkers of all backgrounds chronically failed to live up to employers’ and government officials’ standards.

The Okeechobee Camp was not the only one struggling with its new arrivals. A report from the Palmetto Camp claimed the first 241 workers who arrived at the Center were “on an average, the most disagreeable group of Bahamian workers we have ever had to deal with.”77

The manager did not elaborate on what made those workers particularly unpleasant. But, his assessment reinforces the central point—workers failed to meet growers’ expectations. They often lacked both the skills and the submissive demeanor employers hoped they would possess.

Although men made up the vast majority of recruited workers, some Bahamian women participated in the program. Their presence further complicated grower attempts to make the temporary labor plan operate smoothly, since women often could not do heavy agricultural work.78

Even though they were not actively recruited, Bahamian women entered the program early on. Their employment often proved more challenging. In August of 1943 female workers were part of the agricultural workforce that moved from Florida into the northern states.

However, the War Food Administration had trouble placing all of these workers. So, when they received a work request for twenty individuals in Florida, they suggested sending the women

76 Annual Report by the State Supervisor, Emergency Farm Labor, 1943, p. 4. RG 33 Extension Service; PI-83 Entry 48, Box 2: CO-IN, 1943, Folder: Farm Labor Supervisor, Annual Report, 1943. NACP.

77 Monthly Narrative Report for November 1944, Palmetto Farm Labor Supply Center, p. 3. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 6, Box 1, Folder: C2-R36, Florida, By Date. NACP.

78 Reviewing the 1943 census data, Michael Craton and Gail Saunders notes that 1226 men and 547 women participated in the temporary agricultural labor program in the United States in that year. However, they note that by the 1953 census, most of the participants in the program were men. (Craton and Saunders, Islanders in the Stream, 191.)

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there.79 Farm work was extremely taxing, and many employers would not hire women to do the most physically demanding work. This helps explain why women’s labor contracts did not guarantee them at least three-quarters time employment, like their male counterparts’ contracts.80

In crops like beans, women often planted and harvested because it was considered light farm labor.

The forty-seven acre Gotha Farm Labor Supply Center, located in central Florida, consisted of 98 structures.81 In 1944, Gotha reported that it had no trouble placing its Bahamian workers, except the females. The camp’s manager indicated that the main problem was that it usually supplied labor to local citrus operations. Citrus work—picking in particular—was difficult and dangerous. Grove managers were reluctant to accept female laborers. Married women were somewhat of an exception, though, since they could work the lower branches of the trees while their husbands climbed the ladders, thus increasing efficiency.82 Area growers also had the luxury of excluding Bahamian women from employment opportunities in 1944 because in that same year the center received 250 German POWs.83 Even though female employment

79 Letter to Mason Barr, Chief of the Interstate and Foreign Labor Branch of the Office of Labor; From: E.S. Morgan Regional Chief of the War Food Administration, 8/17/43. RG 224 (OL) PI 51 Entry 6, Box 11: 6-R15 thru 6/R36, Folder: 6-R15 Florida, July-Dec, 1943. NACP.

80 1/3/45, Gable gram from CE Herdt, Chief Operations Branch, Office of Labor, WFA to John A. Hughes, Labour Officer, Nassau Bahamas. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 8: General Correspondence, 1945-1945, Box 11: 1945 Laborers 12 through 1945 Laborers 18, Folder: Laborers 18, Bahamians. NACP.

81 The camp was also called the Gotha Ordnance Depot. POWs were forbidden from working in war industries, but they could be employed in food production and processing. They contributed “250,000 man-days of work, at an estimated value of $700,000” to local citrus and vegetable growers in West Orange County. (Jacob Flynn, “German POWs kept in Central Florida during WWII,” The West Orange Times, Vol. 78, No. 4, 1/27/211. (http://www.westorangetimes.com/articles/2011/01/26/news/top_stories/news04.txt)

82 Gotha Farm Labor Supply Center, Narrative Report, 11/1944, p. 1. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 6, Box 1: C2-C29 thru C2-R36, Folder: C2-R36, Florida, By Date, NACP. Citrus magnate Dr. Phillips farms successfully used a considerable number of women, but the report does not indicate in what capacity he used these female workers.

83 Many prisoners were U-Boat sailors captured in the Caribbean. (Jim Robinson, “Florida Kept German Prisoners Busy with Work,” Orlando Sentinel, 2/22/04. (http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2004-02- 22/news/0402210139_1_german-pows-prison-camps-prisoners-of-war))

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proved challenging, placement agents must have had some success because a 1945 State

Extension Service report estimated that twenty-five percent of the Bahamians working in Florida were women.84 Women faced greater employment challenges because they were primarily used only to harvest specific crops (like beans or celery). Inclement weather that reduced crop yields could significantly undermine a worker’s ability to earn decent money, since there would be fewer crops available to harvest. For example, a hard freeze in January of 1946 wiped out seventy-five percent of the winter bean crop.85 This left many women in a tight financial position. Employers rarely hired women to do non-harvesting field jobs and women faced stiff competition from male colleagues also vying for the limited harvesting positions.86

Of course, not all male recruits were suited to agricultural employment in the U.S South either. Fred Sikes, Vice President of Personnel for U.S. Sugar Corporation, noted that one problem his company encountered with the government-run program was the inferior quality of imported workers. The government “just supplied bodies” rather than selecting individuals with regard to their “background, work experience, and personal record.”87 Graft and corruption in sending countries also led recruiters to give work cards to those who did them favors, rather than furnishing passes to the most appropriate individuals.88 Sikes explained that the first group of workers for the 1943-1944 sugar cane harvest season were Bahamians, but that they did not work

84 Extension Service Farm Labor Annual Report, 1945, p. 6. RG 33 (Extension Service), PI-83 Entry 48, Box 23: FL-IN 1945. NACP.

85 Narrative Reports, Canal Point, 12/2/46. RG 224 (OL) PI 51 Entry 8, Box 24, Folder: Camps 12-1, Florida, Canal Point FLSC. NACP.

86 Ibid.

87 Kramer, The Offshores, 2.

88 Ibid., 2, 12. Bahamian recruitment suffered from less corruption due to political patronage because unlike Jamaica, the Bahamian authorities did not keep a register of eligible workers.

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out because they “had no experience.”89 This, however, was not the primary cause of

Bahamians’ short-lived tenure as cane cutters in Florida. Both workers and Island officials vocalized strong opposition to sugar cane cutting since they considered it dangerous, dirty and degrading work. Bahamians also knew they could earn significantly higher wages doing easier work on area vegetable farms.90

With the Bahamians’ failure to meet U.S. Sugar’s expectations, the company immediately switched to Jamaican cane cutters. It continued using them for the next four decades, claiming the islanders well suited to the task. Providing further proof that Sikes’ claim that Bahamian inexperience was the primary reason why the company found them to be unsuccessful workers was that, at the beginning, most Jamaican cane cutters were also novices with no previous harvesting experience. Furthermore, the earliest reports indicate that Jamaicans with cutting experience were not necessarily the most desirable since they had to relearn Florida cane-cutting techniques. The Florida Extension Service reported that in November of 1943, U.S.

Sugar found the “1200 Jamaicans on their farms doing very unsatisfactory work.”91 The main problem was that workers “were dissatisfied with the type of work and the wages” and therefore

“refused to work or worked in an unsatisfactory manner.”92 The report explained, “many stated

89 Ibid., 2.

90 Cindy Hahamovitch found that U.S. Sugar paid Bahamians the minimum wage of 30 cents an hour. The typical cane cutter worked ten hours per day, thus averaging about $3.00 per day. In contrast, Bahamians on vegetable farms could earn more than $8.00 per day in vegetables. (Hahamovitch, No Man’s Land, 69.)

91 Letter from EF DeBusk, State Supervisor, Emergency Farm Labor, Cooperative Extension Work in Agriculture & Home Economics to CWE Pittman of the Extension Service in D.C. RG 33 (ES), PI-83 Entry 46, Box 14, State Corr., 2nd Service, 1943-46, AL-KY, Folder: Label missing (would likely say “Florida 1943-1946.) NACP.

92 Letter, Clarence E. Herdt to Paul Van der Schouw, Chief, Farm Labor Supply Section, West Palm Beach, Fla., Nov. 1, 1943. Found in Wayne D. Rasmussen’s A History of the Emergency Farm Labor Supply Program, 1943- 1947. Agricultural Monograph No. 13 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, 1951), p. 259.

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they had not realized the type of work they were agreeing to perform when they extended their contracts” and so they expressed their frustrations by performing below expectations.93

Program participants continued to receive mixed reviews. The Florida Defense Council’s

Committee on Agriculture and Agricultural Processing lauded the Bahamian workers, noting they had eventually proven to be “very satisfactory.”94 But the committee denounced Jamaicans claiming they had “almost without exception proven most unsatisfactory” because they were

“unwilling workers, surly and abusive except for a small minority who appreciated the opportunity and wished to stay and work.”95 The Chase Company of Florida, which traditionally utilized African American and Bahamian workers in its celery operations “complained about the

Jamaicans not doing work equal to the Domestic workers.”96 Frustrated that the Jamaicans proved more of a headache than a help, Chase “asked to be released from their Jamaican contract provided they would be replaced by Bahamian workers, which they had requested before the

Center opened."97

The camp manager met with the Jamaican Liaison Officer and the two agreed that Chase foremen would demand a full day’s work, and that all unsatisfactory workers would be identified by the next week. The two men then called the Jamaican workers together, explained the decision and pointed out that good workers were being sent home because of insufficient labor to

93 Ibid.

94 In 1943, Florida imported 4690 Bahamian workers, approximately “6% of all their labor” in the Bahamas. (10/21/43, Meeting of the State Defense Council’s Committee on Agriculture and Agricultural Processing Labor. RG 191 (Florida State Defense Council), Series .419; Box 3, Folder: USDA (1941-1944) Florida Department of State (FDS), State Archives of Florida.)

95 In response to the labor challenges presented by Jamaicans, U.S. officials were looking into recruiting “negroes from Barbados,” because they heard they were “tractable and would make satisfactory farm labor.” As previously noted, Puerto Ricans were ruled out since they were U.S. citizens and tended “scatter” upon arrival. Ibid.

96 4/1947, Narrative Reports, Sanford. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 8 General Correspondence 1945-1945. Box 24: 1946 Camps 12-1 thru 1946 Camps 12-1. Folder: Camps 12-1, Florida, Sanford FLSC. NACP.

97 Ibid.

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meet worker demands. Although they gave workers an opportunity to voice their complaints, the threat was implicit—continue working or face deportation. More compliant workers would replace troublesome ones. In the subsequent few weeks, only one man was declared unsatisfactory.98 Apparently, threats of repatriation either inspired the workers to perform better, or quelled their willingness and ability to protest.

As time passed, returning foreign workers helped lessen the divide between expectation and reality. Those opting to renew their contracts possessed the necessary skills to harvest more efficiently, and employers claimed to have a “better understanding” regarding “the management of this labor."99 Some foreign workers accepted the state’s racial practices enough to maintain employment, but recurrent slights and improper treatment of black workers by white employers proved fertile grounds for breeding discontent and conflict throughout the century.

Even though nearly all Bahamian and BWI workers were black, Jamaica was the only government to (initially) restrict worker placement on racial grounds.100 Rather than focusing on social degradation associated with Jim Crow segregation, Bahamian officials identified the type of labor itself—i.e. sugar cane cutting—as the problem. They felt this work was “demeaning” and slave-like and they did not want Bahamians doing it. The difference in framing helps explain why many U.S. growers and government officials believed Jamaicans were unique in their

98 Ibid.

99 12/1/43-11/30/44, Narrative Report of Hubert E. Maltby, Acting County Agricultural Agent. UF Archives, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Public Records Collection, Series 91a: Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Box 21a, Folder: St. Johns.

100 Initially, Jamaican authorities refused to allow their countrymen south of the Mason-Dixon line because they feared these black men would be mistreated in the segregationist South. They relented, however, in October 1943 following pressure from workers who wanted to remain in the United States to earn more money. After inspecting the sugar camps, Jamaican liaison officers assented because, as Colonel Bruton, Director of Labor for the WFA, explained, they believed placing workers in isolated employer camps would “assure better segregation and control” and thus result in “more satisfactory employment.” (Letter to the Honorable Pat Cannon, House of Representatives; From: Colonel Philip Bruton, Director of Labor, WFA. 10/13/43. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 6, Box 9: 4-WP-R15 thru 6-C22, Folder: 6-R15 Florida, July-Dec. 1943. NACP.)

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opposition to American racial practices. Numerous reports and memos from U.S. officials explain that Jamaicans have “a set of mores and social patterns radically different from those of the American negro.”101 Similarly, they claimed Jamaicans differed from Bahamians and were more sensitive to racial matters because there was “little race distinction on the island

[Jamaica].”102 The testimony of 1950s Bahamian contract worker Samuel Miller, however, contradicted this assessment. Miller, like other Bahamian participants, claimed “after the relative freedom of living in Nassau, adjusting to segregation’s norms was hard.”103 Even though

Bahamians found segregation frustrating, they did not challenge it as overtly as some other

Caribbean groups, which is why Florida employers continued requesting Bahamians in large numbers.

101 5/11/43, Memo from George Hill, Speical Assistant to the Deputy Administrator of the Office of Labor, to Conrad Taeuber, Acting Chief of Farm Population and Rural Welfare Bureau of Agricultural Economics. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 1, Box 15: Farm Labor 3-2-1 thru 4-3-1, Folder: Farm Labor 3-4, Jamaican. NACP.

102 Ibid. In reality, the Bahamas had a long history of racial tension. Bahamian Governor Charles Dundas’ private remarks in 1940 illustrate the view held by many local whites regarding the differing abilities between whites and non-whites. When discussing possible economic development options Dundas linked race to labor claiming, “coloured people are by nature and inclination essentially employees and that they are little fitted to be independent producers” and therefore “will do far better as agricultural labourers than as producers.” Dundas believed rural non- whites were better suited to agricultural production, and would therefore fail to as entrepreneurs. Dundas was governor from 1933-1940. (Craton and Saunders, Islanders in the Stream, 273.) According to Fred Sikes, Trinidadians were equally, if not more, vociferous in complaints about racial and labor mistreatments than either of the latter groups. Sikes stated “the Trinidadian as an individual was a mistake for the program” because he was “not in the least docile, was capable of speaking up for himself and did so vigorously.” (Kramer, The Offshores, 6.)

103 Quote by the author, T.L. Thompson, based on Miller’s 1991 oral history interview. (Thompson, “Remembering ‘The Contract,’ 11.) Cordell Thompson brought up the issue reflecting on the experience of those involved in the contract in his 1990 interview, and James Moss articulated the same point in a 1993 speech. (Bahamas Gullah- Geechee Connection blog) According to Nona Patara Martin, “Many black Bahamians, however, developed a dismissive attitude about the system of discrimination that existed in the colony.” Her research revealed a common attitude among Bahamians, as voiced by Bishop Thompson, was that “‘if you don’t appreciate me then I don’t appreciate you. If you don’t accept me then I don’t accept you.’” (Interview with Bishop Gilbert Thompson in The 1942 Riot, digital video recording, The National Archives in Nona Patara Martin, “I’se a man:” The 1942 Riot as an Attack on Bay Street, Discrimination and Injustice in the Bahamas (Thesis. (Ph.D.)—George Mason University, 2012), 152. (http://digilib.gmu.edu/jspui/bitstream/1920/7866/1/MartinNona_dissertation_2012.pdf))

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Racial tensions increased with the end of World War II.104 In the postwar years, relations deteriorated between workers and their white foremen. Thomas Holland of the U.S. Anglo-

American Caribbean Commission argued that during the war, white supervisors treated black workers better than they perhaps would have under normal circumstances. Initially, supervisors did not want to lose their jobs in an essential industry and thus become eligible for military service. After the war ended and the threat of the draft was removed, though, these white supervisors were “no longer restrained about the possibility of friction developing out of their handling” of black foreign laborers.105 Holland noted in particular, white foreman felt threatened by Jamaican men demanding respect and rights. In Holland’s opinion, the former saw Jamaican attitudes and actions as "a breach of the white man's code in the South for handling the negro” because “the white man can't stand a personal affront to himself as a representative of the controlling race.”106 Holland argued that white supervisors believed that “if the Jamaican is allowed to get away with back talk the next thing you know the American black man will be talking back and acting the same way; and from that he believes it is only a short step to complete social chaos."107

Employers hoped Bahamians would be more docile because, although men like Miller resented segregation and claimed to have “relative freedom” living in Nassau, not all Bahamians shared that freedom. Jim Crow segregation, America’s most insidious export, forced many non-

104 Although conditions had not fallen to unsafe levels for non-white guestworkers, risks “arising out of basic differences on the question of the color between the Jamaican and the Southern white man” persisted. (Memo to Taussig from Thomas W Holland; Subject: Jamaican Workers in Florida, 4/24/46, p. 1. RG 43 (RIC), P Entry 14, Box 42, Folder: E12-1 Labor, General 1946. NACP.) Bahamians faced the same racial challenges as Jamaicans.

105 Ibid., 9. Holland was specifically speaking about the treatment of Jamaicans, but again these concerns applied to all non-white laborers.

106 Ibid.

107 Ibid.

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whites in places like Bermuda, the Bahamas, Panama, and other Western Hemisphere countries into second-class citizenship.108 Money and influence enabled American-owned establishments, like the Colonial Hotel in the Bahamas, to enforce segregation as a means to attract and appease

U.S. tourists.109 Bahamian contract workers may have found Florida segregation repugnant and oppressive, but it would not have been completely foreign to most of them, particularly if they hailed from major tourist areas like Nassau.

The emergent temporary foreign labor program’s success required a steady supply of high quality workers, but there was no guarantee the program would function as envisioned. The earlier vignettes regarding labor quality reveal the overlapping issue of labor control. Not only did employers find it difficult to secure quality workers, but they also had trouble managing the ones they received. Program organizers and employers struggled to control workers because federal immigration and labor policies were created and implemented based on theories that could not fully account for an individual’s actions. While the politics of the new system attempted to render workers powerless, these individuals struggled for visibility and to define their place in the new system. These efforts undermined employer claims of docility.

Guestworkers acted in ways that directly and indirectly challenged authorities and made temporary foreign laborers a noticeable feature of Florida’s agricultural landscape. Although the program operated during a largely pre-advocacy era, some politicians and third-party supporters articulated concerns about the treatment of foreign workers in America as well as their impact on domestic farmworkers more broadly.

108 Krista A. Thompson, An Eye for the Tropics: Tourism, Photography, and Framing the Caribbean Perspective (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 238.

109 Ibid.

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CHAPTER 6 WORKERS’ STRUGGLE FOR VISIBILITY DURING THE FARM LABOR PROGRAM, 1943-1966

Windows shattered along Bay Street in June 194, as disgruntled black Bahamian workers took out their frustrations on local employers and power holders in Nassau. Hired to build two

U.S. air and naval bases in the Islands, in an endeavor known collectively as “The Project,” workers were pleased to have steady employment but furious over the offered wages.

Traditionally, American projects paid wages based on the U.S. wage rate, but “The Project” paid workers the domestic Bahamian rate. Workers also found out Americans doing the same job were being paid at the higher U.S. rate.1 Bahamians took to the streets in protest. Attempts by the

Attorney General to appease the crowd failed. A group of men broke off and started smashing storefronts along Bay Street.2 The riot mainly targeted the white political and economic hierarchy, and marked the beginning of black working-class racial and political consciousness in the Bahamas.3

One year later, a riot exploded in Hastings, Florida, a camp housing Bahamians contracted to harvest potatoes. An estimated four to five hundred people participated, more than

1 In 1940, Britain agreed to allow the United States to build air and naval bases in British-held territories. By 1942 two of these projects were underway in the Bahamas. Oakes Field, also known as Main Field, was located just south of Grant’s Town. The other site, Satellite Field, was located in Pine Barron on the western side of the Island. The route used to transport men and equipment between the two sites was called the Burma Road. In terms of wages, Bahamians were further outraged when they found out the Americans had wanted to pay them higher wages, but that their own government prevented it from happening. Nona Patara Martin, “I’se a man:” The 1942 Riot as an Attack on Bay Street, Discrimination and Injustice in the Bahamas (Thesis. (Ph.D.)—George Mason University, 2012), 11- 14. (http://digilib.gmu.edu/jspui/bitstream/1920/7866/1/MartinNona_dissertation_2012.pdf)

2 Ibid., 16-17. Eric Hallinan, the Attorney General, said that initially the United States had wanted to use American workers on the two projects, but that Bahamian authorities had convinced them to use Bahamian laborers instead since they were such “good workers.” He told workers to return home so they wouldn’t “spoil” Americans’ “good impression” of them. Some workers interpreted this as a threat that if they did not stop protesting Americans would replace them. They broke off from the main group and headed to Bay Street.

