Building the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union

REVOLT IN THE FIELDS: BUILDING THE SOUTHERN TENANT FARMERS’ UNION IN THE OLD SOUTHWEST

MATTHEW F. SIMMONS

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

2019

To my spouse, Vivian

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author wishes to thank his dissertation chair, Dr. Paul Ortiz, for his unflagging support and always timely advice throughout the course of this project. I also extend a special thank you to the other members of my dissertation committee: Dr.

William Link, Dr. Matthew Jacobs, and Dr. Sharon Austin. Dr. Michael Honey deserves special recognition for his willingness to serve as an off-campus, external member of the dissertation committee. I am grateful to my parents for teaching me the value of education early in life and providing constant support and encouragement. Finally, I offer an especially large thank to my wonderful wife Vivian, whose willingness to assist me in any way possible insured the timely completion of this project.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

ABSTRACT ...... 6

CHAPTER

1 DEVIL’S BREW: RACE, LABOR, AND THE DREAM OF LANDED INDEPENDENCE ...... 8

2 HARDEST PLACE IN THE STATES: POWER AND POSITION IN THE ARKANSAS DELTA ...... 19

3 ALWAYS SOMEBODY WILLING TO TAKE THE CHANCE: RADICAL TRADITIONS IN THE OLD SOUTHWEST ...... 71

4 I WOUDN’T STAND FOR IT: THE ROLE OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN IN THE SOUTHERN TENANT FARMERS UNION ...... 126

5 GROWING A MOVEMENT: FUNDRAISING, PUBLICITY, AND STRATEGY ...... 181

6 LOOKING BACKWARD AND FORWARD: THE CHANGING NATURE OF COMMERICAL AGRICULTURE IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH ...... 221

7 ESSAY ON SOURCES ...... 238

LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 256

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 267

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

REVOLT IN THE FIELDS: BUILDING THE SOUTHERN TENANT FARMERS’ UNION IN THE OLD SOUTHWEST By

Matthew F. Simmons

May 2019

Chair: Paul Ortiz Major: History

In 1933 the Roosevelt Administration passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act

(AAA) to buttress a failing agricultural industry during the Great Depression. In the rural

South the AAA had the effect of stabilizing commodity prices, in particular cotton, but it also had the deleterious effect of empowering large landowners and further impoverishing landless black and white tenant farmers and sharecroppers. Realizing that the only way to achieve economic justice was to organize, black and white landless farmers in the Arkansas Delta formed the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU) in

1934. Within a few short years the STFU grew beyond Arkansas to the surrounding Old

Southwest eventually numbering upwards of 30,000 members as more and more rural workers joined seeking to reclaim a measure of control over their lives. My dissertation explores how this social movement developed, examining the factors that allowed it grow as quickly as it did, and highlighting the ways in which poor farmers leveraged limited resources in pursuit of their goals of economic justice and participatory democracy. I argue that this rural insurgency was built on generations of separate black and white radical organizing which coalesced within the STFU, weaving together once separate strands of insurgent tradition. In contrast to most earlier studies of the STFU,

this dissertation also centers black women’s leadership in the union. Without the work of black women at the grassroots level occupying key positions in the union the tremendous growth and success of the union would not have been possible. The rise and fall of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union raise important questions about the role of capital and the state in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries across the globe in creating anti-democratic agricultural policies that fail to take into account the diverse perspectives, values, and insights of workers.

CHAPTER 1 DEVIL’S BREW: RACE, LABOR, AND THE DREAM OF LANDED INDEPENDENCE

This dissertation explores the rise of the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union during the mid-1930s in the Arkansas Delta. The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union developed in response to New Deal agricultural policy designed to ameliorate a crisis of overproduction, but which resulted in the impoverishment of poor farmers. It was in the

Delta that working-class whites and African Americans grew cotton by renting small acreages from large landowners. As different classes of renters, these tenant farmers and sharecroppers received the lowest return on their labor in the nation.

Overproduction, resulting from a surfeit of land being farmed, coupled with advances in technology drove those wages even lower.1

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was one element of the larger New Deal which aimed to decrease unemployment and stabilize the economy, calling for acreage reductions in exchange for government farm subsidies.This policy even received support from northern liberals without the background in agriculture or the foreknowledge to understand how this program would play out in the cotton fields. Theoretically tenant farmers and sharecroppers were to share in the agricultural subsidies and landowners were to maintain the same number of workers on their plantations. Instead, large landowners found ways of coercing their employees into handing over their rightful share of the subsidies and evicted those whom they felt were no longer needed. These subsidies also allowed plantation owners

1 David Eugene Conrad, The Forgotten Farmers: The Story of Sharecroppers in the New Deal (Urbana: The University of Illinois, 1965), 1-18; Donald H. Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union and the New Deal (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 3-16.

to further mechanize cotton agriculture, which accelerated this process of displacement.

In short, New Deal agricultural policy in the South benefitted a rural southern oligarchy at the expense of the poorest members of southern society—black and white tenant farmers and sharecroppers. These men and women formed the Southern Tenant

Farmers’ Union in response to the injustices precipitated by the Agricultural Adjustment

Act.2

Existing studies of the STFU often explain it as a response of hard-pressed landless farmers to New Deal agricultural policies that devastated sharecroppers and tenant farmers.3 While there is much truth in these existing analyses of the relationship of the union to the New Deal, they oftentimes fail to see the union as one link in a much longer chain of southern rural radicalism which preceded the Great Depression by decades. Equally important, I argue that while the STFU lost in the short term it did lay the groundwork for later generations of radicals and their involvement in new organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to thrive and continue the fight for social justice. Many of the earliest studies of the union were part of a general move towards a “history from below” in the 1960s and 1970s, yet still focused on the upper echelons of the union leadership: white men such as H.L. Mitchell and J.R.

Butler. In contrast, my research is oriented towards local leaders, particularly black women, who provided the backbone of the union and the ways in which they carved out social space to take on these leadership roles despite the limitations placed on them by society based on their gender and race. In addition, this dissertation strives to achieve a

2 Conrad, 19-36; Grubbs, 17-39.

3 In particular this was the approach taken in the earliest studies of the union in the 1960s and 1970s by historians such as Conrad and Grubbs.

more accurate understanding of the spatial and regional aspects of unionism. Many studies of the union, while emphasizing its location in the geographic South, fail to distinguish the Old South from the newly developed rural Southwest of the Arkansas and Mississippi Deltas. This distinction is incredibly important in understanding how local power dynamics impacted the union’s growth. Finally, while some studies of the union have crafted a narrative which encompasses both the real physical strife taking place in the Arkansas Delta and surrounding area as well as the political strife taking place in Washington D.C., very little systematic attention has been given to the outside supporters of the union in the North, an ad hoc coalition of progressive Christians, socialists and liberals, and college students. In many ways this coalition anticipated the kinds of alliances civil rights activists would cultivate thirty years later.

My methodological approach is intimately tied to the angle of vision from I have approached this project, namely from the bottom up. In this sense I have mirrored the approach of many recent scholars of the union such as Jarod Roll and James D. Ross,

Jr. with their emphases on the rank-and-file members of the union. This is all well and good, but since I wanted to avoid covering the exact same ground in addition to writing from the perspective of rank-and-file members, I have also chosen a longer chronology than many previous studies of the union as well as arguing for an expanded understanding of the union’s geographic scope. Even though the STFU was centered in the Arkansas Delta it also reached into neighboring states such as Oklahoma and

Texas. Very few studies of the union have placed it within this unique southwestern context and very little attention has been given to the Oklahoma branch of the union.

This broader context matters because the American South is not a monolithic region. It

has the obvious cleavages between rural and urban as well as the Upper South versus the Lower South, but in many ways the Old Southwest is quite distinctive from other subregions of the South in terms of its economic, social, and cultural development.

Large portions of the Old Southwest were developed after the Civil War; in fact, many rural areas were not under cultivation until the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Because of its different developmental path there was a greater degree of fluidity in terms of social structure early on and the old customs of the South did not automatically take root in this new region.

This understandging of the geography and the development of the Old

Southwest has shaped my archival approach to researching the union. Not only did I utilize the extensive Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union papers on microfilm, but I also moved beyond existing studies by visiting a number of regional archives in Oklahoma,

Illinois, New York, and the Arkansas Delta. My methodological approach was similar to existing works in that it looked to the grassroots, rank-and-file members, particularly through the use of oral history interviews. My expanded archival focus has allowed me to rediscover or uncover long-forgotten individuals who had a significant impact on the union, but whose stories have not been sufficiently told. This approach, again, shifts the chronology and geography of the union.

Studying the STFU allows scholars to address questions that go well beyond the subject of the rise and fall of one of the most important unions in American history.

Historically, who has held the power in rural America, and can we accurately describe the social relations between small farmers, tenant farmers, and sharecroppers and large landowners as truly “democratic”? How do we ensure that people actually have a voice

in decisions that affect their daily lives and material well-being? How do “ordinary people” organize to create what historian Lawrence Goodwyn called a “movement culture” that allows them to gain control over their economic existence and to gain a say in the larger society? My project examines what happens when the rules governing society are determined not by a democratic majority, but by an oligarchic minority, when power relations become so imbalanced and people become so oppressed that they rebel at great personal cost to themselves and their families. My work explores how this process of revolt manifests itself and the underlying factors and motivations that drove men and women, young and old, black and white, to take extreme risks and put their own personal safety in jeopardy by challenging corrupt institutions.

