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Caught in the Cross Fire : African Americans and Florida's System of Labor During World War II

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Caught in the Cross Fire : African Americans and Florida's System of Labor During World War II University of South Florida Digital Commons @ University of South Florida USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications USF Faculty Publications 2012 Caught in the Cross Fire : African Americans and Florida's System of Labor during World War II James Anthony Schnur Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/fac_publications Recommended Citation Schnur, James A. "Caught in the Cross Fire: African Americans and Florida's System of Labor during World War II." Sunland Tribune: Journal of the Tampa Historical Society 19 (November 1993): 47-52. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the USF Faculty Publications at Digital Commons @ University of South Florida. It has been accepted for inclusion in USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ University of South Florida. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CAUGHT IN THE CROSS FIRE: AFRICAN AMERICANS AND FLORIDA’S SYSTEM OF LABOR DURING WORLD WAR II By JAMES A. SCHNUR The Second World War greatly altered promising them "complete franchise, Florida's social climate. The trends of freedom, and political and social equality." tourism, business progressivism, ur- Guards closely monitored activities in the banization, and industrial development that Scrub and other black areas of the Cigar evolved during the war and flourished in its City. In June 1918, the mayor of Miami aftermath competed with conventional ordered police to prohibit any gathering of agricultural and extractive enterprises. blacks in Colored Town because he feared Countless soldiers served on Florida's such an assembly might become rowdy and military bases, and many returned after the unmanageable. Police abuse, coupled with war in search of jobs and greater economic other forms of institutional bigotry and a mobility. Women answered the call to fill revived Ku Klux Klan, haunted blacks vacancies in wartime industries. The state's throughout Florida long after hostilities African American residents, however, were concluded on Armistice Day in 1918. The caught in the cross fire between the Klan reemerged in Florida during the early immediate labor demands of a nation 1920s and promptly became immersed in the transformed by war and the long-standing political hierarchy. Wherever klaverns traditions of segregation and paternalism appeared, violence soon followed. In this that had historically stifled their economic paternal culture, many of the white welfare. When the Pittsburgh Courier Floridians who rewarded blacks for announced its "Double V" campaign two deferential behavior would evoke terror to months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, it maintain their social and economic encouraged blacks throughout America to hegemony. Similar to abusive parents who fight for victory in two distinct wars: the excessively punish their children, Southern external struggle against Fascism and the whites considered it their duty to discipline internal culture of racism. This essay blacks for any infringement of customs and examines the precarious balance between traditions. Blacks who challenged the labor and race relations in Florida during division of labor that relegated them to World War II.1 low-wage, low-skilled jobs often endured acts of public humiliation, beatings, and, Despite their loyalty and patriotism, blacks occasionally, murder.2 in Florida encountered blatant discrimination and paternalistic race Florida's unbalanced scales of justice relations in the years prior to World War II. promoted a system of statutory bondage. In A story in a 1917 issue of the Tampa the years following the Civil War, Morning Tribune claimed that German authorities maintained a supply of cheap agents hoped to incite blacks to rebel by labor by instituting a convict lease program and enforcing debt peonage regulations. practice, even after the U. S. Department of Blacks constituted a majority of the convicts Justice and a committee assembled by Gov- leased from Florida's prisons to work for ernor Doyle E. Carlton conducted private companies. Though the state investigations during the early 1930s. In the officially ended this exploitative program in fall of 1936, newspapers throughout 1923, the custom of leasing prisoners America reported that 400 blacks remained persisted into the 1940s. A law enacted enslaved on a farm in Macclenny. One man during the 1919 legislative session remarked that "it would be easier for an considered it “prima facie evidence of the enemy of Hitler to operate in Germany than intent to defraud" if individuals accepted for a union organizer to attempt to set foot in any item of value -- such as transportation to one of these camps." By the end of the a labor camp -- but refused to fulfill their decade, Governor Fred P. Cone denied that obligations. White recruiters could mislead forced labor existed in Florida. When some- desperate and impoverished African one once asked Cone about the 1919 codes Americans by promising