3 Ibid., 20-21.

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a hundred of whom were arrested. In the end two men were shot during a brawl.4 The Sarasota

Herald-Tribune, painting a compelling picture of the event, reported the sheriff's office received an unverified report that the workers were “celebrating the anniversary of a riot in the Bahamas on June 1 and 2 last year during which a considerable amount of property was destroyed."5 The riot in Hastings undermined Florida growers’ claims that Bahamians were a docile people.6

Hastings was the agricultural heart of the upper St. Johns River Valley in Florida. Early

British pioneer, Denys Rolle moved to the area in 1767 and began a utopian agricultural settlement for the poor based on citrus, cattle, and naval stores. The community had historic connections to the Bahamas. After the British withdrew from the Hastings area in 1783, Rolle moved his community to Exuma, in the Bahamas. Those who remained in Hastings began to produce vegetables for Henry Flagler’s hotels around the turn of the twentieth century. With the construction of Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway, Hastings also began shipping potatoes north, thus giving rise to the area’s thriving potato industry, an agricultural pursuit that still dominates production.7 The community played an important role during World War II, providing the nation and military with the durable crop. To harvest the many thousands of pounds of potatoes, area farmers sought the assistance of foreign workers.

4 “Bahamian Workers Row in Florida,” The Washington Post, June 4, 1943. RG 43 (RIC), P Entry 14, Box 42, Folder: E12-2 Labor-Bahamas 1940-6/43. NACP. There were approximately 1200 workers at the camp.

5 A second unverified report said it broke out after two workers got in a fistfight. (“State Guard is Called out as Bahamians Riot,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune, pages 1, 7. June 3,1943. Accessed March 6, 2014. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1755&dat=19430603&id=460qAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jWQEAAAAIBAJ&pg =3095,3729836.

6 The workers’ rebellion in Hastings further proves although Bahamians may have been less militant than their Caribbean neighbors, they were far from submissive. White Floridians were not the only people guilty of characterizing Bahamians as docile. Nona Patara Martin notes even Bahamians themselves sometimes perpetuated this myth. However, she argues the 1942 riot provided yet another example that they were not. Martin contends the 1942 riot was a turning point in the black Bahaman struggle for political and economic power. (Ibid.)

7 http://www.hastings-fl.com/hastingshistory.html. The area also produced other crops; among them are cabbage, onions, eggplant and ornamental horticulture.

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In the eyes of growers and some government officials, Florida’s new labor regime could only function properly with adequate control of the work force.8 Investigating contestations between program organizers, users, and participants highlights workers’ struggle for visibility.

Individuals and their allies demand just treatment, as demonstrated by camp reports and publications by the African American press and other media outlets. Workers’ actions and attitudes reshaped the emergent labor system. Third-party advocates, like the African American press, Caribbean-based organizations, and some American labor unions assisted in this process by shining a spotlight on questionable and abusive labor practices and conditions. Often these allies also leveraged conversations about guestworkers to generate discussions about domestic workers. Since government officials included both program supporters and detractors, individual’s actions and opinions varied dramatically. But, more often than not, officials embraced policies and practices that benefitted employers rather than protected workers.9 In several noteworthy exceptions, though, government representatives focused on the plight of migrant laborers. Juxtaposing program supporters’ attempts to control and diminish workers’ rights, and workers’ and their allies’ efforts to thwart those endeavors, highlights the obstacles foreign laborers faced in making their voices heard.

Workers complained as a way to air grievances and seek redress for real or perceived wrongs. At times, they went beyond complaints, refusing to work, jumping contracts, and occasionally engaging in violent rebellion. Analyzing the interactions of workers and program

8 Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, “Pick or Fight: The Emergency Farm Labor Program in the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta during World War II.” Agricultural History, Vol. 64. No 2, The United States Department of Agriculture in Historical Perspective (Spring, 1990), 76. For a full history, see Woodruff’s book, American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta (University of North Carolina Press, 2012.)

9 The USDA was the general exception to this rule. From the start, its main purpose was to further the interests of agricultural producers. Like the U.S. government, the Bahamian one was divided in its interests. Some members welcomed the program as an opportunity to employ large numbers of Bahamians, but others expressed concern over the treatment of those workers.

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supporters helps frame the nation’s—and Florida’s in particular—complicated labor history and long reliance on invisible workers.10 Workers’ ongoing efforts to become visible illustrate the boundaries of citizenship and human rights, and how these issues played out in the daily lives of migrant workers in Florida’s farm fields and labor camps.11

Challenging the Terms and Conditions of Employment

During both the war and postwar years growers and governments struggled to control imported workers by managing these laborers’ behavior and expectations. Workers, though, challenged employers regularly raising concerns over housing, wages, working conditions, and mobility. These contestations highlight the difficulties in creating and implementing the new labor regime. Workers’ actions forced authorities to address the immediate issues at hand, as well as their broader implications regarding issues like citizenship and basic human rights.

Writing a letter to the War Food Administration (WFA), the “Zellwood Workers”—

Bahamian guestworkers transferred from Zellwood, Florida, to Pungo, Virginia—expressed frustrations over their current situation. Zellwood was part of the muckland farms created by the draining of Lake Apopka, during the Second World War.12 The “Zellwood workers” arrived in

Virginia, hungry from their journey north. They were given insufficient food both in terms of quality and nutrition, as compared to what they received at Zellwood. The men also argued

10 Janet H. Momsen, ed. Gender, Migration, and Domestic Service, Vol. Volume 1 of International Studies of Women and Place Series (New York: Routledge Press, 1999). Lenni B. Benson, “The Invisible Worker,” North Carolina Journal of International Law & Commercial Regulation, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Spring 2002): 490. Daniel Rothenberg, With These Hands: The Hidden World of Migrant Farmworkers Today (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1998), 7.

11 As Alice Kessler-Harris notes, in the United States unskilled laborers including farm and domestic workers were excluded from the full benefits of citizenship. She attributes this to the country’s emphasis on specific types of work as the main criteria that conferred rights on people, rather than on their country of residence. (Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 4.) Foreign guestworkers were excluded from all forms of citizenship, and therefore the benefits associated with them, since they were not citizens according to residence or valued labor standards. They contested their second-class status through their daily lives.

12 See Chapter 2, note 40 for more information on farming in the Apopka area.

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employment conditions were unfair and unsatisfactory, since there was only enough work to keep half the men employed, yet everyone was required to pay for their own meals.13 The letter, written in a beautiful script, is illuminating.

The fact that the men signed their individual names at the end of the letter indicates that they possessed a level of education beyond that of many traditional American migrant farmworkers. Not only did these workers feel they had the right to protest for better conditions, they also had the tools to do so. The letter was addressed directly to the WFA, not the camp management, Bahamian government, or other group tasked with representing the workers.

Rather than relying on intermediaries to relay their complaints to the proper authorities, the men chose to take action themselves and direct their concerns to the highest agency responsible for maintaining the program.

The ninety-two workers clearly identify themselves as “Zellwood Workers,” and only a careful examination of internal Office of Labor communications reveals that the workers were

Bahamian. The Zellwood moniker begs the question, did the men choose to identify themselves as part of the American labor system, rather than as Bahamians specifically, since they would likely be deported if they were identified as foreign troublemakers? It was not unusual for workers to be repatriated for stirring up trouble, and it is likely these men knew others who had suffered this fate.14 Repatriation had significant financial repercussions. The return trip would be deducted from the worker’s pay (or monies held in the mandatory savings account) and the

13 Letter to Hudson Wren, from CE Herdt, Subjec: Employment Conditions at Pungo, Virginia—Bahamians, July 4, 1944. RG 224 (Office of Labor), PI 51 Entry 6: General Correspondence, Aug. 1943-Dec. 1944, Box 17: 30 thru 30- C61, Folder: 30-C61 Bahamian. NARA College Park (NACP.)

14 James Moss recalled working on the Zellwood celery farms in the 1950s, but his experience was quite different from the self-proclaimed Zellwood workers. The latter leveraged their experiences at the Florida farm to try and improve their existing situation in Virginia. Moss, on the other hand, refused to work in celery at Zellwood because the muck irritated his skin so badly. But, this resulted in deportation. (Speech by James Moss, 1993. The Bahamas Folklore Collection blog, Collection editor Cordell Thompson. http://gullahgeecheeconnection.wordpress.com/the- contract-2/.)

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worker could be blacklisted form future employment. Another possible reason for adopting the name of their former work camp was that they were indirectly applauding the treatment (at least in terms of food) that they received there. This might encourage the WFA to look favorably upon their current complaints, since they were expressing overall contentedness with the program, just not with the particulars of their current situation. Workers’ experiences at Zellwood reshaped their identity. No longer were they simply Bahamian nationals; rather, they were members of the

U.S. agricultural labor force calling upon the government to improve the situation of its workers.

At times government officials, like Bahamian Assemblyman Bert Cambridge, advocated vociferously on behalf of his black, working-class constituents. In 1943, less than a year into the program, Cambridge—a black member of the Southern District of Nassau and leader of the

Bahamas Labor Federation—made “vitriolic” comments about the American Farm Labor

Program before the House of Assembly.15 Cambridge insinuated that program participants were more likely to be honest with him than they were with the Duke of Windsor or other high- ranking, white Bahamian officials, because he, Cambridge, was one of the people. Recent returning officials had brought back “glowing reports,” but Cambridge concluded that only represented one side of the story. Whereas those Bahamian officials referenced the “pleasing remarks made about the Bahamian laborers,” Cambridge thought it was most important to

15 12/15/43, American Consulate, Nassau Bahamas, Statements Made by Members of the House of Assembly Regarding Bahamian Laborers in the United States, p. 1. RG 59 Department of State (DOS), Decimal File 1940- 1944, Box: 3881, 811.504/2350 to 811.504 BWI/48, Folder: 811.504 BWI 20. NACP. Nona Patara Martin, notes in her dissertation, “I’se a man,” that Bertram Cambridge and two others, Charles Rhodriguez and Percy Edward Christie “fashioned” themselves labor leaders. Cambridge was also a musician and community leader. Cambridge ran for the Assembly in the weeks following the 1942 Bahamian riot, but Martin argues he had no influence over the people he claimed to represent at the time of the riot. (Martin, “I’se a man,” 85, 139, 152, 191-92.) However, Cambridge was on the executive committee of the Bahamas Federation of Labour. According to the Bahamas “Father of Labour,” Randol Fawkes, the committee and others met with the Labour Office the day before the Burma Road Riot to try and improve wages. (Fawkes played a pivotal role in organizing Bahamian workers in the 1950s and 1960s.) Fawkes claimed that the Attorney General threatened to import foreign labor to replace Bahamians, and that was what triggered the riot the following day. Fawkes succeeded in getting June 1 recognized as Bahamian Labour Day in 1967. (Randol Fawkes, “The First Labour Day,” from the “The Positive Achievements of Sir Randol Fawkes: Bahamian Hero,” blog. (http://dennisdamesonline.net/sir_randol/The_First_Labour_Day.html))

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address the treatment of the workers.16 After visiting the camps and meeting with more than 600

Bahamians, he heard many complaints, the most common regarding contracts and food provisions.

Cambridge contended that upon arrival in Florida, workers’ “contract was violated in almost its entirety.”17 A fellow assemblyman supported this claim, noting he had heard that the original contracts were thrown out upon arrival and new ones signed.18 Workers complained that they were told they would be allowed to cook their own food, but were later denied this right and camp managers removed cooking utensils to prevent them from doing so anyway. Additionally, although the workers were told camp-prepared meals would cost twenty-five cents; the

Bahamians were charged thirty-five cents.19 Cambridge found these changes and several other incidents concerning.

Several Bahamians had died while in the United States, and Cambridge argued those deaths resulted from neglect. He reported seeing overloaded trucks transporting workers. In one case, a rope was tied across the back “to support those in it,” and there were others hanging onto the back.20 Cambridge was particularly concerned that worker transportation could be fatal given the overcrowding, driving speeds, and poor road conditions.21 Migrant transportation was problematic in 1943; and as Edward R. Murrow reported in the 1960 documentary Harvest of

Shame, it remained a serious issue throughout much of the twentieth century. Whereas federal

16 Ibid, 12/14/32 American Consulate statement.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., 4.

19 Ibid., 2.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid., Cambridge argued a full truck traveling at 30 miles per hour on a typical rural Florida road could easily topple over killing the workers.

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and state authorities regulated the transportation of cattle and other livestock, no such provisions existed to protect migrant farmworkers on the road.22

Adequate housing had long been an issue in agriculture, hence the Resettlement

Administration/FSA’s efforts during the Great Depression and early war years to provide satisfactory living conditions. But, not all communities had access to the early Migrant Farm

Labor Camps and even if they did, there was no guarantee that it would substantially improve workers’ lives. Broward County requested a camp from the FSA in 1941 because it would allow

“cheap farm labor to come into this County from North Florida, Georgia, and Alabama.”23 The request highlights tensions between different government agents’ and agencies’ perspectives.

While the FSA promoted the camps as a means to improving workers’ lives, local officials and employers saw the camps as a way to create a labor surplus, depress wages, and simultaneously shift the burden of housing the new workers to the federal government. In the early war years, the Broward official hoped to leverage housing as a way to increase the quantity of available workers. In the years following the importation of offshore labor, housing was used to force domestic workers out of the market by making it largely available only to foreign labor.24

Domestic farmworkers expressed frustration that foreign workers often had privileged access to the better housing in agricultural communities. During World War II, the FSA Migrant

22 Edward R. Murrow, Harvest of Shame, television documentary, Directed by Fred W. Friendly (1960, New York: CBS. Videotape.) In June 1957, near Fayetteville, North Carolina, two trucks collided—one filled with potatoes, the other with migrant workers. Twenty African American bean pickers died, including one child. (Stu Beitler, “Fayetteville, NC Truck and Flat Bed Collide,” The Daily Times News, Burlington, North Carolina. June 7 and 8, 1957. Posted 3/21/09. http://www3.gendisasters.com/north-carolina/12009/fayetteville-nc-truck-flat-bed-collide- june-1957)

23 RG 96 Farm Home Administration (FHA), Entry 93: Office of the Director; General Correspondence, 1934-1942. Box 3, Folder: Rehabilitation and Resettlement; Migrant Labor Camps-Request for Camp-South Broward Co., Fla. NARA—Southeastern Region (Atlanta.)

24 Cindy Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 173-174.

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Labor Camps—originally created to improve the lives of domestic migrants—became “Foreign

Farm Labor Supply Centers.”25 Program organizers found that “employers' living quarters were inadequate or would not pass the State sanitary regulations," and so they sought alternative lodging solutions.26 The problem was that this change displaced many domestic farmworkers in favor of foreign workers, since the foreign labor contracts during the war years said workers either had be housed in U.S. government camps or in state-approved employer owned facilities.

The Extension Service reported having about 5000 foreign workers placed in their camps. By

1946, of the thirty-one Farm Labor Supply Centers in Florida, three were for white domestic workers and five were for “colored domestic” workers.27 However, two of the five housed both foreign and domestic black workers. The remaining centers housed only foreign workers.28

Some Bahamians were relatively satisfied with the housing provided to them through the government-run program. In the “permanent” labor centers, like Pahokee (located in Palm Beach

County), which housed approximately 600 Bahamian laborers, the workers generally reported good conditions, with only a few individual complaints.29 The center also had a mobile dental

25 Ibid.

26 Annual Report by the State Supervisor, Emergency Farm Labor, 1943, p. 2. RG 33 Extension Service (ES), PI-83 Entry 48, Box 2: CO-IN, 1943, Folder: Farm Labor Supervisor, Annual Report, 1943. NACP.

27 "An Analysis of Farm Labor Statistical Report-1946,” 3/7/1947. UF Archives, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Public Records Collection, Series 91a: Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Box 7, Folder: Farm Labor Reports 1946,7 & Emergency Farm Labor Report 4/15/43-6/30/46.

28 Ibid.

29 1/4/44 Letter from John H.E. McAndrews, the American Vice-Consul in Nassau; To the Secretary of State; Subject: Submitting Statements of Local Press on Bahamian Labor Camps in the USA by J.A. Hughes, former Labor Officer in the Bahamas; attached article in the Nassau Guardian from 12/30/43 describes J.A. Hughes observations following his visit to Florida labor camps. RG 59 (DOS), Decimal File 1940-44, Box 3881, Folder: 811.504 BWI/26. NACP. The Annual Report for the British West Indian Central Labour Organisation (BWICLO) reported that Bahamians’ housing conditions were generally satisfactory and that when they requested improvements, they usually received prompt attention. The report is interesting because the Bahamas were not part of BWICLO. This may have been the case, but it’s difficult to know if conditions were truly improved, or simply improved enough so that workers preferred to remain there rather than face repatriation for complaining. In addition to claiming Bahamian concerns were promptly addressed, the writer also argues Bahamians’ “general attitude,” and lower cost, made the program more appealing and run more smoothly. He noted that it was considered common

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clinic and a hospital ward. Pahokee was located on the southeast rim of Lake Okeechobee, just north of Belle Glade.30 Preferring Pahokee labor camp, thirteen Bahamians faced deportation for refusing to live in growers’ private quarters.31 The Okeechobee Center, however, received less favorable reviews.32 Situated in a low-laying area, drainage during the rainy season posed a constant problem.33 Two years later, in 1946, federal authorities visited the camp and reported inadequate conditions including dirty kitchens and mess halls, where "clouds of flies swarmed around the kitchen door where garbage was scattered around on the ground.”34 Further south in

Broward County, nestled between Hollywood and Ft. Lauderdale, was the Dania “tent” camp.

Tent camps received mixed reviews by workers, often depending on the weather. Complaints increased on cold or wet days when their tents did not provide the adequate protection.35

In the case of the Vero Beach temporary tent camp, located in Indian River County, residents eventually found housing conditions poor enough that they requested repatriation rather

knowledge that if given a choice (and if it were possible), the United States would prefer to get all of its labor from the Bahamas, rather than from the Caribbean nations. (RG 43 Records of the International Commission (RIC), P Entry 14: Anglo-American Caribbean Commission, 1940-1946, Subject Files, Box 42: E2-1 to E12-4, Folder: E12- Labor, General 1946. NACP.)

30 Vegetable production in the Pahokee and Belle Glade area included, green beans, celery, and sweet corn.

31 Pahokee Farm Labor Supply Center, Narrative Report. September 1944. RG 224 Office of Labor (OL), PI 51 Entry 6, Box 1: C2-C29 thru C2-R36, Folder: C2-R36, Florida, By Date. NACP.

32 Okeechobee was the name given to the center, town, county, and prominent lake. The town and labor center resided on the northern side of the vast body of water.

33 The Okeechobee Farm Labor Supply Center was located in Palm Beach County. Okeechobee Farm Labor Supply Center, Narrative Report. May 1944. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 6, Box 1, Folder: C2-R36, Florida, By Date. NACP.

34 4/24/46, Memo to Taussig from Thomas W. Holland, Subject: Jamaican Workers in Florida. RG 43 (RIC), P Entry 14, Box 42, Folder: E12-Labor, General 1946. NACP.

35 1/4/44 Letter from John H.E. McAndrews, the American Vice-Consul in Nassau; To the Secretary of State; Subject: Submitting Statements of Local Press on Bahamian Labor Camps in the USA by J.A. Hughes, former Labor Officer in the Bahamas; attached article in the Nassau Guardian from 12/30/43 describes J.A. Hughes observations following his visit to Florida labor camps. RG 59 (DOS), Decimal File 1940-44, Box 3881, Folder: 811.504 BWI/26. NACP.

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than remain in the camp and continue working.36 The Camp Manager reported that the workers tents were “very rotten” and that they attempted to prevent leaking by doubling and tripling up tents to try and keep the rain out. In a similar vein, investigators found the Gould’s tent camp

“definitely inferior.” The tents were crowded, lacked interior lighting, were hot during the warm months and cold during winter, and the camp only had pit toilets.37 The manager’s candid assessment highlights the sometimes-incontrovertible shortcomings of government provided housing. Consequently, the Bahamians clearly indicated that they would prefer to return home than continue to pay for and suffer inadequate housing. They expressed frustrations at having to pay rent for leaky lodgings that could not even keep their clothing dry during the day when they were out working. Although the camp manager tried to justify the poor accommodations by pointing out that in the wake of the war there simply was nothing better available, the workers were not swayed by this argument and chose to return home rather than live in conditions they considered undesirable.38

Conditions were sometimes less than ideal for foreign workers, but American farm laborers generally faced worse prospects, especially if they were African American. Often excluded from government-run centers, and with no guarantee that the available employer

36 Narrative Reports, Vero Beach, February 1946. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 8, Box 24: 1946 Camps 12-1 thru 1946 Camps 12-1, Folder: Camps 12-1, Florida, Vero Beach FLSC. NACP.

37 Interestingly, Holland was comparing the quality to the sugar camps and quarters at South Dade Camp. He did note that the showers, kitchens, and mess halls did appear to be pretty clean. The report was commissioned to determine “whether or not working and living conditions among the Jamaicans have deteriorated in recent months compared with previous seasons, and whether or not, as a consequence, the Jamaicans in Florida are being exposed to new and unusual hazards.” This clearly stated goal indicates complaints by workers or other affiliated individuals warranted an in depth review. (4/24/46, Memo to Taussig from Thomas W. Holland, Subject: Jamaican Workers in Florida. RG 43 (RIC), P Entry 14, Box 42, Folder: E12-Labor, General 1946. NACP.)