While traditional New Deal historiography continues to credit FDR, Frances

Perkins, and industrial leaders with creating the conditions under which workers were able to organize and agitate for better working conditions and wages, my research demonstrates that the poorest people of a society can tackle a lack of democratic representation and economic marginalization through economic cooperation. This can take place in an industrial or rural setting; in this study I explore this cooperation within the context of the rural Old Southwest and through the lives and actions of black and white tenant farmers and sharecroppers. These men and women were motivated by a vision of the future where community and belonging transcended skin color and differences in class standing. This vision repudiated notions of the technological obsolescence of poor farmers and offered cooperative farming as an alternative to new methods of commercial agriculture which privileged the elite.

This story of poor farmers in the Arkansas Delta has great contemporary relevance. This phenomenon of institutional corruption coupled with economic marginalization holds true throughout the twentieth century and even into the twenty- first century in rural areas of the global South.4 The world may be increasingly urbanized, but almost half of the globe is still made up of rural communities.5 And the struggles of tenant farmers and sharecroppers in the American South parallel the struggles of these other people groups in these modern rural communities.6 Thus, my research has resonance across multiple fields and disciplines and touches on questions of economic development, politics and government, sociological change, and environmental management.

Throughout this dissertation I will be making several arguments relating to how social movements are constructed as well as the limitations they face. Arguably the

STFU was successful because it was able to build on pre-existing radical traditions, develop local grassroots leadership, and find allies outside the confines of the rural

South. I would argue that the STFU provides a blueprint for how to build a successful

4 For some excellent works discussing institutional corruption in the United States (and elsewhere) see William Greider, Who Will Tell The People?: The Betrayal Of American Democracy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993); Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (New York: Penguin Books 2017); Noam Chomsky, Falied States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006).

5 The rural population of the United States has declined to around 14 percent according to the USDA and US Census Burea. See https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/90556/eib-200.pdf?v=5899.2. Accessed March 21, 2019 & https://www.census.gov/topics/population.html. Accessed March 21, 2019. Nevertheless, the global rural population remains quite high; according to the “United Nation’s World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision” 55 percent of the world’s population lived in urban areas as of 2018 leaving 45 percent living in rural areas. See https://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2018-KeyFacts.pdf. Accessed March 21, 2019.

6 Even though less than 50 percent of the global population live in rural areas, according to the UN, “Small-scale producers feed 70% of the people in the world.” See “United Nations Nations Declaration on The Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas.” https://viacampesina.org/en/wp- content/uploads/sites/2/2018/11/flyer-peasant-rights-oct2018_rev1.pdf. Accessed March 21, 2019.

social movement as well as providing a cautionary tale about how such a movement can founder on the rocks of internal division, but more importantly how social movements must adapt in the face of broader economic trends. The STFU is significant because it shows interracial, cross-class cooperation was possible and continues to be possible despite a national legacy of racial division and antagonism. If such a movement could manifest in one of the most racially repressive and economically impoverished areas of the 1930s South than modern-day challenges to a deeply unsatisfactory status quo are not only possible, but to be expected.

Studying the story of the STFU challenges notions of the New Deal as being inherently progressive and beneficial for average Americans. In fact, the New Deal was a kind of predecessor to generations of elite policy efforts to improve “agricultural efficiency” such as NAFTA or the so-called Green Revolution that arguably made rural conditions much worse for landless farmers on a global scale. These landless farmers were then forced to migrate to urban slums where instead of simply being poor as they had been in the countryside, they were now poor and hungry without the ability to grow their own food. Furthermore, a closer examination of the STFU also counters a mythology of tenant farmers and sharecroppers as being uneducated, unmotivated, and generally-speaking, passive victims of a white-supremacist, southern oligarchy. Instead, my analysis of the STFU demonstrates the resiliency of the human spirit. Faced with economic deprivation and potentially violent reprisals the men and women of the STFU boldly took a stand and demanded to be treated like human beings rather than cogs in the machinery of southern agriculture. The STFU demonstrates the importance of patient, step-by-step organizing and shows that wherever there is injustice and

inequality there is always resistance. That resistance may only break into open revolt under certain fortuitous (or less than fortuitous) circumstances, but those who bear the heaviest burdens are always waiting for an opportune moment to push for real change in how society is structured and organized.

My first chapter explores the power relations that existed between wealthy landowners and poor black and white tenant farmers and sharecroppers in the

Arkansas Delta and surrounding areas from Reconstruction through the 1930s. It was during this time that the social and economic structure of the Arkansas Delta and surrounding area was still being determined. Consequently, the region was riven by class and race conflicts as elite whites faced off against poor whites, poor whites faced off against poor blacks, and poor blacks demanded fair treatment from whites of all classes. More directly this chapter highlights specific instances of worker misuse and abuse and demonstrates how the legal process and democratic institutions had become corrupted by a white-supremacist, southern oligarchy. This chapter sheds light on a time when the South was a distinctively different place compared to the rest of the United

States with its own culture, traditions, and social norms. Many, but not all, of these characteristics of the Old South were ultimately incorporated into the cultural fabric of the Old Southwest.

The second chapter explores both black and white radical agrarian traditions, traditions the men and women of the STFU drew on and synthesized into a coherent alternative vision of rural social organization and development. African Americans in

Arkansas had a long tradition of resistance to racial oppression that dated back to antelbellum days and, at various times, in the late ninetheen and early twentieth

centuries this tradition manifested itself in collective action such as the formation of the

Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America in Southeastern Arkansas following World War I. White radicals, for their part, had participated in the earlier

Populist and Socialist agrarian uprisings in the Southwest during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Men and women who been active in these earlier movements joined together under the auspices of the STFU to storm the gates of power and privilege in the rural South. They brought with them valuable tactical experience and social networks that facilitated the union’s rapid growth.

Chapter 3 discusses the importance of developing grassroots leadership and the emergence of African American women as leaders of the union in a time when union leadership was dominated by white men. More specifically it interrogates the factors that contributed to the involvement of these black women who took up leadership roles in union locals. I argue that a higher level of literacy than that of their black male counterparts, prior leadership roles in fraternal and church organizations, and a prolonged yearning for land of their own were all key factors in the assumption of leadership roles by black women.

The fourth chapter highlights the importance of outside support from a tactical, financial, and publicity standpoint. A union runs on the dues paid by its members, yet the members of the STFU were the poorest of the poor and only earned money twice a year—during the cotton chopping and cotton-picking seasons. Accordingly, this chapter looks at key individuals and groups outside of union territory who provided financial support as well as advice to the union. In many ways, the relationship between

progressive northern supporters and the union foreshadows similar cooperation during the civil rights movement.

What are the ingredients that make for a successful social movement? What kind of resources must movement members bring to bear on a problem? Do these resources exist within the community already or must they be sought elsewhere? What kinds of force multipliers can be utilized to push for substantive change at the national, state, and local levels? These are all the kinds of questions that my work addresses. This dissertation examines the process of building a class-based, interracial resistance movement, paying particular attention to the elements that make for a successful social movement and highlighting the way in which poor farmers leverage limited resources in pursuit of their goals of economic justice and participatory democracy.

My dissertation demonstrates that democracy functions best when citizens take ownership of their own communities by drawing on inherited populist traditions, developing grassroots leaders, and building alliances that disrupt boundaries. It is these inherited traditions that show movement participants what has been done, what has worked, and what has not worked, thus allowing them to construct a new edifice on the foundations laid by others. It is these grassroots leaders who responsible for mobilizing the entire community, forming a nucleus around which a genuine movement of the people can coalesce, thus allowing a movement to grow organically through personal interaction and connection. And finally, it is these alliances that allow a movement to gain publicity, but more importantly aid from distant cities where their plight is unknown, thus allowing the movement to have an impact and a public persona much larger than its numbers might suggest. These three factors: traditions, leaders, and allies account

for the rapid rise of the social movement embodied in the Southern Tenant Farmers’

Union; these elements also account for its outsized impact on discussions surrounding poverty and agricultural policy in the rural American South during the 1930s.

The fact that the STFU arose when and where it did demonstrate that there has always been a vocal minority of people willing to project an alternative vision of organizing society in the American South. That being said, I would argue that the failure of the STFU to continue as a broad-based movement of poor farmers as well as the failures of industrial unionism in the South helped put in motion a series of events culminated in the deindustrialization of the 1970s which ultimately led to the election of a demagogue in the worst of southern traditions at the dawn of the twenty-first century,

Donald J. Trump. Propelled to national prominence through a combination of bluster, chicanery, and luck, this man was able to tap into feelings of abandonment by working- class, rural whites.7 These men and women, ironically, would have benefited greatly had the vision represented by the STFU gained traction—a more just and egalitarian economic system based on cooperation rather than competition that would have completely restructured the economic and social hierarchy of the American South to the benefit of the masses.

7 It is worth noting that the “southern demagogue” is a political type that benefits from social division and has a long history in the American South dating back to the “redemption” of the South following Reconstruction and continuing through the early twenty-first century.