them free that reconstituted slavery, he replied: "It's a transportation, food, and accommodations if good law. Peonage? We have no peonage in they worked in the forests or plantations. In Florida. Our colored people are the happiest this modern form of indentured servitude, folk on earth-when the Yankees'll (w) let once new employees arrived at the labor them alone." Debt peonage served as an camps, the\ witnessed deplorable conditions important investment for Cone and the state and realized that they owed the company for of Florida. Authorities usually managed to their passage. The law offered no recourse capture laborers who escaped from the for the duped black laborers because it plantation, and judges placed the escapees required them to prove that the employer on chain gangs and forced them to build had misled them: Florida courts would never Florida's roads and infrastructure.4 permit blacks to make such accusations against the white businessmen who Despite federal intervention, peonage at bolstered the state's economy with captive turpentine camps continued throughout the labor.3 war years. A turpentine foreman told folklorist Stetson Kennedy during a 1941 Turpentine camps egregiously violated the camp visit that his authority allowed him to civil rights of black workers. Camp act as "the law, judge, jury, and authorities colluded with sheriffs, executioner.... even rank(ing) ahead of politicians, and civic leaders to keep African God." These plantations-often owned by Americans in a state of peonage. Beatings, Northern business interests -- used their attacks, and murders frequently occurred Southern brand of justice on any unwelcome within the guarded confines of these camps. interloper: Authorities even charged Federal Some rural law enforcement officers Bureau of Investigation agents with criminal arrested innocent people on vagrancy trespass for trying to investigate conditions charges to meet quotas established by at these camps. In 1945, a Marianna turpentine operators. Similar to the purchase turpentine operator falsely arrested and of a slave in the antebellum period, camp forcibly transported across the state a black administrators could secure additional man who owed him money. A similar case workers by assuming the accounts of of bondage prompted the U. S. Supreme indebted blacks from other camps. The Court decision that annulled the peonage government made no attempt to halt this statute. Emanuel Pollock received $5 after he agreed to pay off a loan by performing the South printed an article informing acts of labor. When Pollock failed to keep readers that the sugar industry needed 500 his promise, the judge levied a $100 fine and laborers during the upcoming season. This imprisoned him. story in an August 1942 edition of the Atlanta Daily World mentioned the same In Pollock v. Williams the Supreme Court "free" benefits that white recruiters had declared Florida's 1919 law unconstitutional promised to unsuspecting black men on because it violated the Thirteenth street corners. The paper asked interested Amendment and federal anti-peonage persons to contact the U. S. Employment statutes. But this 1944 verdict failed to curb Service, an agency that enlisted cane cutters de facto peonage. In 1949, the Workers' for sugar corporations. The Employment Defense League (WDL) claimed that 14 Service claimed it assumed no responsibility more forms of forced labor arc more widely for the welfare of the workers once they practiced in Florida than in any other state. entered the plantation.6 Its legislature by successive enactments has most consistently attempted to evade or The sugar industry modified its hiring ignore United States Supreme Court practices by 1943. A year earlier, U. S. decisions." During a visit to Alachua County Attorney General Herbert S. Phillips had in 1949, the WDL located fourteen zealously prosecuted U. S. Sugar. Although turpentine camps which flagrantly violated the court revoked a grand jury indictment workers' civil rights.5 that claimed U. S. Sugar forced field hands to toll under peonage, sugar corporations Atrocities also occurred on sugar plantations decided to halt the recruitment of blacks around Lake Okeechobee. The United States with United States citizenship to prevent Sugar Corporation (US Sugar) harvested its further litigation. Beginning in 1943, first Successful crop near the Everglades in Caribbean residents of African descent 1931. For the next eleven years, white replaced the black Americans who found agents recruited Southern blacks to cut cane employment opportunities in other areas by offering the false assurance that the during World War II. This non-native black company would provide free housing, food, population posed new difficulties for a medical care, and transportation. When region that staunchly adhered to segregation: America's entry into World War II seemed The government detained and deported inevitable, the sugar industry cloaked its many immigrants who challenged the exploitation under the guise of patriotism. discrimination found in the plantation Recruiters for U. S. Sugar and other firms system. In an October 1943 incident, staff at told prospective laborers that they worked U. S.
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