38 Narrative Reports, Vero Beach, February 1946. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 8, Box 24, Folder: Camps 12-1, Florida, Vero Beach FLSC. NACP. Fortunately, a report from Broward County in 1947 noted that since the start of the labor importation program, “there has been marked improvement in housing conditions for farm workers." (14) UF Archives, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Public Records Collection, Series 91a: Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Box 12, Folder: Broward. Narrative Reports, Vero Beach, February 1946. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 8, Box 24: 1946 Camps 12-1 thru 1946 Camps 12-1, Folder: Camps 12-1, Florida, Vero Beach FLSC. NACP.

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housing would meet state sanitation regulations, domestic workers were left to fend for themselves. The Extension Service noted that in 1947, of the 1253 interstate workers, nearly all white laborers were housed in labor centers. However, among African American workers all but

123 were left to find private employer-owned housing.39 African American workers faced significant disadvantages in Florida, but they were not the only ones to suffer mistreatment and limited access to decent housing.

In 1954, the Department of Labor reported that during the winter of that year there were approximately 500 African Americans, 800 Puerto Ricans, and 1500 Texas Mexicans living in

Immokalee, Florida, which was identified as having some of the worst housing situations in the

United States. It noted that many of the inhabitants were women and children and that that not only was the housing situation “unsatisfactory,” but in fact “In many cases, the workers had no houses at all and were living on the banks of irrigation ditches or on the open ground.”40 In an effort to meet the demands of Florida growers, the U.S. government justified shifting the focus and purpose of the FSA Migrant Labor Camps from providing basic necessitates to migrant labor families, to becoming foreign worker supply centers. The government argued that under the new system, every bed would be filled by a worker, rather than by a worker’s family, and therefore it was a better use of resources.41

39 Ibid., 2, 7. In 1947, the federal government decided to dispose of the Centers since it would no longer be directly running the guestworker program. According to the manager at Osceola, a white labor center, this decision concerned many farmworkers. Traditionally they looked forward to returning to the Center with its “reasonable rent and sanitary quarters,” and he noted that for many, “For the first time in their lives this Center has afforded them an opportunity to make a decent living for their families.” Furthermore, he predicted closures would result in additional burdens. Arguing it was already difficult finding work for white laborers, the manager contended they were at a higher risk of needing welfare, especially if affordable housing dried up. (RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 8 General Correspondence 1945-1945. Box 24, Folder: Camps 12-1, Florida, Osceola FLSC. NACP.)

40 Report To the Secretary of Labor From Robert C. Goodwin, Subject: Puerto Rican Situation in Florida, 8/14/54. RG 174 (DOL), NC-58 Entry 36: Subject Files of Secretary James P. Mitchell, 1953-1960, Box 56: 1954 Departmental Subject Files, State-State, Folder: 195-State Correspondence, A-L. NACP.

41 Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor, 176.

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Foreign workers had to be willing to come to the United States, and decent housing became one way to satisfy guestworkers’ demands for fair treatment. It was in farmers’ best interest to encourage the U.S. government to create and maintain farm labor supply centers that workers found relatively satisfactory. By providing inadequate housing and working conditions to domestic African Americans, and excluding them from the government-run housing they previously relied on, growers essentially drove many domestic black workers out of the agricultural labor market, thus perpetuating and reinforcing their labor shortage claims and enabling them to import foreign labor.42 The Office of Labor reported that in 1946 domestic workers were less willing to travel because of the uncertainty of housing in a given place. They also noted that because most domestic workers had families, they preferred the stability of remaining in one place.43 Finally, unlike their offshore counterparts, domestic workers faced the additional burden of paying for their own transportation if they decided to move.44 Together,

42 The President’s Commission on Migratory Labor reported in the early 1950s that that “inadequate housing facilities are ‘a major factor in the present difficulty of procuring and holding an adequate labor supply. The evidence is clear that if farm workers were offered housing conditions which met standards of decency, it would be much less difficult to find an adequate labor supply.’” By failing to supply adequate housing, employers perpetuated the myth that a labor shortage existed, and that foreign labor was the best solution to the problem. (William Tyson, “Migratory Labor: Some Legal, Economic, and Social Aspects,” Mercer Law Review. Vol. 3, Issue 2 (Spring 1952), 289. Footnote 41 refers to the Report on the President’s Commission on Migratory Labor, p. 150.)

43 Nearly 15 years later, a Senate investigation yielded virtually the same findings explaining, “the availability of adequate family housing seems to be the key to developing a stable farm labor force in many areas.” Many present day farm labor advocates would agree with the assessment that access to adequate housing could fundamentally improve labor supplies and workers’ quality of life. (RG 174 (DOL), UD Entry 2: Records of the Secretary of Labor, W. Willard Wirtz, 1962-1969, Box 260: Farm Labor (May 1965), Folder: ES-2-6-1 Farm Labor (April 27) 1965. NACP.) Even in sugar cane, a challenging crop to find adequate labor for given its notoriously unpleasant working conditions, Secretary of Labor Williard Wirtz suggested that improving housing to entice more domestic workers. Wirtz pointed out that if producers could “provision of family housing equal in quality to that build for the Jamaican workers” that “would be of great help in this recruitment program.” Wirtz raised an important issue. Most housing was built in a barracks-style appropriate for single men, but inadequate for family units. Consequently, many workers were loath to accept work that would mean long separations from family members. (5/12/65, Letter from Wirtz to William D. Pawley, President of Talisman Sugar Corporation. RG 174 (DOL), UD Entry 2, Box 260, Folder: ES-2-6-1 Farm Labor, (May 8-12) 1965. NACP.)

44 1946 Narrative Report, Osceola. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 8, Box 24, Folder: Camps 12-1, Florida, Osceola FLSC. NACP.

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these factors strengthened farmers’ claims that offshore workers were the key to a strong workforce and future agricultural success.45

Adequate housing alone, however, did not guarantee foreign worker satisfaction. Many laborers expressed concern about wages and working conditions as well. When workers felt their concerns were not being addressed, they intensified their protests. From the program’s beginning, Jamaicans expressed frustrations with the terms of employment, citing a range of issues including, undesirable conditions, loss of personal property to contract breaches.46 In

October of 1943, the Extension Service received a call from U.S. Sugar that 500 of the 800

Jamaican workers “decided that they would return to Jamaica and not work in the sugar cane fields.”47 The workers who remained also challenged the system that sought to take advantage of them. Rather than simply working, they demonstrated “bad attitudes” and caused problems for employers.48 “Great numbers” of them “refused to work at all” and many went “out of their way

45 Believing the guestworker program would terminate sometime in 1945 or 1946 with the end of the war, Dade County farmers requested the government continue to maintain the centers and house farm laborers. Far from being a benevolent gesture, the proposal had farmers’ best interests at heart. First, if implemented, the federal government would continue to bear the cost of housing workers, thereby releasing farmers from that obligation or from having to pay workers enough that they could afford decent housing. This second point was articulated in the local agricultural agent’s report, which noted farmers argued they could not compete with construction or industry wages. Thus, rather than raising wages so that workers could afford to rent or purchase their own housing, growers wanted the government facilities kept open for domestic use, which would enable them to continue paying substandard wages. (1945-1946 Narrative Report; Chas. H. Steffani, County Agricultural Agent. UF Archives, P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Public Records Collection, Series 91a: Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Box 13, Folder: Dade.)

46 DOS United States Section Anglo-American Caribbean Commission, Memo on Importation of Agricultural Laborers from Jamaica and the Bahamas. 7/31/43. RG 59 (DOS) Decimal File 1940-1944, Box 3881, 811.504/2350 to 811.504 BWI/48, Folder: 811.504 BWI/12. NACP. See also Letter from AP Speer to MC Wilson. 10/19/43. RG 33 (ES) PI-83 Entry 46: Records Concerning the Farm Labor Program; General and Other Correspondence and Related Records, 1943-48, Box 14: State Corr., 2nd Service, 1943-46, AL-KY, Folder: label torn off, but would likely say "Florida 1943-1946." NACP.

47 Ibid., RG 33.

48 Meeting of the State Defense Council’s Committee on Agriculture and Processing Labor. 10/21/43. RG 191 (Florida State Defense Council), Series .419; Box 3, Folder: USDA (1941-1944). Florida Department of State (FDS), State Archives of Florida.

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to intimidate the few who wanted to” work.49 As a result, employers worked with federal officials and local law enforcement to conduct large-scale jailing of workers for violating their contracts. The penalty for contract violation was deportation. Paul Van der Schouw, Chief of the

Farm Labor Supply Section (of the War Food Administration’s Office of Labor) thought that if things progressed at the current rate, “before long a majority of the Jamaicans would be deported.”50 Although the growers claimed to need these workers, the mass deportations served their interests in the long run. Since deportees were “forever stopped from reentry,” the measure was meant to cow future workers into submission.51

Of the various Caribbean nationals participating in the program, Bahamians were generally the least likely to escalate their protests beyond voicing basic complaints. Nevertheless, on at least a few occasions they refused to work in protest. James Moss, former President of the

Bahamian American Association, recalled an incident from the early days of the program in a

1993 speech commemorating the contract program. Moss remembered being sent to the tomato fields of Ojus, Florida (present day Aventura.) The workers arrived at the field in the morning and discovered it soaking wet. They refused to work and were returned to the camp. Officials went through the camp questioning the individuals that refused to work, and promptly deported most for violating their contracts.52 Moss, claiming he had a bad cold and could not work under the existing conditions, temporarily evaded deportation.53 From Ojus, he traveled to Okeechobee and then north to Zellwood to work the celery farms. Moss recounted how the muck the celery

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid.

52 Speech by James Moss, 1993. The Bahamas Folklore Collection blog.

53 Ibid.

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was planted in “would get on the skin and eat you all up” and how all night his skin felt “like it was on fire, because of irritation from the dirt.”54 Moss again refused to work in these conditions, and this time he was deported.55

In 1944 following a major December freeze when the U.S. government decided to move

Bahamian workers into sugar. However, both they and the transferred domestic workers refused to cut cane, instead preferring to ride out the hard times.56 Domestic workers with families were especially loath to leave, since the Everglades Center provided a school. In that year, workers of all backgrounds also refused to move north up the East Coast because the wages were too low to make it worthwhile.57 In 1946 workers again rejected harvesting jobs in the sugar cane fields at

Fellsmere, Florida, because they objected to the type of work and to leaving their women behind in the labor camps.58 In another incident from January of the same year, the camp manager at

Okeechobee—a center located on the northern rim of the lake by the same name—argued that although Bahamians were usually good workers, they refused to do the “less desirable type of work” or jobs that would pay “them less while others are doing better paid work.”59

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid. Moss notes that on his way back to the Bahamas, he stayed at the Dorsey Hotel in Miami. His speech does not include dates as to when all of these events transpired, but based on a roughly estimated timeline, it likely would have been in 1943 or 1944. If that was the case, it would have been around same time Assemblyman Bert Cambridge of the Bahamas denounced the treatment of Bahamians at the Dorsey Hotel.

56 Everglades Farm Labor Supply Center, Narrative Report. 1/1944. RG 224 (Office of Labor), PI 51 Entry 6, Box 1, Folder: C2-R36, Florida, By Date. NACP.

57 Ibid.

58 Letter from EF DeBusk, State Supervisor, Emergency Farm Labor, Cooperative Extension Work in Agriculture & Home Economics to CWE Pittman of the Extension Service in D.C. RG 33 (ES), PI-83 Entry 46, Box 14, State Corr., 2nd Service, 1943-46, AL-KY, Folder: Label missing (would likely say “Florida 1943-1946.) NACP.

59 Narrative Reports, Okeechobee, January 1946, p. 2. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 8, Box 24, Folder: Camps 12-1, Florida, Okeechobee FLSC. NACP. Cindy Hahamovitch, No Man’s Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor (Princeton University Press, 2011), 69. The traditional crops grown in the Okeechobee region included cabbage, celery, beans, sugar cane, and some potatoes.

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An incident from the Okeechobee Mobile Camp demonstrates how low wages facilitated a further decline in relations between workers and camp managers over the course of 1946.

Bahamians were unwilling to accept difficult, low-paying work. The camp manager, though, argued the root cause of the problem was Bahamian laziness. He argued workers would only cut celery because it paid an hourly wage, therefore allowed them to “do as little actual work as possible” while “getting as much pay as possible for it.”60 By May of 1946 tensions escalated between the manager and the workers; he accused the latter of preferring repatriation over waiting around the camp for work or working in the fields for low wages.61 The war’s closure altered employment conditions in 1946. As one supply center manager noted, “The general consensus of opinion is that the glorious years of war wages are over and that there are going to be hard times in the future."62 It became increasingly challenging to place workers in the “better paid work.” Declining wages, furthermore, did not stem the flow of foreign laborers into the country. Their presence exacerbated the situation by flooding the labor market even more.

Harvesting throughout most of Florida tapered off in May, so it was unlikely significant work opportunities would be available to Bahamians awaiting transfers to new destinations.

Bahamians joined the program expecting earnings that would make the sacrifice of leaving the

Islands and their families worthwhile. Camp managers, on the other hand, believed that if

Bahamians came to the United States on a work contract, they should accept employment regardless of the remuneration. Bahamians argued that if they were going to make little money, or actually lose money while waiting for possible job opportunities to arise, then they would be

60 Monthly Narrative Report for the Month of February, 1946, Osceola Farm Labor Supply Center, Belle Glade, Florida. Prepared by Emmett S. Roberts, Center Manager. P. 2-3. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 8, Box 24, Folder: Camps 12-1, Florida, Osceola FLSC, NACP.

61 Ibid., May 1946, p.1.

62 Ibid., October, 1946.

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better off returning to the Bahamas. Employers recruited a handful of white Bahamian workers for the dairy industry in 1946. Of the 90 recruited, 41 terminated their contracts because of

“conditions of work and climatic conditions being more rigorous than those to which Bahamians

(particularly Out Islanders) are accustomed.”63 More continued to depart and in the end, all but seven had returned to the Bahamas.64

Even though Bahamians continued to participate in the contract program, frustrations with wages and mistreatment continued well into the 1950s when the program switched from government to privately run. Returning workers’ developed unique relationships with their employers that sometimes could improve their experiences. In an interview collected in 1991,

Calvin Bethel recalled his time as a contract worker forty years earlier. According to Bethel, he became the trusted hand of one of his employers, to the point that he managed the “several hundred employees” on the farm and even had the power to sign checks on his employer’s behalf.65 However, in an interview collected a year later, Bethel recalled “protesting in 1956 the wage levels of an employer in Pompano Beach, Florida who paid $5.50 per day for a 19-hour workday.”66 Bethel’s testimonies highlight the conflicting realities of guestworker program experiences. Based on the description of his relationship with the first employer, it appears that the program served the interests of both workers and growers. His second story, however, illustrates how power dynamics favored employers and how easily they could exploit workers.

63 2/23/46, Report for Quarter ending 9/20/45. P. 23.1946 Quarterly figures for numbers of workers terminating contracts & returning to Bahamas. CO 23/814, Importation of Labor to Florida.

64 Ibid., Fourteen additional workers departed between September and December, 1945, and 28 more followed suit by March of 1946, leaving only 7 of the original 90 white workers. (4/25/46, Report for Quarter ending 12/31/45 (p.9); 6/19/46, Report for Quarter ending 3/31/46 (p. 5.))

65 T.L. Thompson, “Remembering ‘The Contract’: Recollections of Bahamians,” The International Journal of Bahamian Studies (2012), 10. Apparently Bethel also traded stocks for his employer.

66 Quote from T.L. Thomson. (Ibid.) During the early 1950s, agricultural workers were still excluded from federal minimum wage laws.

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Not only were workers likely to earn low wages, a 19 hour workday was unreasonable by all standards. In addition to working long hours, citrus workers like Bethel had to shimmy up and down ladders with large heavy sacks of fruit. It is no surprise that Bethel recalled some men falling off the ladders.67

Adverse working conditions also included mistreatment by employers. Samuel Miller, a contract worker in 1952, recalled working for a manager that would kick over a picker’s entire box of fruit to check the size of each piece and would “‘leave ‘em on the ground till you pick

‘em up…then he would [say]: ‘Pick that up, boy.’”68 Workers like Miller endured demeaning treatment like this because they did not want to lose the opportunity to work. The memory of this treatment stuck with Miller for forty years; he made a point to use his interview to make visible his experiences and those of his fellow workers.

Even with the development of large-scale agriculture, Florida’s natural environment remained a hostile landscape. As mentioned previously, James Moss found the muckland farms such a terrible place in which to work in that he refused his assignment and was repatriated.69

Both Samuel Miller and Calvin Bethel also commented on the environmental challenges Florida posed. Miller recalled mosquitoes so thick “You could rake your han’ like this an’ grab a hand full o’ ‘em.”70 He also remembered how the water iced over in the morning and how men’s toes would freeze in fields.71 Bethel specifically recalled encountering poisonous snakes. In light of

67 Ibid. Bethel (1992.)

68 Ibid. Miller (1991.)

69 Speech by James Moss, 1993. The Bahamas Folklore Collection blog.

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid.

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these experiences, some workers, like Moss, opted to quit working and were sent home. Others chose to stay and voice their discontent.

Wage and working condition issues persisted throughout the life of the program. In 1966, the final year Bahamians participated in the offshore program, workers only harvested strawberries and citrus. Strawberry wages often fluctuated, and since there was no minimum wage set for picking, the adverse wage rate stipulation did little to deter wages from plummeting.72 The continued presence of large numbers of foreign labors further drove down wage rates. Citrus harvesting traditionally paid higher wages, so Bahamians preferred working in that crop. However, it was also one of the most dangerous harvesting jobs since workers carrying heavy bags or baskets of fruit risked falling off ladders.73 Laborers expressed frustration over the dilemma they found themselves in—they wanted to earn the highest wages possible, but also expose themselves to minimal risks. By the end of the wartime program, liaison officers reported that foreign citrus workers had become “more demanding and less manageable.”74 The workers demanded they be placed in well-paying, safe jobs. When they felt their demands were not met, they refused to work or voiced their frustrations in a myriad of ways.

Caribbean Islanders and British Hondurans were also vocal critics of undesirable conditions. Indeed, managers perceived these latter groups as even more consistently militant than the Bahamians. One of the largest camp riots involved Barbadians and Jamaicans at Camp

Murphy in 1945. The U.S. government established Camp Murphy, situated between Stuart and

Jupiter, Florida in 1942, as a secret radar training school. The camp occupied over 11,000 acres

72 Only sugar harvesting had an established minimum wage guarantee. Peter Kramer, The Offshores, St. Petersburg, August 1966, p. 45. RG 174 (DOL), UD Entry 2, Box 372, Folder: ES-2-6-1 Farm Labor, Aug. 11-20, 1966. NACP.

73 T.L. Thompson, “Remembering ‘The Contract,’” (Bethel, 1992)

74 Narrative Reports, Hastings, April 1946. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 8, Box 24, Folder: Camps 12-1, Florida, Hastings FLSC. NACP.

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and had facilities to house over 6,000 men. Decommissioned in 1944, it was turned over for use as migrant housing. In 1945, many workers housed at Camp Murphy awaited voluntary repatriation, while others faced deportation for attempting to strike while employed on Florida sugar farms. A few of the former hoped they would be sent to Virginia to await repatriation, and could then sign up for industrial jobs in New Jersey and Wisconsin, as had happened with almost two thousand West Indian workers in 1945.75 This, however, did not pan out and the workers found themselves stranded at Camp Murphy awaiting repatriation. A riot broke out—involving

250 Jamaicans and Barbadians—over which group would get to leave first.76 The stranded workers voiced their discontent in the only way they felt they could in this highly restricted environment—they rioted. And although their concerns raised some red flags among their countrymen, they remained largely invisible to American observers.

The Christian Science Monitor reported the men rioted because they did not want to return to “their comparatively drab former existence after sampling the high wages and luxury goods during their employment in the United States.”77 This turned out to be largely false. A conversation between the Department of Agriculture’s Office of Labor and the Department of

State articulates a more accurate picture, but still falls short of the mark. The Deputy Director for the Office of Labor correctly identified the dispute occurring between Jamaicans and Barbadians, but he simply attributed it to “long standing” ill will between the two nationalities, concluding

75 Hahamovitch, No Man’s Land, footnote 54, p. 259. Ibid.

76 Ibid., 80. For more extensive reading on Jamaican strikes in Florida sugar cane fields, see Hahamovitch’s No Man’s Land and Alec Wilkinson’s Big Sugar, Seasons in the Canefields of Florida (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.)

77 Christian Science Monitor, August 28, 1945, Ibid.

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there was “no animosity toward camp officials.”78 He also stated the British Liaison Office had confirmed this assessment and that the Office of Labor did not anticipate complaints from the

Jamaican or Barbadian governments.

Jamaican newspapers, however, provide a different perspective. Writing to the U.S.