CHAPTER 2 HARDEST PLACE IN THE STATES: POWER AND POSITION IN THE ARKANSAS DELTA

Writing to the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union secretary H.L. Mitchell in the middle of June 1936, Viola Smith, president of the Holly Grove of the Lady’s union local in Parkin, Arkansas, lamented over the difficulties she faced: “I can’t get no job, I have house rent to pay, and my husband is sick and I need help.”1 Davis goes on to call her home town of Parkin in Northeast Arkansas “the hardest place in the states.”2 She ends with a plea: “To all of the union members not one but all please help me.”3 What was it that prompted her characterization of life in the Arkansas Delta as being so especially harsh? Certainly, times were hard, but times were hard everywhere—the nation was in the midst of a depression. So why were things so bad in this particular part of the country? One way to better understand the conditions in the Arkansas Delta during the

1930s is to look at the correspondence of another sharecropper woman, Lillian Stultz who was writing to the union a year-and-a-half before Viola Smith. Lillian Stultz was the spouse of William H. Stultz who had recently been imprisoned for union activities along with three other men in the town of Wynne in Cross County, Arkansas, located fifteen miles away from Parkin.4 Mrs. Stultz’s correspondence during the winter of 1934 with

1 Viola Smith to H.L. Mitchell, June 13, 1936, Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Records, Reel 2, originals located in Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 H.L. Mitchell to Dr. Amberson, November 21st & 24th, 1934, Box 1, folder 25, A. Eugene Cox Papers, University of Memphis Special Collections, Memphis, TN.

union supporter Dr. William R. Amberson of Memphis, Tennessee, exemplifies how truly difficult circumstances had become for poor sharecroppers in the Arkansas Delta.

Lillilan Stultz is representative of the conditions that many sharecroppers faced during this period of time, although not all sharecroppers had spouses in prison, many of them were having trouble making ends meet just as Lillian Stultz was. Stultz noted how tight money had become since her husband had been jailed. She thanked H.L.

Mitchell for sending her three dollars, but noted that continued assistance was necessary: “while my husband is away it will be impossible for me to make enough for myself and my six children.”5 In a later letter written two weeks later she again observed the difficulty of making do without her imprisoned spouse—yet when she visited the relief office she was told “There is no project for women.”6 Furthermore, she also found herself and her children facing eviction. In spite of this she maintained a steely resolve, ending her letter matter-of-factly stating, “However I will do the best I can for I know you all are doing all you can for us and the union.”7 Evictions had become an increasingly problematic issue for both union and non-union sharecroppers—New Deal agricultural policy had unintentionally, but not unforeseeably, launched what Alex Lichenstein describes “as an epidemic of evictions” across cotton country during a period of time in

5 Lillian Stultz to H.L. Mitchell, December 4, 1934, Box 1, folder 25, A. Eugene Cox Papers, University of Memphis Special Collections, Memphis, TN.

6 The relief office, while not offering her employment, did offer direct relief if her husband was not released. Lillian Stultz to William R. Amberson, December 22/25th 1934, Box 1, folder 25, A. Eugene Cox Papers, University of Memphis Special Collections, Memphis, TN.

7 Ibid.

which there was no work to be found anywhere.8 And to exacerbate matters further, these evictions often took place in the dead of winter.9

The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union did its best to support Stultz in her time of need, providing not only for her and her children, but also for the families of the other men who had been jailed as well.10 In particular, the union tried to play “Santa Claus” for the children and for this Lillian Stoltz was quite grateful: “I wish to thank you and the other good people again who have made it possible for my children to have a so much nicer Christmas than they could have otherwise had.”11 Dr. Amberson’s wife was also kind enough to send along dresses that Stultz could use and for which she was deeply appreciative.12 Fortunately, for all those concerned the imprisonment only lasted for about a month before the men were released after having been charged with disturbing labor and collecting union dues.13 Nevertheless, even the relatively short period without their husband and father pushed the Stultz family to the brink of ruin and without union funds they would have faced starvation In a subsequent letter Lillian Stultz noted how

8 Alex Lichtenstein in Howard Kester, Revolt Among the Sharecroppers (1936; repr., Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 31.

9 Ibid; Donald H. Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union and the New Deal (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 25; C.L.R James, “With the Sharecroppers,” September 1941, 2, https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1941/09/sharecroppers.html. Accessed January 17, 2019.

10 H.L. Mitchell to William R. Amberson, November 24, 1934, Box 1, folder 25, A. Eugene Cox Papers, University of Memphis Special Collections, Memphis, TN.

11 William R. Amberson to Lillian Stultz, December 20, 1934, Box 1, folder 25, A. Eugene Cox Papers, University of Memphis Special Collections, Memphis, TN.

12 Ibid; Lillian Stultz to William R. Amberson, December 21, 1934, Box 1, folder 25, A. Eugene Cox Papers, University of Memphis Special Collections, Memphis, TN.

13 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land: The Life and Times of H.L. Mitchell, Cofounder of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (1979; repr., Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), 71.

difficult the past year had been for the newest member of the family—a baby girl:

“Insufficient food of the right kind has caused me to be badly undernourished and naturally made it very hard on her.”14

Stultz and those three other men had been arrested at a schoolhouse in what appeared to be a regular meeting of school patrons which turned into an impromptu attempt to enlist union members. According to R.J. Butler, “The first Tuesday night the patrons met…As teacher I called the meeting to order…someone suggested that some information be given about the Tenant Farmers Union.”15 Butler then goes on to state that “I hadn’t heard about it until that night.” After folks began signing up for the union,

Butler observed that “several officials of Cross County elbowed their way to the table…grabbing both right and left and hustling” L.M. Mills, W.H. Stultz, A. B. Brookins, and himself to cars parked on the road after which they were deposited in the Wynne,

Arkansas, jail.16 The next day they were charged and fined one hundred dollars each.17

What precisely were Mills, Stultz, and Brookins doing there at that meeting—why were they organizing for a union?18 They were there because they were desperate to improve their circumstances. The 1920s had been particularly difficult for rural folks in the South

14 Lillian Stultz to H.L. Mitchell December 4, 1934; Lillian Stultz to William R. Amberson December 13, 1934; Lillian Stultz to Dr. and Mrs. Amberson, January 17, 1934, Box 1, folder 25, A. Eugene Cox Papers, University of Memphis Special Collections, Memphis, TN.

15 R.J. Butler to unlisted recipient, December 12, 1934, Box 1, folder 25, A. Eugene Cox Papers, University of Memphis Special Collections, Memphis, TN.

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid. H.L. Mitchell to William R. Amberson, November 1934, Box 1, folder 25, A. Eugene Cox Papers, University of Memphis Special Collections, Memphis, TN; Mitchell, Mean Things, 71.

18 Covington Hall, Labor Struggles in the Deep South & Other Writings (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1999), 49-56.

and the Great Depression had worsened their circumstances.19 As it turned out New

Deal agricultural policy that was ostensibly designed (at least partly) for their benefit made them even more susceptible to risk.20

In May of 1933 as part of the first New Deal President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Agricultural Adjustment Act into law creating the Agricultural Adjustment

Administration to oversee a new program designed “To relieve the existing national economic emergency by increasing agricultural purchasing power.”21 In practical terms this meant stabilizing farm commodity prices. Historian Donald H. Grubbs notes that

“realized net farm income in 1932 was only one-third of the 1929 level.”22 More specifically cotton farmers had seen the value of their crops decline from $1.5 billion in

1928 to $0.5 million in 1932. The situation had become quite dire, particularly for sharecroppers who according to surveys conducted by Charles S. Johnson, Edwin R.

Embree, and W.W. Alexander from 1933-1935: “many had made nothing since the

World War [I].23 The AAA was created to increase purchasing power through a process known as “parity,” meaning that the purchasing power of farmers should be relatively equal to that of urban citizens allowing them to sell their commodities at a “fair

19 Roger Biles, The South and the New Deal (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1994), 18.

20 Charles S. Johnson, Edwin R. Embree, W.W. Alexander, The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy: Summary of Filed Studies & Statistical Surveys 1933-1935 (1935 repr., Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1972), 48- 51.

21 Biles, 38-39. Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. http://nationalaglawcenter.org/wp- content/uploads/assets/farmbills/1933.pdf. Accessed January 16, 2019.

22 Grubbs, 17.

23 Johnson, 13.

exchange value” for industrial and consumer goods.24 Five cent cotton pushed farmers below the cost of production to the point where they were losing money and unable to achieve parity; agricultural economists had established that in order to reach parity cotton would need to sell for 12.7 cents to the pound.25 In order to achieve parity and stabilize the entire agricultural industry it was necessary to find a way to increase agricultural commodity prices.

Overproduction was supposedly the central issue—too much cotton was being grown and the market was oversaturated. The way to increase prices was to plant less—farmers would be paid by the government to leave land fallow (thus beginning an agricultural policy of farm subsidies which continues to the present day). Theoretically, this plan made a lot of sense if one only thought of it in terms of supply and demand— decrease the supply of cotton and demand, along with price, would rise. As C.L.R

James noted, “on paper it was beautiful.”26 Yet, there were some practical issues that got in the way of this overly academic take on boosting prices. First, there was the fact that the crop was already in the ground when this bill was signed into law. This prompted the AAA to call on farmers to actually plow up already planted crops in what came to be known as the “plow-up.”27 Advisor to the STFU Howard Kester observed how “A lot has been said about the difficulty cotton farmers had in getting their mules to

24 Gibert C. Fite, Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture, 1865-1980 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1984), 128; Paul E. Mertz, New Deal Policy and Southern Rural Poverty (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978), 20-21.

25 Pete Daniel, Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures since 1880 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 92.

26 James, 2.

27 Daniel, 92-93. Grubbs, 18.

step on the cotton. The mules had better sense but like sharecroppers they are employed for their brawn and not their brains.”28 Second, there was the question of overproduction—was cotton really being overproduced when, as socialist critic Norman

Thomas noted, “The share-cropper then, is a man who raises cotton but cannot possibly afford proper underclothes for his children or sheets and towels for the family.”29

In theory the increased prices would not just benefit large landowners, but also tenant farmers and sharecroppers. Under the initial contracts drawn up by the AAA landlords were to share the government subsidy for leaving land fallow. Under this plan tenant farmers and sharecroppers were to retain their traditional interest in the land as though they were actively farming it—they were to receive either 75 percent of the subsidy or 50 percent of the subsidy. Grubbs notes how “Landlords were highly dissatisfied and when the 1934-1935 cotton contract terms were drawn up in early 1934 the landlord-tenant benefit distribution ratio was changed in the landlord’s favor.”30 The precise mechanism by which this happened is less important than the outcome—now large landowners would receive eight-ninths of the subsidy, where as their tenants and sharecroppers would only receive the remaining one-ninth.31 Oftentimes, however, they did not even receive that paltry sum; many landowners kept everything. As Grubbs

28 Kester, Revolt Among the Sharecroppers, 28-29.

29 Norman Thomas, The Plight of the Share-Cropper (New York: League for Industrial Democracy, 1934), 9. http://library.samford.edu/digitallibrary/pamphlets/cod-001162.pdf. Accessed January 17, 2019. Kester similarly commented, “I am thoroughly familiar with the arguments advanced by the eminent gentlemen in Washington as to why such a policy is, at this particular period of our national life, necessary , and justifiable, but no amount of finely spun argument will feed the naked, clothe , the hungry and give jobs to those who have been driven off the land because of the reduction program. See Kester, Revolt Among the Sharecroppers, 28.

30 Grubbs, 19.

31 Ibid.

notes, “there were many ways in which enterprising landlords could do this.”32 First of all, checks were generally made out to landlords so a large landowner could simply pocket the check and not tell his tenant or sharecropper.33 If he wanted to make things appear legal, he could keep the check against a debt his tenant or sharecropper supposedly owed him or simply raise the rent to match the amount of the check.34

Tenants and sharecroppers could always appeal to local AAA committees for redress of their grievances, but these committees were invariably made up of large landowners or their friends, creating a situation where, as historian Pete Daniel astutely points out, “the complaint machinery fed the victim to his oppressor.”35

Ultimately the AAA seemed to have the effect of stabilizing agriculture. Prices more or less stabilized following the implementation of the crop reduction program.

Cotton prices rose as high as 11 cents a pound in July of 1934. According to historian

Gibert C. Fite, “The program of sign up, plow up, checkup, and pay up seemed to be a solid success.”36 On the other hand the AAA drastically rearranged the traditional sharecropping system, effectively killing it. Daniel sums it up quite well when he when he says “the AAA program inserted elements of revolutionary change into the landlord- tenant relationship.”37 Because landlords now had an incentive to use fewer sharecroppers they evicted those they no longer needed resulting in massive

32 Grubbs, 21.

33 Lichtenstein in Kester, Revolt Among the Sharecroppers, 30-31.

34 Grubbs, 21.

35 Daniel, 94, 98-99.

36 Fite, 131; Mertz, 22-23.

37 Daniel, 101.

displacement during a period of time when unemployment was already at record highs.38 A survey conducted in 1934 and led by Dr. William R. Amberson concluded that

“at a conservative estimate at least 15% and probably 20%, of all share-cropper families have lost their opportunity to make a living on the land.”39 Furthermore, it was financially advantageous for landlords to classify lessees as farmworkers instead of tenant farmers or sharecroppers since the former were due part of the government subsidy and the latter were not. So those tenant farmers and sharecroppers who were fortunate enough to not be evicted were instead demoted. This effectively ended any upward mobility towards landownership for landless farmers, effectively destroying the rural American

Dream.40

This brings us back to the reason why Lillian Stultz was writing in to William R.

Amberson and the union central office about her pending eviction in December 1935 and why Viola Smith was similarly writing and describing the harsh conditions almost a year later, noting how Arkansas was “the hardest place in the states”—the problem of displacement.41 As has already been noted William R. Amberson’s survey had estimated a displacement rate of between 15-20 percent as a direct result of the AAA and at the same time as people from the city desperate for jobs were trying to move

38 Biles 43, 46-47; Grubbs, 25, 33. Even though the AAA called for them to keep the same number of tenants this provision was rarely enforced. For a discussion of section 7A of the 1935 AAA cotton contract see Mertz, 25-27.

39 Norman Thomas, Plight of the Share-Cropper, 27.

40 Daniel, 91, 101. Lichtenstein in Kester, Revolt Among the Sharecroppers, 31.

41 Viola Smith to H.L. Mitchell, June 13, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Lillian Stultz to William R. Amberson, December 22/25th 1934, Box 1, folder 25, A. Eugene Cox Papers, University of Memphis Special Collections, Memphis, TN. Also see Daniel, 98.

back to the countryside in hopes of finding a living there.42 So the AAA had the intended consequence of stabilizing commodity prices for large landowners while unintentionally increasing unemployment dramatically in rural areas, creating what historian Roger

Biles calls a “rootless peasantry.”43 Worsening conditions, particularly evictions were what prompted many tenant farmers and sharecroppers to consider the dangerous proposition of unionization and the even riskier proposition of interracial cooperation.

Tenant farmers and sharecroppers in the Arkansas Delta were simply out of options, had nowhere to turn, and so, with their backs against the wall, they fought back. They held a preliminary organizational meeting in a small schoolhouse in Poinsett County,

Arkansas, adjacent to the Fairview Plantation owned by Hiram Norcross to discuss forming a union.44

In this chapter I will lay out the context behind the rise of the Southern Tenant

Farmers’ Union by exploring the situation in rural northeastern Arkansas during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century and describing how things got the point where residents of northeastern Arkansas could claim it was “the hardest place in the states.”45 More specifically I will be tracing the changing nature of commercial agriculture in northeastern Arkansas as the region moved from an undeveloped swamp

42 Thomas, Plight of the Share-Cropper, 27; Fite, 121; Daniel 100.

43 Biles, 43; Thomas, Plight of the Share-Cropper, 27-29.

44 Grubbs, 43-44; Mitchell, Mean Things, 50-51; Kester, 55-58.

45 It is worth noting even though the union originated in Poinsett County in Northeastern Arkansas the conditions I will be describing that existed there also existed in other portions of the sparsely developed Old Southwest, particularly Eastern Oklahoma, Southeastern Missouri, and East Texas. For excellent discussion of conditions for tenant farmers and sharecroppers in those areas see the James R. Green’s Grass-Roots Socialism for Oklahoma, Jarod Roll’s Spirit of Rebellion for Missouri, and Neil Foley’s The White Scourge for Texas.

to a cotton plantation system that, at first glance, appeared reminiscent of the antebellum South. However, with the rise of sharecropping and scientific management/business practices it begins to look very different within the context of a changing New South.46 The story of the development of northeastern Arkansas is a story of missed opportunities—many landless black and white farmers saw the region as a place of opportunity where if they just put in the hard work they could one day climb the agricultural ladder to achieve the rural American Dream by becoming successful farm owners.

At the same time southern agriculture was changing and modernizing.

Increasingly technical knowledge, scientific management practices, and, most of all, efficiencies of scale were necessary to make a go of it as a landowning farmer.47 That along with the challenges raised by the coming of the boll weevil as well as natural disasters make it so that only the wealthiest and largest landowners would be able to successfully raise and sell cotton for a profit.48 After a period of time in which the number of smallholders increased somewhat, by the third decade of the twentieth century the trendlines were moving very much in the opposite direction. In fact, from

1880 to 1890 tenancy had increased from 36.2 percent to 55.5 percent for the South as a whole.49 The passage of the AAA only made the already difficult lives of impoverished

46 Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press 2003), 8-13, 21-23.

47 Fite, xxii, 99-101, 114; Daniel, 100.

48 Daniel, 5-6.

49 Fite, 34-35; Daniel, xiv; Johnson, 4-5, Mertz, 5-6.

tenant farmers and sharecroppers worse.50 Rather than the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, however, the AAA turned out to be kindling that burst into flames of rebellion across the Old Southwest as black and white landless farmers rose up and demanded economic justice together.

To understand the changing course of development in northeastern Arkansas during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it is first necessary to explain in detail the evolution of the economic and labor system that arose after the Civil War which undergirded the region’s development. Under this system, sharecropping, power structures were contested as wealthy large landowners, white tenants and sharecroppers, and black tenants, and sharecroppers all fought over who would control the new lands of the Delta that had been reclaimed from the Mississippi River. First, however, it is instructive to take the long view and explore briefly how cotton had been cultivated before the Civil War as sharecropping in some ways was a continuation of this earlier, antebellum system of agricultural production.

Antebellum planters were never consistently flush with cash; the enormous amount of power and wealth they had accrued was largely in physical assets—namely land and people (enslaved blacks). This created difficulties for planters in terms of cash flow—during harvest time they were temporarily flush with cash, but most of that went to repay cotton factors who had made them loans on that year’s crop and provided them the necessary cash advance to see them through to harvest time. Historian Walter

Johnson notes how “Cotton planting was extraordinarily capital intensive, and most of planters’ money was tied up in land and slaves. For the money they needed to get

50 Johnson, 48-52.

through the year—for liquidity—they relied on credit.”51 Furthermore, more often than not those yearly profits were reinvested in purchasing additional land and labor or making improvements such as building additional cotton gins etc.52 This meant that planters were always at the mercy of the market. As long as cotton prices were good this was not an issue, however, in times of economic distress such as the Panic of 1837 this could bring the whole system crashing down.53 The end of the Civil War was another crisis that brought the cotton economy and southern planters to their knees.