Secretary of State, the American Consul in Jamaica included two local newspaper clippings from the Jamaica Daily Express and the Daily Gleaner.79 According to the reports, workers were dissatisfied not only with the camp conditions, but also with the work itself, and their liaison’s apparent inability to improve the circumstances.80 Photographed and interviewed for the piece,

Rupert Forbes and Egerton Dawson (recently returned from Florida on the S.S. George

Washington) reported being stranded at Camp Murphy from June 6th until their departure in late

August.81 The two men claimed they arrived by train, exited, and were told to walk eight miles to the mess hall. Once at the camp, they received rotten sweet potatoes and grits for dinner and were then told to find a house to sleep in for the night. Forbes and Dawson recounted how some men were arrested and taken to jail that night for simply wandering around. Later, these incarcerated men were put to work. The Gleaner argued Forbes’ and Egertons’ claims tallied

78 Memo of Conversation; Subject: Riots at Camp Murphy, 8/27/45, RG 59 (DOS), Decimal File 1945-1949, Box 4850, Folder 811.504 BWI/8-2945. NACP.

79 American Consulate: Subject: Returning Jamaican Workers Complain of Treatment in the United States, August 9, 1945. RG 59 (DOS) Decimal File 1945-1949, Box 4850, 811.504/1-148 to 811.504 BWI/12-3146, Folder 811.504 BWI/8-945 CS/D. NACP. The Consul, John H. Lord, noted the newspapers were taking interest in the story, and probably granting it greater credence, following the U.S. House of Representatives’ resolution (passed on July 27, 1945) recommending an investigation of Camp Murphy conditions.

80 The workers further claimed that the U.S. government was demanding 25% of their earnings for compulsory savings, but that their contracts only agreed to a 10% deduction. Upon investigation, the Express found that the contract stipulated the 25% deduction, so workers’ claims to unfair treatment over that particular issue were unfounded. Nevertheless, the Trades Union Council of Jamaica planned to further investigate the matter in order to guarantee fair treatment of Jamaican nationals. (Ibid., “Returning Farm Workers Complain of Treatment,” Jamaica Daily Express, August 7, 1945.)

81 Ibid., “Workers Return: Hardships of Farm Workers in Florida Camp Described,” The Jamaica Daily Gleaner. (date not included with newspaper clipping)

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“with that of other returnees who spoke of being manacled and forced to work in ‘chain gangs’, notorious U.S. prison labour system.”82 The two guestworekrs ended the interview by claiming that they personally had only worked for one month and, to date, they still had not been paid.83

In the wake of the riot, Jamaican Chief Liaison Officer Herbert MacDonald said in an interview with the Daily Gleaner that it was caused by “a few bad men,” but that everything was now sorted out.84 He did note, though, that from that point on workers awaiting repatriation would only be held at the camp for a few days.85 In the interview, however, he did not point out that new policing was necessary following the verbal abuse of workers and a shooting at the camp. Apparently, during the riot, the U.S. Captain from the Army Corps of Engineers thought it was a good idea to “impress the workers with his authority” by firing his revolver out the window.86 His bullet traveled through the neighboring barrack’s wall, wounding a guestworker in the leg. MacDonald suggested the captain be removed, and that additional military police be brought in to secure the peace. He specifically requested the troops be African American because there were “many reports of abusive language and epithets used toward the workers.”87 The riot, use of force to quell the uprising, and reports of verbal abuse by superiors, make clear that the

82 Ibid.

83 Ibid.

84 Ibid., American Consulate: Subject: Statement of Chief Liaison Officer to the Press Regarding the Riots of Jamaican Workers at Camp Murphy, FL; statement by MacDonald to the Jamaican Daily Gleaner. Folder: 811.504 BWI/10-445 CS/LE. NACP. Macdonald was the head of the British West Indies Central Labour Organisation (BWICLO), the group tasked with monitoring the program and addressing worker complaints.

85 Ibid. MacDonald also said the peace would be maintained through better policing.

86 Letter to Secretary of War Stimson, From Dean Acheson, Secretary of State. 9/21/45. P. 1 Ibid., Folder: 811.504 BWI/8-2145 CS/LE. NACP.

87 Ibid., p. 2. The request for African American troops indicates a highly contentious relationship between white managers and Caribbean workers, since there were known problems between domestic and foreign black workers. (Hahamovitch, No Man’s Land, 81-84.) Apparently, the logic was that although there may be divisions between African Americans and Caribbean workers over labor issues, racially they would be compatible.

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conditions at Camp Murphy were not as rosy as officials liked to portray, even if they were not as dire as some workers claimed. As a result, within the confines of Camp Murphy—and the foreign labor system at large—workers sometimes responded aggressively when they felt their rights were being violated.

Like other foreign workers, British Hondurans challenged the emerging labor regime and the poor conditions that characterized it. One Okeechobee camp manager claimed British

Hondurans created the biggest headache for camp personnel. Half of the workers sent from the

War Manpower Commission over to the Okeelanta Growers and Processors’ Cooperative (a sugar company in South Bay) refused to work and had been repatriated. Following this incident, the manager accused them of “only coming for a trip at the government’s expense.”88 Trouble with the British Hondurans, though, was nothing new. As early as 1944, reports surfaced about laborers actively rejecting unacceptable working conditions. Because British Honduras was located further way than most of the countries supplying foreign labor, program organizers were even more concerned when Hondurans did not meet expectations. The British West Indies

Central Labour Organisation (BWICLO), the agency tasked with monitoring the foreign labor program, reported in November of 1944 that twelve men placed in Lake City, Florida “became so utterly disgusted with conditions that they enlisted” in the U.S. military.89 A decision to jump contract and go to war, rather than engage in American farm labor, speaks volumes about the existing farm labor regime and its failures to provide workers with adequate wages and conditions. British Hondurans were not the only ones to abscond.

88 Narrative Reports, Okeechobee, January 1946, p. 1. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 8, Box 24, Folder: Camps 12-1, Florida, Okeechobee FLSC. NACP.

89 Report of the British West Indies Central Labour Organisation, Nov. 1944, p. 2. RG 43 (RIC), P Entry 14, Box 41 (E11-11 to E12-1), Folder: E12-1 Labor, General 1944. NACP.

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In 1944 BWICLO requested that the U.S. Office of Labor provide it with a list of all

Jamaicans who fled and joined the U.S. military.90 The fact that the United States said it would need time to compare the list of missing Jamaicans with the master list of those repatriated indicates that enough workers absconded during the course of the program that they had trouble keeping track of the exact number.91 Workers disappeared for a variety of reasons. The Hastings

Farm Labor Supply Center frequently saw daily changes in the number of workers available for work. Upon arriving at the Hastings Center in 1946, the new manager reported staggering numbers of workers on the “missing and refused” list. He discovered between 72 to 131 men unaccounted for each day. After meeting with the workers he whittled the list down to around twenty, but noted that it was evident some men had been missing since the first day he arrived.92

His findings reinforce the fact that men often went missing when alternative opportunities presented themselves. A BWICLO report issued in 1946 also supports this conclusion. It estimated 1310 workers were missing in that year, and the author noted that the figure “did not surprise” him.93 Three years into the program, BWICLO was well aware that workers exercised their mobility in order to improve their living and working situation.

90 The archival sources lack a definitive answer to this request.

91 At the time of the report, 18 were reported missing. Letter to Herbert G. Macdonald, Liaison Officer Representing the Jamaican Government, from Mason Barr, Interstate and Foreign Labor Branch of the Office of Labor, Jan. 25, 1944. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 6, Box 11: 6-R15 thru 6/R36, Folder: 6-R15 Florida, July-Dec. 1943. NACP. Cordell Thompson estimated “there must be at least 20,000 Bahamian Americans in the Southern United States as a result of the exploits of the Bahamians who went on the Contract.” This figure isn’t reproduced elsewhere in the record, but it highlights the fact that the program did not operate as smoothly as anticipated, since some workers clearly were not returning back to the islands as planned. Thompson argues Bahamians could easily “pass off as ‘Gullahs’ or ‘Geechies’” in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia and so they blended with local African American populations to outside observers. (Interview with Cordell Thompson, 1990. The Bahamas Folklore Collection blog. Collection editor Cordell Thompson. http://gullahgeecheeconnection.wordpress.com/the-contract- 2/)

92 Narrative Reports, Hastings, April 1946. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 8, Box 24, Folder: Camps 12-1, Florida, Hastings FLSC. NACP.

93 RG 43 (RIC), P Entry 14, Box 42: E2-1 to E12-4, Folder: E12-Labor, General 1946. NACP.

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The Boundaries of Citizenship and Rights

“Not being U.S. citizens, not being organized, the offshores cannot take care of themselves,” declared Congressman Claude Pepper of Miami.94 Guestworkers could easily be caught in legal limbo; they were neither citizens of the United States, nor were they eligible for programs and rights afforded legal immigrants. Pepper felt that workers’ inability to organize unions, coupled with the fact that they had no political power in the United States, left them in a highly vulnerable position. Many of the program’s unequivocal supporters argued that guestworkers’ contracts and liaisons protected them. The terms of the contract, though, did not always benefit the workers, nor did the liaisons, whom were often guilty of advocating for solutions that would help the program run smoothly rather than for resolutions that would be in the best interests of the laborers. Even though he expressed concern, Pepper still voiced support for continuing the program, provided the U.S. government play an active role in regulating it so as to protect workers from abuse.

Pepper was a lone voice among Florida’s elected officials. Senator Spessard Holland expressed the more popular view. He rejected strict government regulation and thought the program should continue to operate as it had in the past. If anything, he believed the only way to improve it would be to eliminate restrictions imposed by the Department of Labor.95 The majority of the state’s elected officials supported the program since their agricultural constituents claimed their farms and groves would fail without it. By the 1960s, agriculture was a significant driver of Florida’s economy and elected officials responded positively to growers’ demands.

94 Pepper was a member of the House of Representatives. Peter Kramer, The Offshores, St. Petersburg, August 1966, p. 82. RG 174 (DOL), UD Entry 2, Box 372, Folder: ES-2-6-1 Farm Labor, Aug. 11-20, 1966. NACP.

95 Ibid.

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Agriculture could not survive without migrant labor (both domestic and foreign), yet their mobility negated their power as a voting group and diminished their ability to make claims for public services. Guestworkers faced an even greater barrier to protection because as non-citizens with no real hope of gaining citizenship, they lacked political capital and so elected officials had nothing to gain by advocating on their behalf. Bahamian Assemblyman and labor leader Bert

Cambridge, noted previously for disparaging the guestworker program when it began in 1943, drew attention to a unique situation highlighting the complex intersection of daily life and the boundaries of citizenship and rights. Cambridge felt that as an elected representative of

Bahamian workers, it was his responsibility to stand up for his constituents wherever they might reside temporarily. His visit to Florida, and subsequent assessment of the guestworker program, highlights the interconnectedness of Bahamian politics and those of Florida farm labor.

Cambridge said that during his visit to the United States, of all the things he witnessed, housing ashamed him the most. He went on to tell a story about eighty Bahamians living in the

Dorsey Hotel in Miami (most likely awaiting repatriation.) Workers were not allowed to use the front door or Lobby, nor were they allowed in their rooms during the day. Most whiled away the hours huddled on the back porch, and when they were allowed in their rooms at night, they slept five to a room, three in beds and two on the floor.96 Cambridge found the overcrowding and restrictions on workers’ mobility appalling since these policies created a group with second-class rights.

It was common for non-whites to be relegated to the back door in segregated Florida, but the twist in the Bahamian story arises from the fact that the Dorsey Hotel was a black-owned

96 12/15/43, American Consulate, Nassau Bahamas, Statements Made by Members of the House of Assembly Regarding Bahamian Laborers in the United States, p. 2. RG 59 (DOS), Decimal File 1940-1944, Box: 3881, Folder: 811.504 BWI 20. NACP.

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establishment. In fact, it was the first black-owned hotel in Miami. Racial tensions existed not only between local whites and blacks, but also between different members of the “black community.” The Dorsey case reminds us that the guestworker program increased tensions between domestic and foreign black populations, and that at times African Americans leveraged their standing as locals and U.S. citizens to deny certain privileges to foreign interlopers.

Domestic workers had no recourse when it came to employers hiring foreign laborers to do the jobs that domestic workers had done for decades. But, they could express their displeasure with the offshore workers by forcing them to submit to the same racial injustices African Americans suffered at the hands of local whites. Although this technically did not strip a Bahamian of his legal rights, it did successfully diminish his dignity. Requiring Bahamians to remain in the back of the hotel rendered the workers both literally and figuratively invisible to passersby.

Assemblyman Cambridge also used the Dorsey hotel case to highlight the program’s failure to protect Bahamians’ rights as laborers. Even though workers had contracts, those alone did not guarantee the provisions would be enforced. Cambridge found the rights of the eighty

Bahamians at the Dorsey neglected by both Bahamian and American authorities—neither party claimed responsibility for transporting the workers at the end of their contract, and so the men languished at the hotel. By the time Cambridge visited, the men had been there twenty-two days and no government was taking action to secure their return to the Islands.97 The United States claimed it was not liable, and that if it had been, the workers would have been removed within twenty-four hours.

The Dorsey incident reveals that, from the beginning, the emergent farm labor system challenged the boundaries of citizenship and undermined workers’ rights. As guestworkers in a

97 Ibid.

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country that abused the rights of its own non-white workers, Bahamians had a difficult time getting local American officials or Bahamian authorities overseas to help them secure their rights. Cambridge argued Bahamians needed to have a representative to look out for them in the

United States, because without one, they would go unnoticed and their interests would continue to be ignored.98 The Bahamas created a new government liaison position, but even this would not guarantee the full protection of workers’ rights and interests.99 For the temporary foreign labor system to function smoothly, growers and government officials needed to undermine workers’ rights by controlling their mobility. This proved difficult though, since individual Bahamians regularly undermined these efforts. Some workers absconded, while others—like women from the Islands trying to locate their husbands—arrived unexpectedly in Miami.

Bahamian women regularly arrived on Florida’s shores seeking negligent or missing husbands.100 These women stayed in Miami until the local Department of Labor office could locate their husbands. Once found, the women were sent to the camps where the husbands worked.101 The record does not indicate if these women entered as contract workers themselves, but it would appear so since they were transported, housed, and placed through the War Food

Administration. It also helps explain how women came to make up approximately thirty percent of the guestworkers in 1943, even though they were not formally recruited in the early days of

98 Ibid. Cambridge visited the United States in 1943; only eight months after the program began.

99 Bahamians appointed a black liaison officer, SC McPherson, in 1945 believing he could give voice to the workers. Officials believed it was important for a black man to have this position, since most workers were black men. RG 59 (DOS), Decimal File 1945-1949, Box 4850, 811.504/1-148 to 811.504 BWI/12-3146, Folder: 811.504 BWI/7-3045 CS/D. NACP.

100 The men entered the United States at an earlier date but then seemingly disappeared or ceased communicating with their families back home.

101 Memo from Hudson Wren, Chief of Operations, Field Operations Office II, To: Colonel Philip G. Bruton, Director of Labor, Subject: Distribution of Bahamian women arriving Miami for 1944 season, 3/15/44. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 6, Box 10: 6-C22 Thru 6-R15, Folder: 6-R15 Bahamas 1944. NACP.

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the program.102 Women’s mobility complicated authorities’ efforts to control workers, but these challenges paled in comparison to challenges arising from Bahamians getting romantically involved with American men and women.

Workers could dramatically alter their status by marrying Americans, which enabled them to get off contract and become eligible for U.S. citizenship. Guestworkers and domestic black communities had complex relationships. Some African Americans felt offshore workers were outsiders who acted like they were better than black Americans. Employers and U.S. government agents aggravated these tensions by claiming Caribbean blacks were superior to

African Americans.103 African Americans also resented foreign laborers for driving down domestic wages and taking area jobs, which then displaced local workers. In cases where individuals did marry members from the Bahamian or Caribbean nations, though, these relationships could reduce tensions. They allowed Caribbean and domestic blacks to mingle as equals, therefore making the former a more integrated part of the local community.104

Although strengthening community relations, marriages between Americans and offshore guestworkers destabilized the temporary foreign labor program. They shifted workers from a non-citizen status to that of an immigrant with potential claims to citizenship. A communication between the U.S. Department of State (DOS) and the American Consular Officer in Kingston,

Jamaica, illustrates the complexity of the issue and how the personal perspectives of government agents could fundamentally alter the emerging guestworker system. In the letter, the State

102 As noted earlier, Michael Craton and Gail Saunders found in 1943 that roughly 547 of the 1776 workers in the temporary agricultural labor program in the United States in that year were women. (Craton and Saunders, Islanders in the Stream, 191.)

103 Kramer, The Offshores, 15. Much like the false conceptions employers and officials had about Caribbean workers’ skills and temperament, many also believed Caribbean blacks were smarter, cleaner, and more responsible than domestic blacks.

104 Ibid., 67.

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Department rejects the U.S. Consul’s proposal to prohibit Jamaican workers from marrying

American women. Although the original letter from the Consulate to the State Department is not included in the archival record, the subsequent letter suggests the consulate wants to ban these marriages in order to “prevent their [Jamaicans] obtaining preferential status within the quota as provided by the United States Immigration Laws.”105 The State Department officer states that this change cannot happen because it would be “contrary to the intent and letter of the immigration law” and would set contract laborers even further apart from other immigrants admitted to the country.106 He explains such an action would be "indefensibly discriminatory and inimical to the good relations existing between this Government and the United Kingdom.”107

The State Department official was keenly aware of the tenuous position guestworkers held in relation to the American legal system. He noted that in order to minimize threats to the existing program, and to stay within the boundaries of the U.S.’s immigration laws, officials had be exceedingly careful about how they crafted and implemented the contract regulations binding workers. Jamaican men had made themselves an invaluable labor source throughout the East

Coast. In particular, they provided the bulk of the labor in Florida’s most difficult agricultural industry, sugar cane. Since few workers were willing to work in this crop, it is unlikely

American officials would do anything to risk upsetting the existing labor regime.

Although contract-jumping via marriage may have frustrated some officials, they could and would not take direct action and prohibit such actions because it would potentially harm an important working relationship between Jamaica and the United States. However, War Food

105 3/6/46, Letter To the American Consular Officer in Charge, Kingston, Jamaica, BWI. RG 59 (DOS), Decimal Files 1945-1949, Box 4850, Folder: 811.504 BWI/1-2946 CS/LF. NACP.

106 Ibid.

107 Ibid.

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Administration officials in 1944 had no such compunction when dealing with pregnant women.

Pregnant Bahamian guestworkers fundamentally undermined the foreign labor program when the father was an American citizen. Consequently, pregnant women were usually repatriated. The reasons were three-fold: pregnancy further diminished a woman’s ability to do heavy agricultural work; the child would be reared under hazardous conditions; and repatriation prevented discussions about the infant’s citizenship claims.108 Although program managers believed repatriation was easiest and most appropriate course of action even, an investigating medical field officer concluded it had “resulted in a considerable number of induced abortions among these women."109 Although the guestworker program allowed female participation, it was never highly encouraged and eventually women were eliminated from the program entirely. Not only were women more difficult to place than men, they posed significant challenges to organizers’ ideas about guestworkers and their rights. These gendered policies not only reflected legal concerns, but also demonstrate the challenges growers and government officials’ faces in crafting and implementing the new labor program.

Pregnant female workers epitomized the challenges offshore laborers presented employers and government agents. They pushed authorities to grapple with what rights

108 7/1/44, Memo to Philip G. Bruton, Brigadier General, U.S. Army, Director of Labor-WFA; From John Newdorp, M.D. Field Medical Officer, Operations Office II; Subject: Repatriation of pregnant women. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 6, Box 12, 6-R59 thru 6-S47, Folder: 6-R59 Repatriation January 1944. NACP. The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. constitution was a post-Civil War measure specifically designed to give African Americans, a class of people many Americans at the time considered “undesirable,” full access to citizenship because of their long history of exploitation yet essential contributions to the development of the country. Traditional immigrants quickly emerged as the second group to benefit most directly from this provision, since it enabled their children to become full, active, engaged members of the American public. By mid-century, though, Americans’ sought to reduce or limit foreigners’ claims to American citizenship and the rights it entailed. Americans accepted the guestworker program because it met regional labor demands and supported national restrictionist immigration policies. Pregnant female guestworkers, then, fundamentally challenged the emerging system. To many then, repatriation appeared the best way to remedy the situation.

109 Originally, the author was skeptical this was occurring, but based on his own investigation he concluded that it was happening, even though he was not able to find out “where abortions were induced” or get any workers to “admit that these abortions were anything other than spontaneous.” (Ibid.)

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immigrants and citizens possessed, and to consider the civil liberties and privileges of those who fell into a new, but yet-undefined, category. Rather than classifying guestworkers as potential citizens, government officials chose to treat them as a group with even fewer privileges than traditional immigrants. Labor contracts dictated: the type of labor guestworkers could do, how much they earned, how much they had to save, who they could work for, and when and where they could move. Traditional immigrants had none of these restrictions, and so they could sell their labor as they saw fit in order to improve their social and economic status. Although temporary foreign laborers could come to the United States in pursuit of economic opportunities and contribute to the country’s financial success, but they would never legally control their labor nor gain access to citizenship, unless they found a way to legally jump their contract.110 Marriage provided the means necessary to do so.