The Civil War devastated the white South in every way imaginable, destroying it economically, socially, and psychologically.54 Planters suffered in two ways: first, they were cut off from their normal sources of income and thus could not sell their cotton on the open market. Additionally, they found their plantations ravaged by invading Union armies and their labor force self-emancipating to Union lines. The basis of their wealth—land and labor—was destroyed. W.E.B Du Bois summed up the level of devastation succinctly, noting how planters “found themselves with much of their wealth gone, their land widely devastated, and some of it confiscated, their slaves declared free, and their country occupied by a hostile army.”55 Even more unnerving for southern

51 Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013), 12.

52 Sven Beckert provides an excellent example of this in the case of Georgia Planter Joseph Clay who switched from to cotton cultivation from rice cultivation in 1793. As Beckert notes, “So profitable was the undertaking that a mere seven years later he was able to repay his debt, lavishly redecorate his mansion, and buy additional slaves and gins.” See Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), 118.

53 Johnson, 12.

54 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 (1935 repr., New York: The Free Press, 1998), 128-129; Link, Atlanta: Cradle of the New South; Woodward, Origins of the New South, 107.

55 W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 128.

whites than the invading blue uniformed northerners was the seemingly docile enslaved individual who, seeing an opportunity to gain his freedom, launched what Du Bois described as a General Strike, “a withdrawal and bestowal of his labor [which] decided the war.”56 The devastation of the war was not limited to the productive cotton fields of the countryside; major economic hubs like Atlanta were specifically targeted by

Northern generals like Sherman who were determined to force the South to capitulate as quickly as possible. Not only was Atlanta completely decimated in a five-week bombardment by union forces, subsequently Sherman ordered all nonessential civilians evacuated from the city in order to conserve vital resources and shorten his defensive lines (which created additional hardships for civilians).57

The situation did not improve much after the Civil War ended.58 Renewed access to foreign markets did not solve the fundamental problem of one crop commercial agriculture—access to capital while the crop was in the ground.59 Worn out soil and the loss of human capital in the form of enslaved individuals who had been legally freed under the Thirteen Amendment only compounded the problem.60 Many planters who

56 Ibid., 57-58.

57 William A. Link, Atlanta: Cradle of the New South (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 26-27. Link notes how Sherman’s approach to warfare contributed to his being cast as a “modern Attila,” and how Southerners attempted to demonize Sherman specifically (and northern forces generally) as barbarians with little regard for the conventions of war. Link instead argues that “In his Atlanta Campaign, Sherman avidly pursued military objectives that led to the bombardment of the city and the expulsion of its citizens. In terms of the military standards of the time, these two decisions combined with his fabled March to the Sea, were legitimate.” See Link, Atlanta, 35, 40.

58 C. Vann Woodward notes how even as late as 1879, “Charleston was still unable to rebuild the great district in the heart of the city which had been burned over during the war. Commerce in almost none of the seaports was increasing and in some it was falling off.” See C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (1951; repr., Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), 107.

59 Woodward, 29; Johnson, 12-13.

60 Beckert, 103, Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 121, 128-129, 188,

made up the southern aristocracy went bankrupt, unable to rise from the ashes and rebuild. Du Bois observed that “With the Civil War, the planters died as a class.”61

Decaying and decrepit mansions became a common sight in the rural South. As Ayers notes, “By the 1880s the planters and especially their children, were leaving the plantations.”62 Some migrated to the cities in search of greater business opportunities, others migrated westward in search of better soil, still dreaming of the fortune to made with the white gold.63

The white gold still called to those eager to benefit from a staple crop with assured demand—Northern and overseas textile mills still needed Southern cotton despite attempts to find alternative sources during the Civil War.64 Yet again, the South had been devastated. Plantation owners, always short of capital, now had even less.

Furthermore, they no longer had access to unpaid labor. On the other side of the equation freedpeople had their labor, but little or no capital of their own, not to mention land.65 Landowners hoped to reconstitute the system of cotton cultivation as closely as

61 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 53-54. Edward Ayers quotes from a postbellum traveler in the Black Belt of the South, “the white-columned porticos of the favorite colonial architecture now moldering in decay, the wide and once hospitable front halls resounding only to the rough banter and quarrels of negro tenants and their children.” See Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 24-25

62Ayers, 24-25.

63 Ayers, 67-69; Woodward, 108.

64 In hindsight many scholars have scoffed at southerners seemingly exaggerated sense of importance as the chief purveyors of cotton, however, it seems clear that what they misunderstood was not the importance of cotton to the global economy, but rather the resourcefulness of the British and others in locating alternative sources in places like Algeria, Egypt, and India when supplies from the American South were cut off. See Beckert, 244-251.

65 Obviously this the was not the case across the board; many enslaved individuals were able to accrue capital by hiring out on the side and some former slaveholders did gift former slaves with money or land, others gave the opportunity for African Americans to purchase land of their own at reasonable rates. Nevertheless, by and large most freedpeople started out with little more than the clothes on their backs and their ability to labor for a daily wage. See Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 587; Beckert, 280-283.

possible to the way it had been before the war, whereas freedpeople desired land of their own. Beckert notes how “By 1867, neither was able to impose their will entirely on the other. Consequently, a social compromise emerged in which African American families worked particular plots of land without day-to-day supervision, received supplies from landlords, and would then be paid with a share of the crop.”66

This system came to be known as sharecropping and for African Americans imagined only as starting point on their way towards landownership; blacks were never content with this “social compromise.” Without chain gangs and direct supervision and with the benefit of real wages at the end of the growing season blacks could not help but dream of one day owning land of their own. It all seemed possible in the first heady years after the end of the Civil War. Freedom had seemed out of reach and that had come to pass so why not landownership as well? According to Du Bois, “To many it seemed that emancipation was accomplished, and the black folk especially were filled with joy and hope.”67 Despite impediments such as vagrancy laws and crop liens landless black farmers did begin to slowly acquire farms of their own. In fact, by 1900 25 percent of black farmers owned their own land.68

66 Landowners had land, but insufficient capital and labor. Freedpeople had their labor, but no land and very little capital. Northern and foreign textile mills had cash, but no cotton for their looms. Sharecropping reunited land, labor, and capital in a new way. See Ayers, 13; Beckert, 279-285. In practice this arrangement meant that black agricultural workers would work for a season without pay in the fields of large landowners who, after selling the cotton crop, would pay agricultural workers at harvest time under what became known as the sharecropping system. Sharecroppers were basically renting a farm, but rather than paying a set amount of rent they owed a percentage of the crop to the landowner (typically 50 percent). See Daniel, xii, 4, 97-98; Beckert, 285-286.

67 W.E.B Du Bois, “The Economics of Negro Emancipation in the United States,” The Sociological Review 4, No. 3 (October 1911), 308. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3913498;view=1up;seq=319. Accessed March 22, 2019.

68 Du Bois, “The Economics of Negro Emancipation in the United States,” 309-311.

This state of affairs was simply unacceptable to large landowners and a new merchant class which supplied the needs of landowners and sharecroppers alike. An independent black yeomanry could not be as successfully gouged by ridiculous prices for basic necessities. An independent black yeomanry would not be beholden to their

“social betters” and would demand a say in how society was structured. As political, economic, and social power are deeply intertwined the landlords and merchants found a way to deliver what Du Bois describes as a “master stroke of concentrated capital against labor.”69 The solution was disenfranchisement: breaking the political power of

African Americans would allow elite whites to undermine their growing economic and power. All of this, according to Du Bois, could be accomplished under “the cry of race prejudice. No method inflaming the darkest passions of men was unused.”70

The result of this subversion of black political and economic aspirations was the exploitation and impoverishment of black landless farmers who were unable to climb the increasingly difficult agricultural ladder from sharecropping to landownership. The authors of the The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy came to the conclusion that “cotton tenants live at a level of mere subsistence.”71 Similarly, Fite noted how “The living standard of so many farmers in the South was not a relative matter but one of absolute

69 Du Bois, “The Economics of Negro Emancipation in the United States,” 310.

70 Du Bois, “The Economics of Negro Emancipation in the United States,” 311. Du Bois goes on to state that “The lynching mob was given its glut of blood, and egged on by purposely exaggerated often wholly invented tales of crime on the part of perhaps the most peaceful and sweet tempered race the world has ever known….Laws were passed, in the State where three-fourths of the Negroes live, so ingeniously frame that a black university graduate could be prevented from voting and the most ignorant white hoodlum could be admitted to the polls.” See Du Bois, “The Economics of Negro Emancipation in the United States,” 311.