The Roots of Modern Farm Labor Advocacy

Few Americans thought about domestic farmworkers during the war years. And in a sense, the public returned to pre-Depression era notions about poverty. Thanks to the economic uplift triggered by wartime mobilization, many people believed impoverished individuals should again help themselves rather than rely on government assistance or protection. While the war

110 In The Citizen and the Alien, Linda Bozniak asks readers to think about citizenship and rights in new ways. She focuses on Michel Walzer’s work in Spheres of Justice and how it challenges us to think about how a migrant should be treated when he resides in a community and labors there. She notes that Walzer argues these criteria should render migrants members of the community, and that if they are not yet members they should be “on a swift track to citizenship, or full membership.” (Bozniak, p. 41) Under this model, the U.S. usage of offshore workers as permanent temporary guestworkers falls short of the mark. Although Walzer’s work focuses on European guestworkers; it provides a useful framework for thinking about American agricultural labor, since the industry has become almost completely reliant on migrant labor. The difference between the European guestworkers of Walzer’s study, and most farmworkers in America today, is that the majority of the latter are undocumented or falsely documented migrant workers. Consequently, many Americans see these individuals as having no legitimate claims to citizenship or the rights associated with it. However, the small group of legal guestworkers brought in under the Bahamian/BWI program and the later H-2A program do fit within Walzer’s model and raise the same issues as their European counterparts. The precarious status of these individuals raise serious questions about guestworker programs, and force us to consider how our treatment of them affects workers who exist outside the formal legal labor system. (Linda Bosniak, The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.)

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provided great industrial employment opportunities for some people, it left many—often desperately poor African Americans—seeking work in America’s farm fields. Unlike the 1930s, though, the plight of these migrants often went unnoticed.

The Second World War ushered in significant changes in the American farm labor system. These transformations generally occurred under the radar of the American public; and when noticed, they were justified using the rhetoric of wartime necessity. The rise of the government-run Bracero, Bahamian, and British West Indian Temporary Labor Programs highlight growers’ success in fundamentally changing American farm labor practices. The programs essentially turned the United States government into a foreign labor contractor. At the same time these changes occurred, many Americans had ceased focusing on the wages and working conditions of farmworkers. The combination of these meant that under the new program, many people either did not think about how guestworkers were treated, or they assumed that the government would act in an ethical manner and protect workers. Americans believed that the provisions established in the contracts would reflect terms acceptable to both parties. However, as demonstrated, contracts did little to fully protect workers from real or perceived abuses or problems with wages and working conditions. In response, some individuals sought to draw attention to the hardships suffered by America’s farm laborers.

A thorough investigation the period between the Great Depression and the 1960s illuminates how farm labor advocacy took on its modern form with César Chávez and Dolores

Huerta, co-founders of the National Farm Workers Association (later known as the United Farm

Workers Union.) Fleshing out early advocacy efforts further illuminates how Florida’s farm labor regime evolved. Growers, governments, and workers were the primary actors shaping the system; but third-party activists played an increasingly important role in making workers visible

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and providing a moral compass to policymakers. These early advocacy groups included non- profit organizations and associations, the media, and special government commissions tasked with focusing on the plight of migrants.

Non-Profit Groups

Florida’s long history of peonage and forced labor practices haunted employers and government officials well into the twentieth century. Like many Afro-Caribbean organizations, the West Indies National Council, based in New York City, was a long-time advocate of democracy and equality for all people. The Council’s primary goal was to win independence for colonized Caribbean nations. However, the association also hoped to leverage the war and associated rhetoric not only to further the cause of Caribbean independence, but also to push for improved treatment of British West Indian peoples throughout the world, and particularly in the

United States. In 1943 the Executive Secretary, Herman P. Osbourne, wrote to President

Roosevelt expressing concern over the new wartime labor importation scheme. Osbourne believed that the program mistreated workers, subjected them to unfair racial segregation, and attempted to reduce them “to virtual peonage.”111 He argued the jailing and deportation of

111 Department of Justice, Peonage Files, Microform, Reel 11, Casefile 50-18-30, 1943. The workers themselves sometimes used the rhetoric of forced labor to draw attention to their issues, such as when dissatisfied workers in a Deerfield labor camp in 1946 accused the former manager of everything from “peonage to downright brutality.” If we believe the new manager (and author of the archived documentation), the issue was about the workers getting charged for excess baggage, and being frustrated that the camp concession store closed early. Although the true story likely resides somewhere in between the worker accusations and the manager’s retelling of the incident, it appears the latter addressed the workers’ concerns and they dropped the most extreme accusations and things returned to normal. Unfortunately, it is impossible to know what “negotiations” transpired that led to the workers agreeing to return to work. Was it truly a voluntary and mutually agreed upon solution, or were they threatened with deportation if they continued resisting the existing conditions and practices? (Narrative Report, April 1946. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 8, Box 24, Folder: Camps 12-1, Florida, Hastings FLSC. NACP.) Charges of peonage were not simply evoking people’s memories about historical forced labor practices in Florida. As late as 1942, the U.S. Sugar Company was indicted for peonage of domestic African Americans. The company paid substantial sums of money to recruit, transport, and equip seasonal workers; therefore, they tried to extract as much work from them as possible. (Jerrell H. Shofner, “The Legacy of Racial Slavery: Free Enterprise and Forced Labor in Florida in the 1940s,” The Journal of Southern History, Vol. XLVII, No. 3 (Aug. 1981): 415.) Eventually the case was dropped on a technicality, but this triggered the shift away from domestic to foreign labor sources. Furthermore, the U.S. Supreme Court did not strike down Florida’s second Contract Labor Law until Pollock v. Williams in 1944.

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hundreds of workers in Florida, “because of their manly protest against such undemocratic treatment,” fundamentally undermined America’s claims to justice and democracy in the world.112 To align his arguments with Roosevelt’s political goals, Osbourne concluded his letter by reminding FDR that “dealing with smaller and weaker peoples” in an honorable and just manner would do much to promote the President’s “good neighbor policy.”113

Familiar with race relations and labor practices in the American South, Caribbean immigrants and advocates of national freedom felt it was their right and responsibility to protect their brethren at home and abroad. During a time when the United States was literally fighting to promote justice, equality, and democratic opportunity throughout the world, the West Indies

National Council’s grasped the opportunity to seek better treatment of Caribbean workers by appealing directly to the President’s ambitions and desires. Osbourne’s letter stands apart from a general appeal for the improved treatment of a subjugated people, however, because it contained explicit references to policies and practices in Florida that the Council found most egregious. It rooted guestworkers’ plight in a longer, darker labor history and called on the President to protect workers from abuse. The Council knew workers had few people advocating on their behalf, and so from more than a thousand miles away, they took up their brothers’ cause with the highest authority in the country, the President of the United States.

In similar fashion, the Bahamas Benevolent Protective Association, also located in New

York City, contacted the War Food Administration raising concerns about the mistreatment of

Bahamian workers in a labor camp in Maryland. The “Bahamas Benevolent Protective

Association” was actually the “Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks of the

112 Narrative Report, April 1946. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 8, Box 24, Folder: Camps 12-1, Florida, Hastings FLSC. NACP.

113 Ibid.

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World,” (IBPOEW) a fraternal organization formed in 1898 for primarily black men. The original Benevolent Protective Order of the Elks, commonly known today simply as the “Elks,” was founded in 1868, but it excluded non-whites from participating. Consequently, black men, modeling their new group on the original Elks organization, added the word “Improved” to the title and formed their own organization.114 The evolution of the Bahamian branch of the Elks further highlights the long interconnected political and labor histories of the Bahamas and

Florida. The group operated under the auspices of the Florida State Association of the Elks from its founding in 1908 until it broke from the group in 1953 to form an independent branch.115

Although Bahamians may have lacked formal political representation in the United States, advocates like the Elks sought to apply political pressure to ensure worker protections.

The president of the Association expressed concerns over several facets of the existing program, including transportation costs, food quality, amount of work available, and the number hours per day men were expected to work. 116 Generally, the Association addressed the same issues that the workers themselves regularly raised. The communications highlight how once again an international organization played an active role in questioning U.S. labor practices and holding program managers accountable for wellbeing of workers.

114 http://www.elksoftheworld.com/elkhistory.html

115 Speech of Senator Allyson Maynard-Gibson, “Reviewing the Past, Charting The Way in Fraternal Excellence 2011 and Beyond,” at the 55th Annual State Convention of The Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World, June 8, 2011. http://bahamaspress.com/2011/06/12/madam-senator-maynard-gibson-addresses-the- elks-convention%E2%80%8F/.

116 Memo to Director of Labor from Howard Preston, Chief of Operations regarding the "Bahamas Benevolent Protective Association,” 10/27/44. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 6, Box 17, Folder: 30-C61 Bahamian. NACP. Mr. Origen L. Taylor, President of the Bahamas Benevolent Protective Association in New York City, wrote to Mr. Howard A. Preston, Chief of Operations of the War Food Administration’s Office of Labor. The original letter from the president of the Association was not included in the archival record.

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The African American Press

The African American press also worked to highlight the plight of farmworkers, both domestic and foreign; but like the black community itself, the message and focus was not monolithic. In many cases newspapers emphasized the racial and socioeconmic motives and provisions of the newly emerging foreign labor regime, and they specifically pointed out the detrimental effect foreign labor had on domestic workers. Some of most well known African

American newspapers were not from Florida; consequently, their critiques provide diverse insights about the evolving farm labor system in Florida and its impacts on the nation. The most vocal and popular papers in the 1940s included the Baltimore Afro-American, the Atlanta Daily

World, the Norfolk, Virginia New Journal and Guide, and The Chicago Defender among others.

The African American press focused intently on the racialized nature of the foreign labor program, and its attempts to conform to America’s segregationist and economically deplorable labor practices. The Baltimore Afro American in August of 1943 reported on a farmer in

Maryland who admitted he preferred Bahamians because they “know how to act—how to stay in their place” and that they seemed “just like our own Southern boys.”117 The candid statement reveals one of the central problems arising from the new labor scheme—the continued exploitation of non-white workers. The Baltimore Afro American expressed concern that

117 “Bahama Farm Laborers Stay in Their Place; Md. White Farmer Says He Doesn’t Like the Strong Jamaicans” The Baltimore Afro American, August 14, 1943, p. 11. Accessed via ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988.) The farmer went on to specifically argue he preferred Bahamians to Jamaicans. He claimed the latter refused to acknowledge and follow the rules about “just how things worked” in the South.117 Jamaicans’ refusals to abide by the South’s segregationist policies led area farmers to “get rid of them” and replace them with Bahamians. The Jamaican workers were shipped to New Jersey. In another instance, the War Food Administration approved placing Bahamians, but not Jamaicans, in the Redlands Camp near Homestead, Florida. The Homestead Leader-Enterprise (a white-run newspaper) reported that Jamaicans were “less adaptable and not as easy to get along with,” so they were being sent to Clewiston, Florida to work in the sugar fields, where “they will be able to lead their own type of community life.” This option appeared preferable since there would be large numbers of them employed there. It also probably helped that sugar plantations were isolated from the general white public, with whom the Jamaicans seemed to have trouble getting along. (“WFA Men To Give Bahama Labor Talk Tuesday,” Homestead Leader-Enterprise. Oct. 13, 1944, p. 1, 8.)

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Bahamians were being used to perpetuate a labor scheme that systematically devalued people of color and undermined their ability to improve their social and economic standing.

The Chicago Defender’s Sam Lacy traveled over 2800 miles inspecting labor camps in

New England, Delaware, and Maryland. He reported that Bahamians apparent docility and conformity to Southern mores resulted in their facing worse conditions than their more vocal

Jamaican counterparts. Although he declared all workers rightfully complained about poor housing, lack of work, and general mistreatment, he noted that Bahamians suffered disproportionately since they were most often placed below the Mason-Dixon line and thus lived in “anti-Negro communities” where they had to deal with numerous “racial indignities.”118

Lacy’s findings reflected the longer, broader historical record—Bahamians did not sit idly by and accept the situation. Lacy found guestworkers, frustrated by local merchants who refused to serve them, sought clearance to return home rather than living and working under such degrading conditions.119

In another case, workers on a Warren, Ohio farm refused to work because they didn’t like the accommodations or the snakes they saw in the fields. Growers called the local police, who then hauled the striking workers to the county jail where they held until the issue was sorted out.

However, it was the Cleveland Call and Post, not the police or employers, that eventually contacted the British vice-consul in Cleveland and alerted him to the situation. The vice-consul and U.S. Labor Board officials reported they had no prior knowledge of the case.120 The

118 Sam Lacy, “Jamaican Farmhands Live Rose Life As Compared to That Of Bahamians,” The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), Aug. 28, 1943, p. 6. Accessed via ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Defender (1910-1975.)

119 Ibid. The writer also notes that Bahamians earned less money at the Delaware farms than they had in Florida, which likely also accounted for their dissatisfaction.

120 “Bahamians Balk on Conditions at Fisher Bros. Farm,” Cleveland Call and Post (1934-1962), Sept. 18, 1943, p. 1_A. Accessed via ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

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newspaper’s willingness to actively advocate for the workers’ welfare fundamentally altered the latter’s experience and begs the question, how long would the laborers have languished behind bars had the paper not spoken to the proper authorities on their behalf?

Newspapers highlighted labor practices and conditions in public ways that the workers themselves often could not. The African American press also contextualized these issues by grounding them more deeply in American history. For example, The Chicago Defender reported that living conditions West Indians faced under the U.S. farm labor program were basically “a return to southern plantation peonage.”121 Similarly, the Atlanta World Daily reported in 1945 that Florida citrus workers typically preferred to work five days per week, but were often arrested by local authorities on Saturdays on vagrancy charges. The laborers were then charged a

$25 bond for release. Consequently, workers either had to work more hours voluntarily to earn money to pay off the bond fee, or they would “labor against their will, fearing arrest.”122 Peonage charges reverberate throughout Florida’s labor history. Many black Americans, particularly in the South, were well aware of that history and saw the correlations between past and present labor practices. The African American press sought to expose not only the South’s historical coercive labor practices, but also how those experiences were being replicated in the present day.

Many African Americans, and farm labor advocates more generally, argued that guestworker programs perpetuated coercive labor practices, and further undermined local workers’ abilities to secure employment. By forcing significant reform or ending the program all together, advocates

121 Venice T. Spraggs, “West Indies Farm Hands Face Jail, Peonage Here,” The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), Aug. 19, 1944, p. 11. Accessed via ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Defender (1910-1975.

122 “Charge Peonage is Widespread in Fla.,” Atlanta Daily World (1932-2003), May 2, 1945; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Atlanta Daily World (1931-2003.)

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hoped to secure safer working conditions and better wages for remaining offshore and domestic workers.

Sometimes workers and writers alike called upon even more poignant and historical memories by evoking images of slavery when they talked about the mistreatment of workers. In one case, nineteen Bahamians charged they were treated like slaves on a Louisiana farm. They reported gross mistreatment culminating in a violent episode in which the plantation manager and his aid began firing on workers’ living quarters. A government agent subsequently came to get the workers and return them to the Bahamas.123 However, the abuse apparently continued.

The workers claimed they were fed only one meal on their journey from Louisiana to South

Carolina, and they did not have money to buy food for themselves. They also claimed the government agent subjected them to verbal abuse along the way.124

The Atlanta Daily World also invoked images of slavery declaring “Jim Crow facilities, unsanitary living conditions, and Simon Legree bulldozing on farms” would be responsible for the predicted reduction in the spring crop production.125 The author went on to point out that if conditions were better, and workers did not suffer “unbelievable and harassing events…while in the employ of agriculture slavocrats,” then there would not be a labor shortage imperiling the upcoming harvest.126 The articles sometimes drifted towards hyperbole or fiery rhetoric, but this

123 “19 Bahamians Charge Slave Treatment on Louisiana Farm,” The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921- 1967), Dec. 20, 1947, p. 1. Accessed via ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Defender (1910-1975.) No men were hit in the shooting incident.

124 C. Lamar Weaver, “Ill-fed, Ill-Treated, Bahamian Migratory Workers Charge,” Atlanta Daily World (1932- 2003), Dec. 4, 1947, p.1. Accessed via ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Atlanta Daily World (1931-2003.)

125 “Labor Shortage Imperils’ Florida Spring Produce,” Atlanta Daily World (1932-2003), Mar. 11, 1948, p. 2. Accessed via ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Atlanta Daily World (1931-2003.

126 Ibid.

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only furthered their goal of drawing public attention to working conditions faced by foreign and domestic farmworkers.

Members of the African American press were not the only individuals concerned with conditions facing tens of thousands of farmworkers in the Southeast. In the 1960s, broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow narrated and co-produced the CBS documentary, Harvest of

Shame, which traced the plight of domestic migrant workers along the East Coast.127 Peter

Kramer authored over forty pieces for the St. Petersburg Times, analyzing the U.S. foreign labor program’s successes and failures. He also wrote a comprehensive study entitled, “The

Offshores,” published by the St. Petersburg Times in 1966. Popular pieces like Murrow’s film, which aired on Thanksgiving in 1960, reached millions of mainstream Americans and again focused the nation’s attention on the workers—the men, women, and children—who put the food on the nation’s tables. The documentary told the stories of both black and white migrant families.

This public spotlight, in addition to increasing support for the Civil Rights movement, made

Americans more receptive to the stories advocates were telling. These early diverse media outlets and efforts helped pave the way for future labor leaders like Chávez and Huerta to call upon

Americans of all backgrounds to support farmworkers in their quest for justice and equality.

Government and Quasi-government Groups

Like benevolent associations and the African American press, special government taskforces also publically addressed migrant issues and improve living and working conditions.

The earliest commissions emerged to address widespread poverty as a result of the Great

Depression. In 1940, the U.S. government created the Select Committee to Investigate the

Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens. The commission was tasked with providing Congress

127 Murrow, Harvest of Shame.

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detailed knowledge about the plight of domestic migrants—displaced by the long agricultural depression and Great Depression—so that Congress could create appropriate legislation to improve workers’ social and economic conditions. The committee, set to expire in 1941, was renamed the Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration Hearings and extended until 1943. The committee, in reference to its chair, John Tolan, was often referred to as the

Tolan Committee.

The Tolan committee traveled around the United States conducting hearings between

July 1940 and September 1942, compiling significant testimony regarding the acute poverty among America’s migrant farmworkers. In Florida, John Beecher, Supervisor of FSA Florida

Migratory Labor Camps, testified that most southern migrants were farm refugees—former sharecroppers, tenants, and small landowners from the cotton belt. He explained how soil depletion from erosion led to acreage reduction, and that mechanization displaced many workers, pushing them from tenancy to wage labor. Furthermore, commercial truck, berry, and fruit farming also increasing demand for mobile labor, which led to the development of several routes starting in Florida and spreading out along the East Coast as the season progressed.128 Beecher noted that the most acute labor situation developed around Lake Okeechobee in Florida, resulting from the agricultural boom in the preceding twenty years. The area had a labor surplus, which led to increased community tensions as well as inadequate housing, school, and recreational facilities. Beecher argued that the dramatic influx of seasonal workers caused rent prices to skyrocket, and the quality of those properties to decline, since owners had few incentives to

128 Some of the main routes identified by Beecher beginning in Florida and heading north include: 1) the potato route (Florida, the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, Long Island); 2) the fruit route (Florida citrus, Georgia and California peaces, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York apples); 3) the strawberry route (Florida, Louisianna, Arkansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan). (Digest of Testimony Before Tolan Committee; John Beecher, Supervisor, Florida Migratory Labor Camps, FSA. RG 233 (U.S. House of Representatives), Subcommittee to Investigate National Defense Migration, Box 36: Hearings in Montgomery & Huntsville, AL. (Ala., Dept. of Public Welfare to Dunn), Folder: John Beecher, Supervisor Migrant Labor Camps, FSA, FL. NAB.)

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invest in them given they could easily rent them regardless of the condition. Not only did the worker influx negatively affect housing, it also drove down local wages. For these reasons, the

FSA opened its first two labor camps in the area, Pahokee and Okeechobee, to try and improve migrant lives.129 Witnessing the dismal working conditions resulting from a surplus of workers, federal agencies like the FSA and its sub-agencies did not support grower-proposed labor importation schemes immediately.

Although Congress ultimately caved to constituent pressures and capitalized on wartime demands and rhetoric to justify the creation of guestworker programs throughout the United

States, the importation of foreign workers eventually came under public scrutiny. In 1951, increasing concerns about migrant workers’ living and working conditions led President Truman to establish his Commission on Migratory Labor. The Cold War spotlighted American labor practices and racial policies on a world stage in unanticipated ways. As the United States and the

Soviet Union competed to demonstrate that capitalism and communism respectively were the best socio-economic models, they had to acknowledge and address the shortcomings of those systems. American prosperity built on the backs of marginalized non-citizens laboring in the

United States was unlikely to curry favor with Caribbean and Latin American neighbors who may have been flirting with a communist alternative. As part of this self-evaluation, then, the

President’s Commission examined both domestic and foreign migrant workers’ situations and how the presence of foreign labor affected national workers.