71 Johnson, The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, 1.

poverty.”72 Landless farmers in the South were the poorest citizens in the nation. While some scholars have argued that this poverty was a morally neutral, structural issue and that sharecropping as a system was simply unsustainable, for actual sharecroppers the real issue was that the system was rife with abuse. The problem was not that the system was impractical or unsustainable, it was that the system was essentially exploitative. Landless farmers rarely received what they were due; often they received nothing at all in return for their year’s hard labor in the cotton fields of the American

South.73

A letter from Osie McRay, a sharecropper from Earl, Arkansas, to the Southern

Tenant Farmer’s Union central office illustrates this perfectly: “Dear Sir I am asking you will you help me get my settlement for we are in a suffering condicton an cant get our

Boss, A.B. Lancastre to give us any money at all…I made 3 bales of cotton an I get

$8.00 for 3 month an $10 for 2 month and he will not let me have nothing.”74 Not all landlords were so bold in their theft of worker’s wages—there were easier, less obvious ways to siphon off any profits that might somehow accrue to a sharecropper during harvest time. Sharecroppers received their daily necessities or “furnish” at a landlord- owned commissary or country store on credit against the cotton crop.75 Sharecroppers had little choice about where to shop due to their rural isolation and the demands of

72 Fite, 34.

73 Grubbs, 10.

74 The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, The Disinherited Speak, Letters from Sharecroppers (New York: Workers’ Defense League, 1937), 5.

75 Sometimes an “independent” merchant owned the country store or commissary, but he was almost always allied in some way with the plantation owner. See Ayers, 13; Grubbs, 7-10; Beckert, 285-286; Woodruff, 25-27.

their landlord that they only shop at his commissary or one that he approved of.76 Goods purchased on credit were much more expensive than goods purchased with cash with interest rates as high as 40 percent.77 According to Grubbs, landlords “could figure interest on supplies at any rate he felt proper.”78 in their study Johnson et al. discovered that between inflated prices and the high rate of interest charged sharecroppers were paying 50% per annum in Texas and Mississippi79 It is no surprise than that a sharecropper named E.L. Ganan sent a commissary bill to the Southern Tenant

Farmers’ Union with a letter requesting help to “get a cash furnish from the government because “we can not pay these prices…look at these Bill ya will see how he is charging us.”80

And, if after the high costs of daily necessities and exorbitant interest charges a sharecropper was still owed something at the end of harvest season landowners or store merchants would simply “cook the books,” making sure the charges equaled the amount owed to a sharecropper. H.L. Mitchell recalled how many sharecroppers grumbled at settlement time that “The Dee Ducks got it all.”81 This is precisely the

76 Woodruff, 27. Beckert, 285-286. Ayers, 194-195.

77 Grubbs, 7-10.

78 Grubbs, 7-10.

79 Johnson, Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, 31-32.

80 Letter from E.L. Ganan to STFU central office, March 18, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

81 A story Mitchell recalls about a sharecropper went to settle with his landlord, but still had two bales of cotton left to gin illustrates this situation perfectly. The landlord responded: “Oh hell, why didn’t you tell me that to start with? Now I’ll have to do this figuring all over again to bring you out in debt.” See H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 21-22. Henry Blake also recalled how “A man that didn’t know how to count would always lose. He might lose anyhow. They didn’t give no itemized statement. No, you just had to take their word. They never give you no details. They just say you owe so much.” See interview with Henry Blake, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938, Volume 2, Part 1, Library

situation faced by sharecropper Glennie French, “they give me a credic recit know I mark out of det last year and they clame I odd three huddred an five dollars en they lend me 6.75 lb of lent cotton to pay my debt.”82 If a sharecropper did end the year in debt it meant he could not move until he repaid everything he owed.83 Of course, a sharecropper might try to contest the landlord’s figures, but most sharecroppers either had very little schooling or did not keep receipts (if they were even given receipts in the first place).84 Besides this the entire power structure was designed to favor the landlord rather than the sharecropper.85 This is amply demonstrated by lien laws which gave a landlord primary rights over the cotton crop a sharecropper was planting and harvesting.86

Some sharecroppers did push back against the unfair practices of landlords. But those who pushed too hard ran the risk of being evicted and blacklisted, or even worse.87 Former sharecropper Henry Black recalled how “If there was an argument, he

of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to- 1938/about-this-collection/ Accessed September 15, 2018.

82 The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, The Disinherited Speak, 7.

83 Mitchell, Mean Things, 22.

84 According to Johnson’s report: “In any case, the tenant rarely if ever gets a detailed statement of debits and credits. He has no choice but to accept the settlement given him.” Johnson, Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, 28. Also see Mitchell, Mean Things, 22. For additional details on education/illiteracy see Fite, 39-40.

85 Johnson’s report noted that the landlord, “controls the courts, agencies of law enforcement, and as in the case of sharecroppers in eastern AR, an effectively thwart efforts at organization to protect their meager rights.” See Johnson, Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, 22.

86 And it was not just the lien law which according to Ayers was “a powerful political and economic weapon” gave landowner control over his sharecroppers. See Ayers, 13.

87 Fite, 46; Mitchell, Mean Things, 21.

[the landlord] would get mad and there would be a shooting take place.”88 Oftentimes the pushback that occurred was indirect—moving to a new plantation or having a spouse question the landlord’s figures, for example, since black women were less likely to be lynched than black men.89 Sometimes it was more direct such as the formation of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union in the vicinity of Elaine, Arkansas a small farming community in the southeastern part of the Arkansas Delta. Following the formation of the union a race riot broke out in the fall of 1919. Allegedly it caused by a conspiracy of black sharecroppers to murder white landowners. Anti-lynching advocate

Ida B. Wells-Barnett went to investigate and found that was as far from the truth as possible: “The terrible crime these men had committed was to organize their members into a union for the purpose of getting the market price for their cotton…Cotton was selling for more than ever before in their lives. These negroes believed their chance had come to make some money for themselves and get out from under the white landlord’s thumb.”90

By the 1930s sharecropping was rife with abuse. As has already been noted, in the beginning this system was an inequitable compromise between white landlords with limited capital, but lots of land and sharecroppers who only possessed their own labor and wanted minimal supervision. Over time, sharecropping as a system became more

88 Interview with Henry Blake, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936- 1938, Volume 2, Part 1, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the- federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/ Accessed September 15, 2018.

89 Woodruff notes that “Many sharecroppers realized, after planting the crop, that they would not break even at the end of the year. Thus, they often moved off the plantation, sometimes sneaking away night, in hope of finding a fairer landlord.” See Woodruff, 32-33.

90 Ida B. Wells-Barnett, The Arkansas Race Riot (1920; repr., Aquila, 2013), 7.

and more oppressive, particularly after the rise of Jim Crow. However, in the last two decades of the nineteenth century sharecropping seemed to allow for advancement in the Arkansas Delta. The system was unbalanced and favored landlords, but the power structure in the undeveloped region of northeastern Arkansas had not been completely and irrevocably determined; consequently, many poor black and white tenants and sharecroppers immigrated there in search of opportunity. The remainder of this chapter will trace the agricultural development of this undeveloped region of the Arkansas Delta as well as explore how the balance of power there shifted over time to increasingly favor large landowners.

Even though Arkansas had been admitted to the union in 1836, as late as the

1880s there were still large portions of the state that were relatively undeveloped— principally along the Mississippi River with its swampy terrain that made sustained agriculture impossible.91 Consequently, turn-of-the-century Northeastern Arkansas appeared to many as a land of unrealized potential and boundless opportunity, a region largely untouched by commercial development. According to historian Jeannie Whayne,

“this final frontier included some of the most fertile soil remaining uncultivated in the country.”92 That soil drew many immigrants from all over the South (and many from outside the South as well).93 Lillie Baccus was one of those individuals drawn to the

91 “Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood, 1803-1860,” The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=398, Accessed 11/23/2018. Whayne, 1.

92 See Whayne, 1. Woodruff similarly refers to the Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta as a “frontier of opportunity.” See Woodruff, 8-13.

93 According to Woodruff, “The men who carved out an empire from the swamplands rarely claimed an Old South lineage. According to the Southern Lumberman, a major trade journal for the Delta timber industry, most of the owners of the lumber mills in Memphis, Arkansas, and Mississippi came from the Midwest.” See Woodruff, 10.

Delta. Born in West Point, Mississippi she immigrated to Arkansas “because they said money was easy to get—growed on bushes. I had four little children to make a living for and they said it was easier.”94 Before the soil could be tilled, however, first the timber had to be cleared and the river controlled. Beginning in the 1880s lumber companies began to move into the area looking to harvest its great untouched hardwood forests paving the way for large scale commercial agriculture.95

For African Americans who had been unable to achieve much success economically in the previous thirty-plus years since emancipation undeveloped

Northeastern Arkansas appeared to be a promised land, a place to escape the economic dependency that had increasingly characterized their lives. Whayne observes that “by the beginning of the twentieth century, blacks found themselves in dependency relationships with planters too reminiscent of slavery.”96 Consequently African

Americans flocked to places like Northeast Arkansas where it was understood that wages were higher and working conditions were better.97 As the trees were felled cotton plantations took their place accompanied by levies to keep the river at bay in territory that was prone to flooding. All of this development meant jobs for men willing to put in

94 Interview with Lillie Baccus, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936- 1938, Volume 2, Part 1, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the- federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/ Accessed September 15, 2018. Other interviewees echoed these sentiments. According to Lucien Abernathy, also from Mississippi, “I sure was struck wid dat lan’ what you could make a bale to a acre on an’ I just knowed dat I was gwine git rich in a hurry.” Ibid.

95 Whayne, 12-19; Woodruff, 8-12.

96 Whayne, 55-56. Similarly, Du Bois noted how “It must be remembered and never forgotten that the Civil War in the South which overthrew Reconstruction was a determine effort to reduce black labor as nearly as possible to a condition of unlimited exploitation and build a new class of capitalists on this foundation.” See Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 670.