The Truman Commission concluded that the country could more effectively use the domestic labor force, and that “No special measures should be adopted to increase the number of

129 Ibid.

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alien contract laborers beyond the number admitted in 1950.”130 The commission went on to report that in states using high numbers of foreign workers, specifically citing Texas and Florida, the average wage rates were much below the national average. Therefore they concluded,

“demand for foreign labor in these States is in part, at least, due to the desire to keep low wages from rising.”131 Such findings demonstrate increasing national scrutiny of the potential problems labor importation programs fostered. The efforts of these early farm labor supporters demonstrated that the presence of foreign workers drove down domestic wages and that the foreign workers themselves were forced to work for inadequate wages. Furthermore, foreign farmworkers were denied the opportunity to participate in the U.S. Social Security program, a right granted to domestic workers in 1950, provided they worked for the same crew for twenty days. As non-citizens, guestworkers remained outside the scope of the new reform measure.

Additionally, their presence undermined American’s ability to capitalize on this new opportunity by taking jobs away from domestic workers.

In a 1952 congressional hearing, former Commissioner of the President’s Commission on

Migratory Labor, Archbishop Robert E. Lucey of San Antonio, Texas, articulated the central problem of the new farm labor system. Forcing government officials to confront the underpinnings of the foreign labor system Lucey argued, “Congress must not encourage the farm employers to use misery at home and poverty abroad as tile foundation of the recruitment of their supply.”132 He also asked the fundamental question, “Does Congress desire to depress job

130 Presidents Commission on Migratory Labor. Migratory Labor in American Agriculture: Report of the President’s Commission on Migratory Labor. (Washington, D.C.: G.P.O, 1951), iii.

131 Ibid., 133.

132 United States Congress Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare Subcommittee on Labor and Labor Management Relations. Migratory Labor. Part 1 [Electronic Resource] : Hearings before the United States Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Subcommittee on Labor and Labor-Management Relations, Eighty-Second Congress, Second Session, on Feb. 5-7, 11, 14, 15, 27-29, Mar. 27, 28, 1952. (Washington: U.S. G.P.O, 1952,

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standards?”133 Some concerned members of Congress expressed their support for changing the system by participating in these early government inquiries and investigations, which were aimed at improving domestic labor conditions by highlighting the inequities and poor conditions the foreign labor programs created. The historical record, though, indicates that regardless of

Congressional “desire,” in practice, it depressed American farm labor standards by perpetuating the foreign labor program.

Committees geared towards addressing farm labor issues existed at both the federal and state level. In 1954 President Eisenhower continued Truman’s efforts by establishing his own

President’s Committee on Migratory Labor, and Florida created the Florida Citizens Advisory

Committee on Migrant Agricultural Labor in 1956. Following these inquiries, Florida became a national leader by passing an important piece of legislation, the Crew Leader Registration Act.134

Congress also prepared national legislation regarding crew leaders, but failed to pass it into law.135 Although the Florida law was riddled with loopholes, and generally failing to provide any meaningful change at the time, it identified by name a central issue plaguing the new farm labor

Licensed for access by UF students, faculty, staff and other registered users. http://www.lexisnexis.com/congcomp/getdoc?HEARING-ID=HRG-1952-LPW-0007), 6-7.

133 Ibid.

134 New York was one of the first states to require crew leader registration (1955), and Florida followed suit in 1959. Florida revised and renamed the Crew Leader Registration Act of 1959 the Farm Labor Contractor Act (FLCA) in 1973. Florida passed the Farm Labor Registration Law in 1971, but it was not enforced until it received funding in 1974. It was similar to federal act but went “a bit further in requiring crew leaders to furnish workers with written wage records including all deductions." Problems with crew leader laws included: lack of enforcement, weak penalties, and a "narrow definition, which allows industry to escape liability, and in effect 'hide behind' crew leaders." (RG 100 Governor's Task Force on Migrant Labor, .S 1172 Migrant Labor Program, Administrative Files 1973-1991, Box 5, Folder: 6.06 Florida Impact, January 1983, "Prepare" publication, Farmworkers Edition. Florida State Archives and Records.

135 Hahamovitch, No Man’s Land. The federal government eventually succeeded in passing the National Farm Labor Contractor Registration Act (FLCRA) in 1963. However, it had too many loopholes and was amended in 1974. The national FLCRA’s main requirements included: providing proof of liability insurance coverage, document that housing meets health and safety standards, carrying federal registration certificate at all times, inform workers in the worker's primary language of conditions of employment. (7 USC section 2050 a (a))

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system.136 Rather than growers directly hiring domestic workers, they utilized crew leaders to recruit, manage, and compensate laborers. While some crew leaders were honest and reputable, many earned a living by siphoning off substantial portions of their fieldworkers’ already meager wages. Domestic workers suffered directly at the hands of crew leaders and indirectly from the contracts offered to foreign workers.

Contracts could help foreign workers, but they usually undermined domestic workers.

Employers hoping to hire temporary foreign labor first had to offer the job to Americans at the prevailing wage rate. If they could not find domestic workers, then they could petition for approval of foreign labor. The common strategy was to set the prevailing wage rate so low that it was economically unfeasible for domestic workers to survive. This opened the door to foreign labor. Domestic workers would have to seek employment elsewhere or tap into any available social services or community support programs. So although advocates of the foreign labor program claimed the contract benefited domestic workers by mandating minimum wage rate, they failed to acknowledge that often the rate was intentionally set at a deplorably low level in order to prevent domestic workers from accepting the work.137 Contracts also worked against domestic migrant workers because American workers did not have access to employer or government-funded transportation from one job to another.138 Consequently, many domestic had to pay out of pocket and rely on crew leaders to help them locate and travel to new employment

136 The law was revised and renamed in 1973 as the Farm Labor Contract Act (FLCA.) The national government followed suit in 1963, passing the Farm Labor Contractor Registration Act. This law was amended in 1974, 1978, and 1979, and then finally replaced by the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act of 1983.

137 Presidents Commission on Migratory Labor. Migratory Labor in American Agriculture: Report of the President’s Commission on Migratory Labor. (Washington, D.C.: G.P.O, 1951), 133. 2/25/64, Citrus Industrial Council Newsletter. University of FL Archives, Florida History Collection, The Chase Collection, Ms 14, RG 1, Series 4, Box 91, Folder: Chase & Company. Citrus Department. 1964.

138 1946 Narrative Report, Osceola. RG 224 (OL), PI 51 Entry 8, Box 24, Folder: Camps 12-1, Florida, Osceola FLSC. NACP.

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throughout the harvest season. This created yet another opportunity for dishonest crew leaders to take advantage of workers.

In the 1960s, quasi-government agencies like Florida Rural Legal Services (FRLS) also played a central role supporting farmworkers.139 FRLS started as the South Florida Migrant

Rural Legal Services (SFMRLS), under the leadership of Joseph Segor in 1966. It received funding from the federal Office of Employment Opportunity to provide legal assistance to destitute migrants in five heavy agricultural South Florida counties: Dade, Broward, Palm Beach,

Lee, and Collier.140 Segor and his assistant, Kent Spriggs, actively sought out clients who needed their assistance. Some of the first workers they attempted to help were Jamaican men held in

William Meranda’s warehouse, awaiting repatriation. The Jamaicans had been arrested for striking and were being deported. Segor and Spriggs offered their services, but the workers preferred simply to return home.141 The legal team was disappointed, but the feeling was relatively short-lived since they soon discovered fifty-two cane cutters being held in the West

Palm Beach jail, even though they had not been charged with any crime.142 Although public

139 Since the 1960s, FRLS expanded service to thirteen counties in South Central Florida. When it changed its name, it also shifted its focus from primarily helping migrants to also providing services to indigent families and low- income elderly people. In the wake of increased awareness in the 1960s and 1970s the non-profit Florida Legal Services, founded in 1973, was created to provide civil legal assistance to indigent people of all backgrounds. The current managing attorney of the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project (founded in 1996), Gregory Schnell, has deep roots in the struggle for migrant legal rights. Schnell worked as the Director of the Farmworker Employment Group at FRLS from 1988-1995 before moving to FLS and developing the migrant aspect of their legal services. For more information on the development of the various legal agencies see: Hahamovitch, No Man’s Land, 165-166; Earl Johnson Jr., Justice and Reform: The Formative Years of the OEO: Legal Service Program (New York: Russeell Sage, 1974), 93; and Kris Shepard, Rationing Justice: Poverty Lawyers and Poor People in the Deep South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007), 36.

140 The Florida Industrial Commission estimated that seventy percent of the 100,000 migrants in the South Florida area lived in those counties. (Inter-office Communication from the Florida Industrial Commission, 8/22/67. Box 96, Folder: Labor, Costs and Regulation. 1963-1966. MS 14 The Chase Collection, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida.

141 Hahamovitch, No Man’s Land, 166-167.

142 Ibid., 167.

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defenders and liaisons from the West Indies Central Labour Organisation also stopped by, organizations like SFMRLS/FRLS played an important role in the early years advocating for fair and just treatment of foreign and American farmworkers.143

Local Organizations

Local organizations also underwent significant changes in the 1960s, given the increasing emphasis on worker and human rights. The Florida Christian Migrant Ministry (FCMM) began in 1939 to assist migrant workers. Early on, it became a favorite of growers and their wives.

Many of these individuals eventually served on the Board of Directors, and played a central role shaping the mission of the organization. The group generally focused on providing basic services to migrants; their efforts did not extend to advocating for higher wages or better working conditions. But, according to the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, in 1966 the

“complexion and direction” of the organization began changing.144 The transformation was complete by 1969, when Reverend August Vandenbosch took over leadership. Under the new director, the organization adopted a pro-union position—a stance inimical to the ideas promoted by area growers.145 A letter from Randall Chase, a prominent farmer and member of the FFVA to the FCMM illustrates the divergence in opinion. The pro-union FCMM advocates were pushing for workers to demand higher wages for picking corn. Citing a case in Belle Glade where a farm owner’s corn packing crew supposedly averaged wages of $24.75, Chase argued that it was impossible and unnecessary for the grower to pay a higher wage. Rather than earning higher

143 Following the independence of several Caribbean countries in the 1960s, including Jamaica and Barbados, the region dropped the “British” identifier. Hence the former British West Indian Central Labour Organisation (BWICLO) went by simply the West Indian Central Labour Organisation (WICLO.)

144 The FFVA Bulletin cited Ben Fraticelli’s taking over the leadership of the organization as the turning of the tide away from grower interests, to union-based worker activity. (FFVA Labor Bulletin, 4/14/71. MS 14 The Chase Collection, Special and Area Studies Collections, University of Florida. RG 1, Series 4: Subject Files, 1961-1984, Box 128, Folder: Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association. Labor Committee. 1970-71.)

145 Ibid.

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wages, he said migrants needed “training in how to live, some responsibility, and, of course, above all, integrity and morals.”146 Chase contended that improving workers’ lives through better wages so that they no longer need the services provided by the FCMM, would only fuel union activism in the area. He thought that fire was “already burning pretty lively” and that growers should do nothing that would be perceived of as giving into labor’s demands.147 The FCMM’s shift from a grower-supported aid organization to a vocal, pro-union group further demonstrates how the modern farm labor advocacy movement emerged.

Establishing Visibility and a Voice

Workers gained visibility and a voice during the Farm Labor Program, from 1943 through 1966, by controlling their labor and fighting workplace injustice. Workers focused on issues like housing, wages, general living and working conditions, and mobility. Some individuals protested by articulating their complaints to authorities, and others took more aggressive actions like leaving their contracts, going on strike, or violently rebelling. Third-party groups also played an important role in advocating on behalf of workers, helping them garner greater public attention. The African American press, and groups like the Bahamas’ branch of the Elks, and the West Indies National Council, increased national awareness of workers’ causes.

They raised the profile of these issues by keeping them in the public eye and by bringing them to the attention of prominent officials.

Eventually workers’ and advocacy groups’ efforts paid off and their concerns moved into mainstream public awareness. In the West, a showcasing the abuses of the Bracero Program resulted in the U.S. government shutting the program down in 1964. Although the

146 Letter from Randall Chase to Reverend William L. Hargrave. 4/5/67. Ibid., Box 96, Folder: Labor. Christian Migrant Ministry. 1967.

147 Ibid.

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Bahamian/BWI guestworker program continued in Florida, advocacy efforts yielded some changes. By the mid-1960s, Florida growers and government officials were well aware that the tide of public opinion was turning against the formal guestworker labor system, and eventually the Bahamian program ended. Examining the Bahamian program’s termination helps contextualize the rise of the current farm labor regime; one that relies primarily on undocumented or falsely documented workers from Mexico and Central America.

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CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION: THE END OF THE BAHAMIAN FOREIGN LABOR PROGRAM AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE MODERN FARM LABOR REGIME

“The 85th Congress was a humanitarian Congress,” declared Secretary of Labor, Willard

Wirtz in his statement discussing the termination of Public Law No. 78, legislation authorizing the Mexican Bracero Program.1 Wirtz contextualized the program’s end by noting the changing climate in America, due to the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Anti-Poverty Bill. He claimed that in light of these improvements, the public desired an end to the Mexican guestworker program, which he characterized as “a system that had too often disregarded human values.”2 Wirtz acknowledged farm work—and “stoop labor” in particular—was

“unquestionably hard and unpleasant,” but he pointed out that lots of jobs are “just as hard and just as objectionable,” yet people do them because the wages offered make it worthwhile.3

Noting the four million unemployed citizens in the United States, he argued that if workers received just wages and had decent working conditions, Americans would be willing to take these positions and growers would not need foreign labor.

After Secretary Wirtz successfully terminated the Bracero Program, he set his sights on the Bahamian and BWI temporary worker programs utilized in Florida and long the East Coast.

He did not state outright his desire to end these programs. In his 1964 speech, Wirtz claimed that these 15,000 workers present in the United States under Public Law 414, the Immigration and

Nationality Act of 1952, would not be affected by any “administrative extension” of the law

1 12/19/64 Statement by Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz on the Termination of Public Law No. 78, University of FL Archives, Florida History Collection, The Chase Collection, Ms 14, RG 1, Series 4: Subject Files, 1961-1984, Box 96, Folder: Labor, Costs and Regulation. 1963-1966.

2 Ibid. In 1951 Public Law No. 78 replaced Public Law No. 45, the original law authorizing the Bracero Program. In contrast, the Bahamian and British West Indian Programs were authorized under Public Law 414, the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952.

3 Ibid.

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ending the Bracero Program.4 But, he did say that he would administer the program strictly in accordance with the regulations being issued that day, which specified terms and conditions that must be offered to domestic workers before certifying admission for foreign labor.5 True to his word, in the months following the Bracero Program’s termination, Wirtz focused his attention on the Bahamian/BWI programs. He sought to improve conditions for workers and make it prohibitively expensive for growers to hire foreign labor.6

Wirtz was not the first Secretary of Labor to try and reduce, or possibly end, the

Bahamian guestworker program. Various secretaries had tried to do so since the end of World

War II. The goal was to improve wages and working conditions in order to facilitate a steady supply of reliable domestic labor, so that foreign labor would no longer be necessary or desirable. The Department of Labor’s (DOL) early efforts yielded mixed results. There were small successes, but the DOL faced stiff opposition from the Department of Agriculture and congressmen representing agricultural interests. A close examination of changing conditions and attitudes in the 1950s and 1960s illustrates why the program continued, even if contested. It also explains why the program eventually came to an end in 1966.

Starting in the 1950s, renewed concerns about U.S. workers—and migrants in particular—garnered public attention and sympathy. This interest, though, rarely translated into direct, meaningful action, and so foreign labor importation continued. By the 1960s, a rebounding domestic Bahamian economy made the contract program less desirable to Bahamian laborers. This change, coupled with American’s increased attention to civil rights, helped move

4 Ibid., 2.

5 Ibid.

6 Cindy Hahamovitch, “‘The Worst Job in the World’: Reform, Revolution, and the Secret Rebellion in Florida’s Cane Fields,” (Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 35, Issue 4 (2008)), 772.

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Florida away from relying on imported Bahamian labor. Finally, mechanization and labor transformations on American farms throughout the country triggered changes that would lead to the Latinization of the Florida farm labor workforce. Examining the program’s demise and eventual collapse sheds light on how Florida’s long farm labor history not only helped shape the modern agricultural labor regime, but also reflected national changes in that system.

Promoting Domestic Labor

In an attempt to develop “policy and procedure which would assure domestic workers job preference in agriculture,” the DOL put together an Annual Worker Plan starting in 1949.7 The goal was to facilitate domestic labor flows and provide continuous employment to migrant families by finding more efficient and effective ways to move workers from regions of labor surplus to those with labor scarcities.8 Around the time DOL developed the plan, it also re- opened the Puerto Rican labor importation program to encourage employment of U.S. citizens, even if they were not domestic workers from the mainland.9 DOL evaluated the program for five years before making it national in 1954.10 While the U.S. government made some gains increasing domestic employment, the Korean War temporarily limited its success. President

7 The plan was formerly known as the Eastern Seaboard Plan, and came about following the return of the Farm Placement Service from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to the U.S. Department of Labor DOL in 1948. (5/25/59, Office Memorandum, U.S. Government; To Under Secretary, From Robert C. Goodwin; Subject: Information Concerning the Annual Worker Plan. RG 174 Department of Labor (DOL) NC-58 Entry 36, Box 293, 1959 Alpha-Numeric Subject Files, ES-2-6-1—ES-2-6-1, Folder: Subfolder: ES-2-6-1. NACP.) The plan was conceived of in 1948, implemented in 1949, and evaluated for five years. It went national in 1954.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid., 7/1/59, Report by the U.S. Department of Labor for James Roosevelt.

10 In order for the plan to succeed, employers had to release their workers to other employers “in strict accordance with the commitment,” crew leaders had to keep their commitments, States had to give their full cooperation and refrain from recruiting anyone or anytime other than “during scheduled interviews with crews,” and finally the States had to inform user-States of crew arrivals. As Goodwin, the report author noted, “A major problem was to obtain full cooperation of all States in the employment patterns.” (Ibid.) This explicitly indentified a central challenge in implementing national policies—their success hinged on individuals and agencies in participating states acting in strict accordance with the stated policy. This proved difficult since states, and state officials, were often pressured by their constituents to act in a way that most benefited the state and its citizenry (rather than serving national interests.)

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Eisenhower had tried to make it more expensive to import workers, hoping this would encourage growers to hire domestic workers instead. But, these efforts failed since a premium was again placed on food production. Increased agricultural demands provided growers with ample opportunities to claim they needed access to greater numbers of workers. Similar to conditions during World War II, though, many former African American farmworkers refused to work in the fields for paltry wages. They demanded pay increases and threatened to look elsewhere for work. Growers leveraged these threats politically to demanded access to a reliable supply of foreign labor. Their lobbying efforts were successful, and guestworkers continued entering the

United States.

Pressures to reform the migrant farm labor system re-emerged because, as the 1954

President’s Commission discovered, larger numbers of Americans were joining the migrant stream. The Commission attributed the increase to workers’ inability to earn a living wage in one location. The rise of industrial agriculture and crop specialization reduced year-round employment and eliminated many jobs through mechanization.11 Like earlier periods of modernization, these changes had a ripple effect. Mechanical improvements in crops like cotton and sugar beet harvesting in the West and Midwest resulted in land consolidation and the rise of industrial farming in regions traditionally dominated by small farmers, tenants, and sharecroppers. This displaced the aforementioned workers and sent many of them into the migrant labor stream or looking for work outside of agriculture.12

11 11/22/57, Washington Legislative Bulletin, Vol. 1, NO. 36, p. 3. RG 174 (DOL), NC-58 Entry 36, Box 209: Organization Subject Files, Committees (Inter-Departmental), Folder: 1957—Committee—President’s Committee on Migratory Labor. NACP.

12 Kitty Calavita found that between 1950 and 1960, mechanization reduced the total number of farmworkers by 41%. (Calavita, Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the I.N.S. (New York: Routledge, 1992), 71.) Nevertheless, this did not alleviate growers’ concerns about adequate labor supplies in non-mechanized truck- farming crops.