97 Woodruff, 21, 32.

an honest day’s labor working on the railroad or felling trees and then milling lumber.98

Silas Abbott recalled how he “come to Arkansas railroading. I railroaded forty years,” similarly J.W.H. Barnett “worked on the railroad section, laid crossties, worked in stave mills.”99 Yes despite the high expectations of men like Abbott and Barnett the lumber industry suffered from the kinds of cyclical booms and boosts that often characterized the industrial North, consequently sawmill workers had very little job security and many were chronically underemployed.100

And while economics may have been the primary motivating force in drawing poor blacks (and poor whites as well) to the undeveloped regions of Arkansas, the relatively fluid racial and social norms in the still, as of yet, relatively unstratified society must have been appealing as well. Whayne points out how black and white sawmill workers in Marked Tree would “frequent the same saloons in town.”101 The lack of an established social hierarchy also made possible black involvement in politics, at least for a time.102 Boston Blackwell recalled how “They was colored men in office. Colored

98 Whayne, 12-25-27.

99 John W.H. Barnett was one of many immigrants who combined wage work with farming: “I fared a whole lot all along. I hauled and cut wood.” Interview with John W.H. Barnett, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938, Volume 2, Part 1, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this- collection/ Accessed September 15, 2018. Oftentimes, however, the work on railroads or in mills was more lucrative than farming, despite the strong pull the idea of land ownership had on poor farmers. Henry Anthony recalled how “One time my son bought a place for me and him. He paid all ‘cept $70. I don’t whut it cost now. It was 47 acres. I worked on it three years. He sold it and went to the sawmill.” Interview with Henry Anthony, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936- 1938, Volume 2, Part 1, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the- federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/ Accessed September 15, 2018.

100 Whayne, 25-27.

101 Whayne, 28-29.

102 Woodruff notes how “During the 1890s black peoples’ economic opportunity and political power declined.” See Woodruff, 22.

legislature, and colored circuit clerks, and colored county clerks. They was all my friends. This here used be a good county.”103 Over time, however, blacks found participating fully as a citizen in the political process was becoming increasingly difficult.104 F.H. Brown remembered how the Ku Klux Klan would prevent blacks from exercising the franchise: “They kept the Negroes from voting. They would whip them.

They put notices, ‘No niggers to come out to the polls tomorrow.’”105 Southern

Progressivism of the early 1900s was racialized—its emphasis on moral reform included

“safeguarding” the ballot box by disenfranchising African Americans who were thought to have corrupted the electoral process by selling their votes.106

The adoption of Arkansas’s version of the Second Mississippi Plan signaled the reinstatement of an elite white racial hierarchy very similar to the one that existed before the Civil War. Included in the plan were a poll tax (1893) and a white primary (1907).107

103 According to Wash Dukes, “I remember since I been up here you know they had colored man in the courthouse. When they had a grand jury, they had ‘em mixed, some colored and some white.” Interview with Wash Dukes, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938, Volume 2, Part 1, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal- writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/ Accessed September 15, 2018.

104 According to Whayne, “Arguing that the ability of some whites to manipulate the black vote threatened the integrity of the democratic process, progressives supported the implementation for the white primary in 1907 and secure the placement of a grandfather clause on the ballot in 1912.” See Whayne, 22.

105 Interview with F.H. Brown, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936- 1938, Volume 2, Part 1, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the- federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/ Accessed September 15, 2018.

106 Whayne, 21-22. Woodward was perhaps the first to demonstrate the fallaciousness of this argument and point to the real issue—control of the electoral process and political offices by a white elite who were wanted to eliminate all races of lesser individuals from voting. The underlying issue was one of class rather than race. See Woodward, 326-336.

107 The Mississippi Plan used a variety of methods to disenfranchise African Americans including poll taxes, white primaries, and Grandfather Clauses developed in the late nineteenth century. Originating in the state of Mississippi in 1890 by 1910 it had spread throughout the South. See Woodward 321, 330- 331; Whayne, 22. “Poll Tax,” Encyclopedia of Arkansas History. http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry- detail.aspx?search=1&entryID=5045.Accessed 11/24/2018.

Richard Crump was one of voters who found himself disenfranchised. He used to vote in Mississippi before he moved to Arkansas: “I haven’t voted since I been here. Do no good nohow. Can’t vote in none of these primary elections…They can throw your ballot out if they want to.”108 Nevertheless, despite impediments to their participation in the political process many African Americans persisted in voting (albeit in much reduced numbers).109

Voting was one way of resisting a hierarchy which placed rich whites at the top and poor blacks at the bottom. Peter Brown remembered going to the polls consistently,

“I voted regular a long time. The last President I voted for was Wilson.”110 And despite the risk involved, some black voters were not particularly shy about talking politics.

Charles Green Dortch remembered getting in a fistfight over his declaration of support for President Benjamin Harrison: “I got this thumb broken beating a white man up…I was in Sol Joe’s saloon and I said, ‘Hurrah for Harrison.’ A white man at standing at the bar there said to me, ‘what do mean, nigger, insulting the guests here?’”111 This political

108 Interview with Richard Crump, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938, Volume 2, Part 1, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from- the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/. Accessed September 15, 2018.

109 Will Burks Senior voted up until he was interviewed noting how he had “voted fur Mr. Roosevelt. I know he is [a Democrat]. I know’d it when I voted for him. Times is tough but they was worse ‘fo he got elected.” Interview with Will Burks Senior, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938, Volume 2, Part 1, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave- narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/. Accessed September 15, 2018. Callie Donaldson was also voting in the 1930s: “I voted one time in ma life, in 1933, for Hoover.” Interview with Callie Donaldson, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938, Volume 2, Part 1, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from- the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/. Accessed September 15, 2018.

110 Interview with Peter Brown, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936- 1938, Volume 2, Part 1, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the- federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/. Accessed September 15, 2018.

111 Interview with Charles Green Dortch, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938, Volume 2, Part 1, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave- narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/. Accessed September 15,

participation by Peter Brown belies any notions that African Americans passively submitted to the rise of Jim Crow (or had been sufficiently cowed during Redemption).

This is evidence that there was a radical undercurrent of black resistance that ultimately flowed into the movement embodied by the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union.

Turn-of-the-twentieth century Northeast Arkansas was a dangerous place to be a black man asserting one’s political rights. And politics as a way of self-expression and advancement was largely closed off by the end of the first decade for African

Americans.112 Racial animosity only seemed to increase as more and more black and white immigrants entered Northeast Arkansas in search of opportunity at the turn of the century.113 Froelich and Zimmerman note how “communities experiencing economic growth and an accompanying increase in black population–often bred racial violence in the New South.”114 As honky-tonk’s and integrated saloons were shut down under the auspices of moral reform, more and more African Americans retreated into separate societies.115 Nevertheless, some economic opportunities still existed. Many blacks

2018. Benjamin Harrison was President from 1889-1893. The situation could have turned out much worse than a simple broken thumb. A rise in violence accompanied the rollback of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow. See Fite, 46; Woodruff, 22.

112 Ayers, 309; Fite, 67.

113 Woodruff, 30-31; Whayne, 47-49.

114 And this is precisely what occurred in the African American community of Harrison. Even though Harrison was in the Northwest portion of Arkansas in an already settled region it experienced an influx of outsiders seeking work similar to what occurred in the Delta. These newcomers and the failure of a railroad to create an economic boom ultimately precipitated a race riot which left Harrison almost entirely bereft of black citizens. See Jacqueline Froelich and David Zimmerman, “Total Eclipse: The Destruction of the African American Community of Harrison, Arkansas in 1905 and 1909,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Summer 1999): 131, 135-137. Woodruff similarly notes how “Disfranchisement and the dramatic rise in lynching of Delta black people laid the foundation for twentieth-century white supremacy in the Delta.” See Woodruff, 22.

115 Prohibition passed at the state level in Arkansas in 1916. See Whayne, 21. Dora Dennis remembers this separate black world, noting how blacks had “their own churches and their own business and things like that, and they would have dancing halls and things like that.” See interview with Dora Strong Dennis, interview by Paul Ortiz, Fargo, Arkansas, July 19, 1995, Behind the Veil: Documenting African American

heeded Booker T. Washington’s advice to “Cast down your bucket where you are,” surrendering their political rights in the hopes that by working hard they could advance economically within an increasingly belligerent white society.116

Black landownership was on the rise during this period of time, Dora Dennis was born in

1900 and remembers how “It come a time that black people were getting their own property.”117 Consequently black migrants to the Arkansas Delta were able to join the ranks of black landowners who had inherited tribal lands or purchased land during

Reconstruction.118

Black economic advancement was seen as a challenge and an affront by poor whites who were also struggling to climb the agricultural ladder (or not be pushed

Life in the Jim Crow South Digital Collection, John Hope Franklin Research Center, Duke University Libraries. Also see Whayne, 4.