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During the pre-advocacy era for migrant farm laborers, select congressional committees made recommendations for improving conditions for domestic migrant workers. Not only did they hope to improve workers’ lives, but also make farm work more appealing so that the country could reduce its dependence on foreign workers. In the mid-1950s, the Special Farm

Labor Committee and the Labor Advisory Committee on Farm Labor issued a series of recommendations. It suggested the DOL circulate information about rest stops to states to help migrants map their future travels in search of work. To assist in disseminating this information and facilitating smoother labor flows from place to place, the committees also suggested each state establish a migrant labor committee. The report listed several other recommendations, including providing family rather than barracks-style housing.13 This would enable families, rather than just single men, to more easily travel with the seasons. Efforts like these resulted in new mandates and legislation that altered the landscape in which foreign labor operated. But, even with concerted efforts to increase domestic labor usage and bring most foreign labor to an end, it did not cease immediately.14

Contested Policy and Practice

Supporters of the foreign labor importation program traditionally marshaled their arguments around the undesirable nature of farm work and the unwillingness of Americans to do these low-wage jobs. They claimed guestworker programs were the only way to guarantee a

13 2/9/56, Memo to Secretary Mitchell, From Robert C. Goodwin, Subject: Recommendations of the Special Farm Labor Committee and the Labor Advisory Committee on Farm Labor. RG 174 (Department of Labor), NC-58 Entry 36: Subject Files of Secretary James P. Mitchell, 1953-1960. Box 154: 1956 Organizational Subject Files, Congressional Committees (Ways & Means)-Committees (Labor Dept.), Folder: 1956—Committee—Special Farm Labor Committee of the Bureau of Employment Security (BES). NACP.

14 Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz believed the H2 program was on its deathbed in the 1960s, until he watched cane cutting in Florida and described it as “the worst job in the world.” He was convinced Americans would never do it. Following the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and the subsequent sugar embargo, U.S. sugar cane production increased as did labor demands. Even Secretary Wirtz recognized the limits of American workers, so as he pushed for elimination of guestworkers in other agricultural industries, he continued to allow BWI workers to dominate the ranks of U.S. Sugar’s Florida operations. (Hahamovitch, No Man's Land, 136.)

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stable workforce, prevent labor shortages, and harvest crops on time. Although growers were the most vocal supporters of the offshore labor program, at times the program created strange bedfellows. In the mid-1950s program proponents also got a boost from an unexpected source— labor union advocates.

In 1955, A. Philip Randolph, President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters saw the merger of his union with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial

Organizations (AFL-CIO). During that same year, Randolph communicated extensively with

Islands in the West Indies. In one exchange, the Chief Minister of Jamaica petitioned Randolph to use his resources and connections to find out why fewer Jamaicans were being admitted to the

United States, when the number of Mexicans allowed in remained high.15 Randolph took up the

Minister’s request, and sent letters to both the President of the Agricultural Workers Union and

Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell. Randolph argued the program was important since the

Jamaican government was impoverished and many Jamaican men needed work. Secretary

Mitchell responded that his office only approved foreign labor when domestic labor supplies proved inadequate to meet demand, and that his office did not determine the nationality of the workers to be imported, therefore he could not specifically facilitate Jamaican employment. He also said most employers based their worker selections on transportation costs. For that reason, he pointed out that although the number of Jamaican participants may have gone down,

Bahamian numbers remained about the same because of their close proximity to Florida and their subsequent lower transportation costs.16 Mitchell contended that overall Bahamian/Caribbean

15 7/30/55, Letter from NW Manley, Chief Minister of Jamaica. A. Philip Randolph Papers, IMG_001608_019_0823. 100892. He sent a similar letter on 10/27/55. The Minister, N.W. Manly, originally blamed the AFL-CIO but then recanted this accusation noting that the organization had reversed course on the issue and no longer opposed a continuation of the program.

16 10/25/55, Response from Sec. of Labor Mitchell. A. Philip Randolph Papers, IMG_001608_019_0823. 100898.

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guestworker numbers decreased because more domestic workers were available due to a late spring freeze in southern fruit, which freed up domestic workers.17

AFL-CIO support of the program is surprising since most program opponents claimed it undermined the wages and working conditions of domestic farmworkers. The national organization, though, did not create a farm labor branch until the mid-1960s so the fate of farmworkers originally lay outside the organization’s primary purview.18 But, even when the

AFL did weigh in on farmworker issues, the results were unusual. President George Meany argued the Bahamian and British West Indian governments and liaison offices did a better job of running the program and looking after their men than did the Mexican government with the

Bracero Program, therefore the program was somewhat acceptable. He did note, however, that wages and conditions were not necessarily as good as they could or should be.19 Another trade union, the International Association of Machinists, also supported the continuation of the BWI program. Machinists’ members worked in Florida’s sugar processing mills. Since mill workers needed a steady supply of affordable cane in order to complete their work, they supported whatever farm labor system was most likely to produce those conditions. Like the AFL-CIO, though, the Machinists did qualify their support for the program arguing it needed improved wages and conditions to become completely acceptable.20

George Oldham, president of the Palm Beach County Federation of Labor, also believed the program should continue in sugar, but be greatly reduced in scope and scale. He thought it

17 Ibid. Mitchell also notes the large number of Mexican participants resulted from the crackdown on illegal labor during and after Operation Wetback.

18 Eventually the AFL-CIO created the Farm Labor Organizing Committee.

19 Peter Kramer, The Offshores, St. Petersburg, August 1966, p. 75. RG 174 (DOL), UD Entry 2, Box 372, Folder: ES-2-6-1 Farm Labor, Aug. 11-20, 1966. NACP.

20 Ibid., 76.

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should be eliminated from citrus and vegetable production.21 Within the sugar industry, Oldham wanted it limited to unskilled work only, and advocated creating a training program for domestic workers so they could earn the more skilled positions. Oldham appeared to share Secretary

Wirtz’s point of view that the program was only necessary in sugar, since Americans refused to do that type of labor. Union officials were not the only ones to support the program, provided it underwent some changes.

Representative Claude Pepper of Dade County, long concerned about foreign worker exploitation, still supported the guestworker program so long as there was strict governmental surveillance. Pepper’s support for the program paled in comparison to the enthusiasm of most

Florida politicians, including Senators Smathers and Holland. Peppers’ concerns were two-fold.

First, he wanted to make sure there was a genuine need for imported labor; and second, he wanted guarantees that workers’ rights were well protected.22 Pepper argued Americans needed jobs and should have equal, if not preferred, access to them. He also contended that as noncitizens who also lacked union representation, foreign workers did not have the fundamental rights needed to protect themselves. Consequently, he believed it was the responsibility of the

U.S. government to do it. If the program favored American employment over foreign and guaranteed the fair treatment of all workers, he would lend his support.

In contrast to program advocates and semi-supporters, some union and government officials in the 1960s rejected outright the need for foreign labor importation. These objections rarely, if ever, came from Florida. Senator Harrison of New Jersey, the head of the Senate

Subcommittee on Migratory Labor, said he had no doubt offshore workers harmed domestic

21 Ibid., 77.

22 Ibid., 84.

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workers by depressing wages and displacing domestic workers. He lauded Wirtz’s efforts to curtail the program except in cases of last resort where imported workers were truly essential and supplemental to a mainly domestic workforce.23 Congressmen Jeffery Cohelan of California argued the program was “devastating” in countless ways and must be terminated.24 He said its continuation undermined Congress’s efforts with the termination of Public Law 78 to curb

American reliance on foreign labor. While this may have been true, Cohelan then revealed his most salient reason for opposing the program’s continuation. He pointed out that its perpetuation gave Florida an unfair advantage over California and other western agricultural states, since the latter regions could no longer rely on cheap Mexican labor. Cohelan claimed that like the former braceros, BWIs and Bahamians needed more protective regulations. He also rejected the economic argument some program supporters made claiming that the program was a cost- effective means of providing aid to foreign countries.25 Elected officials weren’t the only ones calling for the program’s termination.

Although some union representatives supported a reformed program, not all of the leadership felt this way. The first vice-president of the AFL-CIO argued the program should be discontinued at the earliest possible moment because it harmed domestic workers.26 Arnold

Mayer, the legislative representative for the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen articulated this point more specifically. He argued that the program prevented shortages, which should drive up wages like it does in industry. He also contended that Bahamians and BWI workers garnered no more protections than did the Braceros, and that if Congress and the

23 Ibid., 85.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid., 77. The first vice-president was Art Hallgren.

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American public deemed the Bracero Program exploitative and degrading, so too was the

Bahamian/BWI Program. He also rejected the claims that the program was good for the sending nations since it denigrated the workers’ dignity, noting that working under conditions seen as unfit by domestic workers would do nothing to improve the morale of the migrants. Furthermore, sharing a similar perspective to Representative Cohelan, Mayer pointed out that it was irresponsible and immoral to provide aid to foreign nations “on the backs of our nation’s poorest people.27

Like Mayer’s critique, the National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor’s (NACFL) opposition to the program struck at the heart of the matter. It claimed that adequate numbers of domestic workers were available, particularly in Florida. NACFL pointed out that Florida was

“the largest migrant labor supply state on the east coast,” and it had easy access to labor surpluses from Georgia as well.28 The group also reiterated the refrain common among farm labor advocates—if farm owners increased wages and improved working conditions so they were on par with other American job opportunities, labor recruitment would not be an issue. NACFL made a point of declaring that they were not opposed to foreign workers coming to the United

Sates and settling permanently to pursue the American dream and enjoy American living standard. They did reject, though, importing workers on a temporary basis since their presence

“kept farm workers’ standards far below those of other American workers” and they reaped none of the benefits associated with citizenship.29 Increased public and political opposition eroded

27 Ibid., 76-77. The National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor also articulated this same point as a reason to terminate the program.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

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support for the Bahamian program, but it alone did not cause its demise. Rather, changing economic conditions in the islands eventually led to its termination.

Changing Conditions at Home and Abroad

The Bahamian labor program ended during Secretary Wirtz’s tenure, when the supply of workers began decreasing.30 Bahamian participation declined for several reasons. First, the concerted effort of government officials, like Wirtz, to reduce access to foreign workers limited the number able to enter the country. Second, the Bahamian economy improved in the 1960s with the resurgence in tourism. And third, increasing Mexican and Central American migration decreased demands for Caribbean workers.

Reducing Legal Access to Foreign Labor

Agricultural producers constantly claimed ending foreign labor importation would undermine American food production and would harm consumers financially. Nevertheless, following in the footsteps of previous Labor Secretaries, Wirtz remained strong in his conviction that it was in the best interest of American workers to eliminate the program in most cases. By the mid-1960s, he had successfully prevented most growers and their associations from importing large numbers of workers by making the program costly and by actively recruiting domestic workers to fill open positions.31

A 1965 memo between executives of the Chase Company in Florida illustrates the effectiveness of Wirtz’s efforts. The company was a major player in the citrus and celery industries and it often compared its labor situation between the two crops to identify impending

30 Wirtz served as Secretary of Labor from 1962 through 1969.

31 As noted, Florida’s sugar industry continued importing workers with little opposition. However, by restricting foreign labor usage almost exclusively to sugar, Secretary Wirtz succeeded in minimizing Bahamian participation in the program since that country had essentially banned the use of Bahamian laborers in sugar cane harvesting from the beginning.

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changes. According to new regulations, employers hoping to obtain foreign labor would have to submit individual requests (as opposed group requests through their association) indicating the number of workers they believed they would need to harvest their crops. Furthermore, the Citrus

Industrial Council reported that the new contracts stated employers would have to pay “foreign workers at a rate not less than the prevailing wage rate or the established adverse effect wage rate, whichever is higher.”32 Since the adverse effect wage rate had not yet been established in

Florida for the season, the Council suggested its members strike the latter provision from the contract. That way, employers would not be legally bound to pay the adverse effect wage if it went into effect, and it would give them the opportunity to decide “whether or not he wishes to employ supplemental foreign workers and domestic workers at this rate.”33 If they signed the contracts without striking the provision, they would be bound to pay it once it was established.

As evidenced, the labor situation was not so dire in Florida that employers would hire offshore workers at any wage rate. Rather, growers were carefully monitoring labor costs in order to determine which employment option was most cost-effective. DOL’s efforts to reduce foreign labor were working. By forcing employers to pay adequate wages to foreign workers, the

Department reduced demand for guestworkers. Realizing ideal conditions for employing offshore labor were disappearing and that the more stringent requirements applied to the Citrus

Council contract were becoming the norm, the Florida Fresh Produce Exchange (a celery group to which the Chase Company belonged) decided it would “not attempt any such contract as the

32 2/25/64, Citrus Industrial Council Newsletter. University of FL Archives, Florida History Collection, The Chase Collection, Ms 14, RG 1, Series 4, Box 91, Folder: Chase & Company. Citrus Department. 1964.

33 Ibid.

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Citrus Council proposed” because it felt that if “that was the best arrangement that could be made in order to obtain foreign labor, the celery crowd would simply drop it.”34

Growers marshaled their political strength to try and maintain their fairly open and easy access to foreign labor, but the tide was turning against them. Senator Holland attempted to amend the 1965 Farm Bill so that statutory responsibility for recommending approval of foreign workers would shift from the Secretary of Labor to the Secretary of Agriculture. Vice President

Hubert Humphrey’s tie-breaking vote defeated this effort.35 Holland’s proposal harkened back to earlier efforts to wrest control of the farm labor program away from the Department of Labor.

The DOL traditionally represented laborers’ interests. Holland’s goal was to place the program under the direction of the Department of Agriculture, since it advocated policies supporting farmers and agricultural production.

Throughout 1965, DOL continued to push back against growers’ labor shortage claims.

When leading Florida growers like the Wedgworth and Chase families petitioned directly to the

Secretary of Labor, they met little success or sympathy. Wirtz told representatives of the two companies they “hadn’t done anything to help” themselves on the labor front, noting that they had not improved their housing or raised wages to become competitive with other industries.36

During this meeting Wirtz approved offshore workers in sugar cane, but argued it was unnecessary in vegetables. When the delegation pointed out the crop losses suffered over the past

34 9/28/65, Memo from R. Chase to S.O. Chase, Jr. and Frank W. Chase. University of FL Archives, Florida History Collection, The Chase Collection, Ms 14, RG 1, Series 4, Box 91, Folder: Chase & Company. Citrus Department. 1965.

35 10/14/65, FFVA Labor Bulletin, No. 246/65-66. Ibid., Box 96, Folder: Labor, Costs and Regulation. 1963-1966.

36 10/19/65, Memo from J.C. Hutchinson to Randall Chase, SO Chase Jr, & Lee P. Moore. Ibid., Box 91, Folder: Chase & Company. Citrus Department. 1965.

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year because it lacked sufficient labor to harvest it, Wirtz countered that it was not a labor issue that ruined production, but rather poor market conditions.37

Wirtz continued to hold the line on foreign labor importation, even in the face of stiff opposition. The Orlando Sentinel reported that in December of 1964, Senator Holland was so furious that he “vowed he would start efforts to have Wirtz impeached,” because he said Wirtz’s policies would destroy the Sunshine State’s citrus industry.38 However, the paper reported in

December of 1965, “Wirtz out of Doghouse, Citrus Industry Finds Enough U.S. Pickers.”39 The paper reported that in the previous season, 2845 foreign laborers worked in citrus but that during the current year there were none. The paper attributed the availability of domestic labor to increased wages, in-migration from other southern states, free-wheelers who were not part of the formal recruitment program, and local farm labor made available by flooding in other crops.40

Building on this successful usage of domestic labor, Wirtz expanded the role of USES the following year to recruit more domestic labor. Although the DOL’s policies forced many vegetable growers to turn to domestic labor, those policies alone did not facilitate the Bahamian program’s closure. An improving domestic economy encouraged many islanders to remain at home.

37 Ibid. The speaker took offense to Wirtz’s implication that he was lying about the matter, and Wirtz had the exchange stricken from the written record. However, he did not apologize or recant his assertion that shortages were due to market rather than labor conditions.

38 12/28/65, "Wirtz Out of Doghouse, Citrus Industry Finds Enough US Pickers"; Orlando Sentinel. University of FL Archives, Florida History Collection. Charles E. Bennett Papers, Box 79, Folder: Legislation, Labor: Migratory Farm Labor, Current File. By 1961, Florida produced roughly 69% of the United States’ citrus tonnage. (Florida Statistical Reporting Service, “Fourteenth Annual Citrus Statistical Summary,” Florida Department of Agriculture and Florida Citrus Commission. April 1962. Page 1. http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Florida/Publications/hist_sum_pdf/citrus/cs/florida%20citrus%20fruit %20annual%20summary-1961.pdf)

39 12/28/65, "Wirtz Out of Doghouse, Citrus Industry Finds Enough US Pickers"; Orlando Sentinel. University of FL Archives, Florida History Collection. Charles E. Bennett Papers, Box 79, Folder: Legislation, Labor: Migratory Farm Labor, Current File.

40 Ibid.

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A Rebounding Bahamian Economy

While the DOL restricted foreign labor importation in the 1960s, the Bahamas simultaneously underwent economic expansion fueled by the tourism and construction industries.41 In fact, conditions changed so dramatically that by 1966 the Bahamas had become a net importer of labor from Haiti and Turks and Caicos. With the economic boom, older men found sufficient employment opportunities at home, and the foreign labor program lost some of its earlier attraction and appeal.42 Furthermore, young men were either too inexperienced to

“establish a solid niche in the foreign labor program or to cope with its conditions.”43 The

Bahamian Ministry of Labor noted fewer Bahamians grew up working in the fields, and so the local construction industry was more appealing to younger men. He also noted that with the boom, domestic wages increased to the point that they were competitive with, if not better than, wages offered in the guestworker program. Unlike the staggering unemployment rates found in nations like Jamaica or Turks and Caicos, unemployment in New Providence, Bahamas, was only about four percent, and in the out-islands it only reached about six percent.44 In addition to diminishing demand for migratory work among Bahamian men and women, the government also found it economically unsustainable. From approximately 1962 onwards, the Bahamian government had essentially subsidized the program.45

41 Klaus de Albuquerque and Jerome L. McElroy. “Bahamian Labor Migration, 1901-1963,” New West Indian Guide/ Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 60, no: 3/4 Leiden (1986), 172.

42 In the 1963 Annual Report, the Bahamas Ministry of Labor addressed reasons for the program’s decline. Kramer, The Offshores, p. 16.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid. Jamaica averaged around twenty to twenty-five percent unemployment in the 1960s.

45 Ibid.

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Although these economic developments at home were instrumental in reviving the

Bahamian economy, government officials knew prosperity based on the tourist industry alone could be volatile.46 They also acknowledged the island nation’s lack of natural resources and booming population made the future uncertain. Consequently, some officials hoped to maintain the guestworker program with the United States, even if it were at a reduced number of participants. As a result, they worked with the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association to try and continue the program. Officials understood the U.S. government’s desire to severely reduce or eliminate the program in order lessen American unemployment rates, but they were still frustrated with the evolving U.S. policy. The Bahamian Labor Minister argued the United States was acting solely in its own best interest and not in the best interest of the region. He contended the only way the Bahamas would re-open the program would be on a “pre-Wirtz basis,” since otherwise it was not economically worth it.47

In contrast to some of the government officials who wished the program could continue,

Randol Fawkes, President of the Bahamas Federation of Labor and a legislative representative of the National Labor Party, was pleased when the Bahamas Government Liaison Office in

Orlando, shut its doors and ceased operations on April 30, 1966.48 He felt it was the responsibility of the domestic government to provide jobs for its citizens, and he was concerned that workers’ inability to unionize resulted and their being “treated as second class citizens in the

US with regard to wages, sub-standard housing, poorly prepared food, an the lack of human

46 The Bahamian economy collapsed around World War I with the decline in tourism, and it did not recover until the 1960s. Its weak economic underpinnings led to seasonal migration early on, and this fostered formalization of the World War II guestworker program.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid.

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rights.”49 Fawkes felt the lack of union representation undermined supporters’ claims that the program protected the workers. He was, however, open to the idea of continuing the program if

American workers were given job priority and if Bahamians were guaranteed better conditions and the right to unionize.

The termination of the Bahamian Temporary Labor Program marked the end of a strong

Bahamian presence in Florida farming. Initially African Americans continued to dominate the labor pool. But gradually Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Central Americans began filling vacant positions and again replacing domestic workers.

The Emergence of the Modern Farm Labor Regime

When southern and western domestic workers lost their land or jobs to mechanization, bracero guestworkers, or undocumented workers, they joined the migrant streams following the harvests. Often, these displaced workers were Mexican and Mexican American workers.50

Responding to these changing labor conditions, Latino families began moving to Florida in larger numbers in the 1950s. In order to contextualize the Latinization of Florida farming, one must begin with a cursory look at changes in the farm labor system in the South and West, and the relationship between the Bracero Program and the rise of undocumented labor.51

49 Ibid.

50 David Griffith, American Guestworkers: Jamaicans and Mexicans in the U.S. Labor Market. (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006) 186. Kitty Calavita estimated that “The average number [of braceros] entering annually between 1951 and 1959 was ten times higher than the number admitted during the wartime program of 1942-1947, when a labor emergency had been declared.” (Calavita, Inside the State, 141.)

51 For books focused on this subject see: Kitty Calavita, Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the I.N.S. (New York: Routledge, 1992), Deborah Cohen, Braceros: Migrant Citizens & Transnational Subjects in the Postwar United States and Mexico (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), Kelly Lytle Hernández, Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), Ronald L. Mize and Alicia C.S. Swords, Consuming Mexican Labor: From the Bracero Program to NAFTA (Toranto: University of Toranto Press, Higher Education Division, 2010), Mark Overmyer-Velazquez, Beyond la Frontera: The History of Mexico-U.S. Migration (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 2011.)

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The Bracero Program imported hundreds of thousands of Mexican contract workers, but it also had significant unintended consequences for illegal labor migration. Mexican migrants found that even if they were not directly recruited for the program in Mexico, they could often gain legal access to the program through the informal “touch-back” program.52 Many also discovered that regardless of their official immigration status, they could secure employment.

The Department of Labor took over responsibility for certifying growers’ need for foreign labor in 1951, with Public Law 78, which reauthorized the Bracero Program.53 To promote domestic employment, DOL made access to legal braceros more difficult and costly to secure; the consequence was employers increasingly drawing on the plethora of available undocumented labor. The situation was complicated, though, since DOL was working at loggerheads with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and Border Patrol. Whereas

DOL was tasked with improving domestic labor conditions, INS and Border Patrol were responsible for monitoring migration.

Mexican workers excluded from the formal Bracero Program exploited growers’ desires for labor and immigration enforcement loopholes. Along the border, growers exerted pressure on officials to allow unmitigated migration since it supported their business needs. Many Mexicans migrated to the United States illegally and, with the blessings of the INS the Border Patrol,

“touched back” over the border, and then reentered immediately as newly certified bracero workers. Immigration and Naturalization Service proposed this plan in response to complaints by growers that the official process was too expensive and time-consuming.54 Although this conflicted with the intent of official labor recruitment strategies and regulations promoted by the

52 Calavita, Inside the State, 109.

53 Public Law 78 shifted statutory authority to the Department of Labor. (And PL 893 to the USES.)

54 Calavita, Inside the State, 2-3.

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DOL, it enabled struggling government agencies like the INS and the Border Patrol to cope with increasing illegal immigration.55

The touch-back practice highlights how and why state policies fractured once implemented. The federal government created and implemented labor and migration policies they thought would both meet employers’ needs and control the border. However, they either failed—or were unable—to account for the fact that individuals and government agencies would react in different ways to the official plans.56 Mexican workers made decisions about what was best for themselves and their families and then, regardless of formal immigration policy, took action by moving to the United States if they thought it would improve their lives. Their movements in turn forced INS and Border Patrol to deal with the political and legal fallout from thousands of people entering the country illegally. Facing massive numbers of undocumented workers, and pressure from area growers to turn a blind eye, many INS and Border Patrol agents believed the only feasible means of addressing the situation was to immediately legalize those who had already crossed.

Touch-back legalization kept constituents happy and maintained political appearances. It helped make the number of “undocumented” people in the country seem low, and that border and immigration agencies were performing their jobs well. It also provided area growers access to a large supply of low-wage labor during the harvest period. The policy, therefore, indirectly served broader national political goals and local business interests. By granting temporary legal access

55 Calavita notes that “By 1950, the number of Mexicans ‘legalized’ and ‘paroled’ to growers as braceros was five times higher than the number actually recruited from Mexico.” (Calavita, Inside the State, 2.)

56 Paul Pierson rejects the functionalist approach to understanding policy creation, which implies that policies reflect the rational decisions of policymakers. He argues that an often overlooked, unintended consequence of policymaking is that “decision makers cannot hope to fully anticipate all of the major implications of their actions.” It is impossible to anticipate all outcomes, because the more people involved and affected by policy, the greater the unintended consequences. (Paul Pierson, “The Study of Policy Development,” Journal of Policy History, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2005), 44.)

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INS and Border Patrol remained faithful to the nation’s increasingly restrictive immigration policies, yet they also continued to provide unmitigated access to cheap labor. But it came at a cost. This practice prompted more Mexicans to illegally cross the border and then seek legalization after the fact. It became a self-perpetuating cycle and eventually the number of undocumented workers out paced that of legal workers. It soon became irrelevant whether workers had proper documentation or not.

The evolving informal system channeled illegal workers into jobs normally filled by domestic labor or legal guestworkers. Since there was no real consequence for hiring undocumented workers, many employers turned to the emerging informal, unregulated labor system. With increased employment opportunities, many Mexican migrants found little reason to touch-back.57 Employers came to prefer undocumented workers over braceros or domestic workers because the former had no claims to workplace protections. Braceros had contracts that theoretically guaranteed minimum wages, working conditions, and duration of employment (all of which were supposed to be monitored and enforced by the Mexican government). Beginning in 1966, domestic farmworkers gained limited protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act.58

Since undocumented workers by definition lacked a formal legal status with established safeguards, they were more tractable. For many employers, then, rather than being a last resort illegal workers became the workforce of choice. Government agencies were sometimes complicit in this scheme. INS would knowingly ignore unsanctioned workers during periods of peak need,

57 Calavita’s data shows that INS apprehended a significant number of undocumented workers by 1949, and that the number continued to rise until Operation Wetback in 1954. (Calavita, Inside the State, 32, 53.)

58 It still excludes them in significant ways: farm workers have no right to overtime pay, workers on small farms are not entitled to receive minimum wage, and children as young as twelve are legally allowed to work in the fields. (National Farm Worker Ministry, http://nfwm.org/education-center/farm-worker-issues/labor-laws/)

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and then when the harvest season ended and employers no longer needed laborers, area farm owners would call INS. Agents would then round up and deport the workers.59

Many “Texas Mexicans” in the 1950s started moving into Florida looking for work after being displaced by mechanization, in crops like cotton and tobacco, or facing increased job competition from undocumented Mexicans.60 These individuals quickly dominated the nation’s domestic migratory labor force. They looked to agricultural states like Florida for new opportunities. The state lagged behind other agricultural producing regions in adopting technological solutions. Instead, it continued to rely primarily on manual labor to harvest most truck crops, citrus, and sugar cane. Although the Latinization of the Florida workforce began in the 1950s, it was a slow process.

Florida’s farm labor work force did not shift predominantly to Mexicans, Mexican

Americans, and Central Americans until the 1980s and 1990s.61 In their study on the Latinization

59 Ibid., 33. [Calavita] As national concerns about illegal immigration increased, the country embraced Operation Wetback in 1954. With almost total disregard for individuals’ civil liberties or basic human rights, under this plan, INS officials coordinated with employers of undocumented workers by letting them know when they were planning to deport their workers, and making sure new legal workers were immediately available if necessary. (Ibid., 53) Somewhat surprisingly, many growers supported Operation Wetback and the resumption of a functioning Bracero Program because they thought it would stabilize the market and provide a dependable pool of experienced, skilled, cheap laborers, which was better than having to rely on an unpredictable labor pool. (Ibid., 59) Operation Wetback, coupled with the subsequent expansion of the Bracero Program and increased control mechanisms to prevent workers from “skipping” their contracts, enabled INS and the Border Patrol to crack down on illegal border crossings with the blessing of area growers. (Ibid., 75) Between 1951 and 1959, the number of braceros entering in the program was ten times higher than the number admitted during the wartime program of 1942-1947. (Ibid., 141.) Furthermore, officials tightened their control over workers by using the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act. They cracked down on workers who proved less tractable by labeling them as “labor agitators” or “subversives,” and then deporting, and blacklisting them from future employment. (Ibid., 77) By providing access to cheap, plentiful, controllable bracero workers, there was less immediate need for undocumented workers. However, the migration patterns and relationships established in the preceding years were difficult to alter; once the more drastic border procedures implemented during Wetback ended, substantial illegal migration resumed.

60 William Tyson, “Migratory Labor: Some Legal, Economic, and Social Aspects,” Mercer Law Review. Vol. 3, Issue 2 (Spring 1952), 289. Footnote 41 refers to the Report on the President’s Commission on Migratory Labor, p. 284. In the 1950s, Americans (including government officials) referred to virtually anyone of Spanish-speaking ancestry in the South and Southwest United States, Mexico, or Central America as “Texas Mexicans,” so it is impossible to know the workers’ place of origin.

61 Leo C. Polopolus and Robert D. Emerson, The Latinization of the Florida Farm Labor Market (Gainesville, FL: Food and Resource Economics Dept., Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, 1994), 1.

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of the Florida workforce, Leo C. Polopolus and Robert D. Emerson found that by 1971, over 50 percent of all hired workers were African American (the majority of which were women), and only 6.4 percent were Mexican.62 By the late 1980s, the researchers found the reported percentage of African Americans in the horticulture workforce dropped precipitously. African

Americans made up less than 15 percent, while Mexicans had increased to almost two-thirds of the total.63 Although the numbers were based on horticulture, and not agriculture exclusively, the researchers concluded the trends fairly represented the Florida seasonal farm labor markets.64

Fleeing civil war at home, Guatemalans began entering Florida in large numbers in the

1980s and they found jobs in the state’s southern vegetable fields.65 By the 1990-1991 harvest season, Guatemalans made up 20 percent of the work force, and Mexicans/Chicanos made up an additional 49 percent.66 The vast majority of these workers were foreign born, underemployed, young, mobile, immigrant workers.67 Although an important part of the new workforce,

Guatemalans, unlike Mexicans, typically did not remain in agriculture long term. Allan Burns attributed this to a few factors. He notes that in some cases, like citrus, Guatemalans’ smaller stature made it more challenging for them to harvest certain crops at the same rate as their larger

Mexican co-workers, thus they earned less money and quickly looked for employment

62 Of the African Americans workers, almost 63 percent were women. Of the remaining workers, 25.2 percent were Caucasian and 4.7 percent were simply grouped as “Other.” (Ibid., 1-2.)

63 Ibid., 3. The estimates provided are averages. They found difference among various crops. For example, Latino workers dominated strawberries and tomatoes by this time. (Ibid., 4.)

64 Ibid., 3.

65 South Florida includes: Southwestern Florida and Eastern Florida, particularly Collier, Hendry, and Palm Beach counties. Ibid., 8.

66 Ibid., 8. The remaining 30 percent of workers were split almost evenly between Haitian born and U.S. born workers, including African Americans. (Ibid., 9. Table 5: South Florida Vegetable Workers, 1990-1991 Season.)

67 Ibid.

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elsewhere.68 Additionally, Burns notes subsistence-farming Guatemalans had plant husbandry skills that translated well to golf course construction and other similar jobs. This did not mean working conditions were markedly better in those industries, or that workers were always content. Some employers preferred Guatemalans because they found them more tractable.

Guatemalans found themselves trapped in undesirable jobs because few could speak English, or even Spanish, so they were less likely to complain about tedious work.69

According to Polopolus and Emerson, three main factors explain the dramatic increase in the role of Latin American workers in Florida: poverty and low education; wage differentials; and U.S. immigration policies (specifically the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of

1986).70 The poverty and low education hypothesis essentially argued those two conditions trapped workers and their children in cycle of poverty. Lack of education prevented individuals from securing permanent work, forcing them to piece together a living through seasonal agricultural employment. For families with children, this meant kids could not regularly attend school.71

Unlike the declining wage differential between the Bahamas and the United States, substantial differences existed between the United States, Mexico, and Guatemala. This large gap explains why workers sought jobs in the United States both legally and illegally.72 When their study was published in 1994, Polopolus and Emerson were speculating on the impact the

68 Allan F. Burns. Maya in Exile: Guatemalans in Florida. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), p. 108.

69 Ibid., 110. Unlike African American farmworkers, where women made up a significant percentage of the workforce, most Guatemalan women did not engage in wage labor in the formal agricultural sector. Rather, they would earn money by cooking for the male workers, selling goods in a market, etc. (Ibid., 118.)

70 Polopolus and Emerson, The Latinization of the Florida Farm Labor Market, 10.

71 Ibid., 12. Migrants often remitted money to help family members back in their native country. They rarely made enough to move out of poverty, but they could marginally improve the living standards of family members there.

72 Ibid., 10.

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North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would have on wage differentials once it went into effect. They predicted it would narrow them, though they were unsure whether or not this would slow migration. They speculated entrenched migration networks would link families on both sides of the border, resulting in continued movement between countries. 73 Part of their predictions proved true. Families did maintain connections between Mexico and the United

States, which resulted in frequent movement between the two. Today, though, most scholars acknowledge that NAFTA had a devastating effect on wages in Mexico. Rather than reducing the wage gap, it increased it.74 Small subsistence farmers could not compete with imported foodstuffs from the United States. As a result, NAFTA pushed many Mexicans north to look for work in the United States.75

IRCA provided an opportunity for undocumented workers to gain legal status and simultaneously curb future illegal immigration through increased border security and employer sanctions. The idea was that amnesty would legalize existing members of the workforce, thus creating an ample supply of legal workers to agricultural employers. IRCA also included employer sanctions, intended to reduce future demand for illegal labor by imposing penalties on individuals and companies that hired undocumented workers. However, IRCA proved ineffective in a many ways. Individuals who should not have qualified for amnesty found ways to access it,

73 Ibid., 10. Polopolus and Emerson were not alone in predicting possible reduction in the wage differentials between the United States and Mexico. Wallace E. Huffman reached a similar conclusion in “Immigration and Agriculture in the 1990s” in Philip Martin’s edited collection, Immigration Reform and U.S. Agriculture, Vol. 3358 of Publication (University of California (System) Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. ANR Publications, 1995), 425.

74 Hernández, Migra, 230. Raymond A. Mohl, “Globalization, Latinization, and the Nuevo New South,” Journal of American Ethnic History, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Summer, 2003): 35. James C. Cobb and William Whitney Stueck, Globalization and the American South. (Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press, 2005), 35.

75 María Josefina Saldana-Portillo, “In the Shadow of NAFTA: Y tu mama también Revisits the National Allegory of Mexican Sovereignty” in Legal Borderlands: Law and the Construction of American Borders. Mary L. Dudziak and Leti Volpp, ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 165.

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and employer sanctions quickly proved ineffective in combating illegal immigration. The law legalized undocumented workers who had entered and resided continuously in the United States before January 1, 1982, provided they paid fines, back taxes, and other monetary penalties. A special provision was added to legalize agricultural workers who had performed 90 days of labor on U.S. farms. The law contained provisions designed to levy sanctions against employers who knowingly hired illegal workers, but enforcement proved weak at best. Although the law required employers ask potential workers for proper legal documents, the former were not required to verify that the documents provided were genuine, legitimate government-issued papers.76 Consequently, rather than deterring illegal migration and employment, it simply led many workers to change their status from “undocumented” to “falsely” documented.77 Since large numbers of the newly naturalized citizens were male heads of household, upon receiving legal status they began the process of reunifying their families by bringing them to the United

States. This resulted in new legal and illegal migratory flows.78

An in depth look at IRCA in the context of Florida’s long migrant farm labor history reveals U.S. agricultural labor policy cannot be severed from immigration policy. As demonstrated, for decades Caribbean workers, both informally and formally, supplemented the domestic labor force in Florida. However, as those labor supplies dwindled with the termination of the Bahamian program, Latinos increasingly filled the void. The Latinization of the Florida workforce began when changing labor conditions at home and in the West displaced Mexicans and Mexican Americans. But it wasn’t until IRCA in 1986 that it dramatically increased.

76 Calavita, Inside the State, 169. Mohl, “Globalization, Latinization, and the Nuevo New South,” 49.

77 Martin, “IRCA and Agriculture: Hopes, Fears, & Realities,” in Immigration Reform and U.S. Agriculture, 26.

78 Roberto Suro, Strangers Among Us: How Latino Immigration Is Transforming America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 94.

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Although formal immigration policy sought to limit entrance to eligible individuals via the nation’s main gate, formal and informal labor policies and practices undermined this effort.

Examining the often-overlooked element of the southern agricultural labor system, the influence of temporary foreign migrant workers, sheds light on how Florida agriculture came to rely on and perpetuate a regime rooted in low-wage, mobile, non-citizen labor. A close examination of the state’s coercive labor practices and a long look at regional migration patterns illuminates the evolution of this system. Farming picked up in Florida in the 1920s, just as the state’s more coercive labor practices—debt peonage and convict leasing—were under increasing attack. Growers had to look for an alternative labor supply. This development, coupled with changing labor trends following the great migration north of millions of African Americans, led area farm owners to believe they were losing access to the considerable number of unskilled, non-white workers they would need to engage in large-scale agriculture.

Bahamians, traveling between the island archipelago and the Florida peninsula for generations, played a pivotal role in helping develop the state. In the 1920s, when access to domestic labor seemed to be changing, some farmers began advocating for a formalization of these temporary labor migration trends. But, this push coincided with national trends towards immigration restriction, and so these efforts generally fell on deaf ears. World War II, however, further altered American labor patterns. It again provided domestic workers with new employment opportunities, thus bolstering farm owners’ claims to “labor shortages.” Although this assertion proved to be false, it gained traction among lawmakers and the American public since the war placed exceptional attention and priority on American food production. Wartime rhetoric was crucial in shaping the state’s evolving agricultural labor practices. It solidified

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growers’ reliance on non-citizen workers and set in motion policies and practices that opened the door to future exploitative labor regimes.

From the turn of the century through World War II, workers engaged in informal, seasonal labor migration between the Bahamas and Florida. The war ended unofficial migration, and led to the rise of a sanctioned, government-run, guestworker program. Growers and government officials adapted the emergency war policies over time to facilitate the flow of foreign labor into industries with wages and working conditions so abhorrent that domestic workers refused to work in them. In 1952, this program emerged as the H-2A guestworker program.

As Peter Kramer noted, the temporary foreign farm labor program was a “child of crisis” and kept alive by a series of international emergencies; however, by the 1960s, it had “become a habit” among American growers.79 Examining the program’s evolution from inception through termination illuminates the space between policy theory and practice, and highlights how growers, governments, and workers fought to shape and reshape the evolving farm labor regime in their favor. The history of the Bahamian labor program demonstrates that although growers and governments took pains to create and organize a system that would provide a steady flow of workers from the island nation to the Florida peninsula, workers frequently challenged that scheme in an effort to bend it meet their own needs. Whether intentional or not, workers forced organizers to reconsider how labor moved from one area to another, what kinds of workers were most effective, and how best to control those they imported. In addition to challenging the system’s daily operations, workers’ foreign status and their actions once they were in the United

79 Kramer, The Offshores, 87.

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States also made employers and program authorities address more abstract ideas like citizenship and rights.

In the wake of the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement and resurgence of the Bahamian economy, however, the guestworker system came under increased scrutiny and eventually ended in 1966. Although some growers resisted the program’s termination, for many, the decline was irrelevant. The increased availability of undocumented, temporary, foreign migrants meant that

Florida agriculture continued to perpetuate a labor system based on the informal movement of low-wage workers. Unlike past migrants, however, current workers are often falsely or undocumented migrants. A case study of Florida’s evolving agricultural labor regimes in the twentieth century shows how the state has had real and significant historical and political effects on modern labor policies and practices.

The mere presence of foreign workers, who by definition were contributing members of a society yet excluded from the rights and privileges of citizenship, opened unintended dialogues.

Formal guestworker programs, or simply the reliance on non-citizen workers (legal or not), raise complicated questions. How can we improve wages and working conditions so that farm work is appealing to domestic workers, and enables them to maintain their dignity and earn a living wage? If America is considering a new foreign labor program, how can it avoid setting up a system where guestworkers are treated as second-class citizens? How do we award and guarantee rights and privileges to those who economically contribute to the development of a country, but are excluded from full the political, social, and economic benefits of that country?

These are problems Americans must address as we discuss labor and immigration policies for the twenty-first century.

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Films

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Online Resources

The Bahamas Folklore Collection blog. Collection editor Cordell Thompson. http://gullahgeecheeconnection.wordpress.com/the-contract-2/.

Coalition for Immokalee Workers. http://www.ciw-online.org/slavery.html.

Farmworker Association of Florida. http://www.floridafarmworkers.org/

International Labor Organization. http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/history/lang--en/index.htm http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO:12100:P12100_I NSTRUMENT_ID:312211:NO http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO:12100:P12100_I NSTRUMENT_ID:312242:NO

Mailboats Bahamas Blog, Eric Wiberg. http://mailboatsbahamas.blogspot.com/2013/06/monarch-of-nassau-inter-island-twin.html

Maynard-Gibson, Allyson. Speech. “Reviewing the Past, Charting The Way in Fraternal Excellence 2011 and Beyond.” 55th Annual State Convention of The Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World, June 8, 2011. http://bahamaspress.com/2011/06/12/madam-senator-maynard-gibson-addresses-the-elks- convention%E2%80%8F/.

National Farm Worker Ministry. http://nfwm.org/education-center/farm-worker-issues/labor- laws/

“The Positive Achievements of Sir Randol Fawkes: Bahamian Hero,” Blog, http://dennisdamesonline.net/sir_randol/The_First_Labour_Day.html

St. John’s River Management District. http://www.sjrwmd.com/lakeapopka/history.html

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Erin L. Conlin completed her B.A. in history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

She moved to Florida and taught middle and high school before attending graduate school. Erin completed her M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Florida, under the direction of

Joseph Spillane, in 2010 and 2014 respectively. In addition to undergraduate teaching and archival research, she pursued an interest in public history through her work at the University of

Florida Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (SPOHP), under director Paul Ortiz. While serving as a graduate coordinator with SPOHP, Erin organized two community-based projects designed to build bridges between students and the local community. During the 2014-2015 academic she further developed her public history credentials as a visiting scholar at Concordia University’s

Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (Montreal, Quebec, Canada.)

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