116 Booker T. Washington, “1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech” http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/39/. Accessed 12/17/2018. Woodruff, 12-13. Although this should not be confused with docile acquiescence; rather, it was more of a strategic retreat. Or as Woodruff puts it quite succinctly, “black people engaged in more than playing possum.” Woodruff, 5. Despite the rising tide of white supremacy and their increasing marginalization, African Americans still found ways of fighting back in the political and economic spheres. That being said, according to Ayers, “By the first decade of the twentieth century the Southern electorate had been transformed from what it had been twenty years earlier. More than two-thirds of adult Southern males had voted in the 1880s, and that proportion had risen to nearly three-quarters of the electorate in the 1890s in state that had not yet restricted the franchise. In the early years of the twentieth century by contrast, fewer than one man in three voted in the South.” See Ayers 309. By the 1930s blacks had been almost entirely eliminated from political participation. This was commented on by Norman Thomas in a visit to the Arkansas Delta when he suggested a union was a better vehicle for black advancement than a political party. H.L. Mitchell recalled that “Norman Thomas told us that while he highly approved of our belonging to the Socialist Party, what was really needed was a sharecropper’s’ organization to fight for the rights of those being evicted and cast adrift, as well as for those being denied their share of the government payments.” Mitchell, Mean Things, 40; Grubbs, 29.

117 Interview with Dora Strong Dennis, interview by Paul Ortiz, Fargo, Arkansas, July 19, 1995, Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South Digital Collection, John Hope Franklin Research Center, Duke University Libraries. Born almost a decade-and-a-half later, William Malone similarity recalled quite a few black property owners in the Delta. Interview with William Thomas Malone, interview by Doris Dixon, Cotton Plant, Arkansas, July 18, 1995, Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South Digital Collection, John Hope Franklin Research Center, Duke University Libraries.

118 Also see Fite, 34; Jack Temple Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost: The American South 1920-1960 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 1-2, 34; Woodruff, 31.

farther down it) and were competing with African Americans for rental contracts.119 For a brief time it looked as though the Populist Movement might unite small and landless farmers of both races. There was some limited cooperation between the Farmer’s

Alliance and the Colored Farmer’s Alliance.120 Yet their interests diverged as evidenced by the failed Cotton Picker’s Strike of 1891 which was called in response to attempts by white landowners to suppress wages. As Hild points out, the strike underscored a major divergence of economic interests between member of the white and black

Alliances…many members of the former employed member of the latter to pick their cotton.”121 The white alliances contained some farmers of means which impeded the development of a movement of poor farmers. Ultimately the Populist Movement collapsed; nevertheless, the underlying factors that fueled much of the movement remained as did the future possibility of class-based interracial cooperation between white and black landless farmers. Goodwyn noted how Populists “explored new modes of interracial political coalition.”122 This new mode would ultimately be adopted by the members of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union three decades later.

Following the demise of the Populist Movement in the first two decades of the twentieth century a power struggle developed in the Arkansas Delta between poor blacks, poor whites, and large landowners, the latter group who according to Whayne,

119 Whayne, 47-48.

120 Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 118-123; Whayne, 22, 56.

121 Matthew Hild, Greenbackers, Knights of Labor, & Populists: Farmer-Labor Insurgency in the Late- Nineteenth-Century South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007), 143-144.

122 Ibid; Goodwyn, viii-xvi, xxii, 297-298.

“had not yet firmly established their ascendency.”123 Would the region develop along the lines of the Old South with its land and wealth concentrated in the hands of a few or would it be a community of small farmers?124 Poor whites who saw poor blacks as their competitors engaged in night riding and white capping which placed large landowners in the odd position of physically defending their black sharecroppers and attempting to round up the perpetrators. More often than not they were unsuccessful in doing so.125

Yet African Americans did not just rely on the questionable benevolence of landlords for protection. They defended themselves and fought back; one such instance of armed resistance led to the arrest of white cappers in Calhoun County.126 At the same time blacks took measures to mitigate any source of friction between themselves and poor white farmers. Tolbert T. Chism, a resident of Brinkley, Arkansas recalled how “up in

Cross County….they had to be kind of careful about their horse and their buggy, anything was of any value…they would always say that it belonged to some white fellow.”127

While poor white farmers were blaming poor black farmers for their lack of success, the federal government was reshaping the nature of development in Northeast

123 Whayne, 48, 56-57.

124 Poinsett County, Arkansas, which later became one of the core areas that the STFU organized, was a battleground between these three groups.

125 Whayne, 47-53.

126 It is worth noting that according to Whayne, “open defiance against either whitecappers or planters was almost always suicidal.” See Whayne, 47-56.

127 Interview with Tolbert T. Chism, interview by Paul Ortiz, Brinkley, Arkansas, July 15, 1995, Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South Digital Collection, John Hope Franklin Research Center, Duke University Libraries.

Arkansas to benefit large landowners.128 A perfect example of this is the example of the

“sunken lands,” a region reshaped by the New Madrid Earthquake of 1811-1812.129

Located in Poinsett, Mississippi, Craighead, and Green counties these lands were swampland that the St. Francis Levee District had drained.130 The land never actually belonged to the levee district or the state of Arkansas and was still technically federal land. Accordingly, the Department of the Interior opened up the land to potential homesteaders in 1908.131 Woodruff observes how this resulted in “a scramble for land by black and white small farmers hoping to find a new start.”132 Unfortunately for these homesteaders the large landowners whose land adjoined the sunken lands claimed them for their own. And even though early court decisions favored the homesteaders, ultimately Arkansas politicians allied with the large landowners passed legislation in

Washington, D.C., granting title to the large landowners.133 By 1921 the question of how northeastern Arkansas would be developed and who would benefit most from its

128 Whayne, 47-49; 87.

129 Woodruff, 14. Traditionally the government had supported the notion of homesteading as way to encourage upward economic mobility for landless whites. In practice oftentimes, federal land designated for homestead was instead allocated to railroads or bought up by speculators who would then sell it to small farmers at inflated prices

130 Whayne, 87.

131 Whayne, 86-91.

132 Woodruff, 14.

133 Whayne, 87, 91-93.

development had finally been settled—large landowners.134 As Whayne succinctly notes, “1921 was a good year for the rich and powerful delta elite.”135

One particular opportunity that arose for African Americans occurred with the onset of World War I. The onset of World War I initially triggered a significant price drop—the 1914 cotton crop was the highest on record with 16.1 million bales harvested.

Large landowners and sharecroppers who were anticipating prices of 12-13 cents a pound found their hopes stymied. Two-thirds of the crop was exported, and these exports were cut off by the war.136 This had a very negative initial impact on black small farmers and sharecroppers, but after the initial shock, the war created even greater demand boosting the price of cotton to new heights of between 19-20 cents a pound.

Fite notes how “By the end of 1916 many southern farmers were enjoying the greatest prosperity they had ever experienced.”137

The war had also created jobs in northern factories sending war materiel to the

European continent. Fite observes that “under the pull of better economic opportunities, a flood of black workers streamed northward to the ‘promised land.’”138 Thus many southern blacks left the South in search of higher wages and greater racial equality. An article in the Chicago Defender pointed out how in one southern locale “Hundreds of families have left during the past few months local editorials in white papers are

134 This outcome demonstrates that contrary to some narratives, the federal government was still quite active in the South even after Redemption—and would henceforth intervene squarely on the side of large landowners in debates over agriculture and land policy. See Whayne, 112.

135 Whayne, 112.

136 Fite, 91.

137 Fite, 94, 98.

138 Fite, 94, 98.

pleading with the businessmen to hold the race men if possible.”139 This change in circumstances provided blacks who remained behind with an unheard-of degree of leverage in their interactions with white landlords in the Arkansas Delta. Their labor was in high demand, cotton prices were rising, and large landowners knew that in order to maximize their profits they would have to share said profits with the African Americans working in their fields.140

Of course planters responded in different ways trying to convince black workers to stay—some promised higher wages, whereas other’s doubled down on traditional labor management techniques such as arresting individuals trying to leave and/or chasing away labor recruiters.141 Black readers in the Delta in the early twentieth century, however, were increasingly connected to the rest of the country through national newspapers like the Chicago Defender. There was no way for planters to squelch the knowledge of better paying jobs in a less racially restrictive environment in northern industrial cities.142 Despite attempts by large landowners to hold onto their workforce almost half a million African American workers headed north during the war years. Those left behind with what Woodruff describes as “economic leverage” in their negotiations with employers over wages and working conditions.143 The increasing adoption of cars coupled with the higher wages black workers received as cotton prices

139 Chicago Defender, Feb 5, 1916.

140 Fite, 98.

141 Fite, 30; Woodruff, 39-40.

142 Woodruff, 38-40.

143 Woodruff, 40-42.

jumped from 11 cents a pound to 43 cents a pound over the course of only four years also granted those workers increasing independence.144

Large landowners found their authority increasingly challenged by a more assertive, economically secure, and physically mobile workforce who according to

Woodruff, “made broad demands that challenged planter control over their lives.”145 Of course, there was still the final (and sometimes first) option of violence as a tool of control over black labor. An article in the January 8, 1916 edition of the Chicago

Defender noted how 45 men and women had been murdered in mob violence the previous year, “Forty-five human beings, two which were women, the total of this monster during the 1915 who died martyrs.”146 However, now violence was just as likely to spur further emigration out of the South as it was to cow the population into temporary submission. And with cotton prices at record highs any miscalculation on the part of the local white rural elite could prove to be very costly.

The consolidation of power by the Delta elite, as has already been noted, was challenged, particularly by African Americans who according to Whayne, had arrived to with “high expectations and sought to stretch the plantation system beyond the limits

144 Woodruff, 42-44.

145 Woodruff, 43. Important to note that this was not just about wages and working conditions. The plantation system that had been developing in the Delta was a system of total control over every aspect of a worker’s life not just wages, but also where those wages were spent. Ingenious in its perfidiousness and structured in such a way as to maximize every iota of profit from an unfree workforce, the neo- plantation of the early twentieth century charged workers exorbitant interest on loans borrowed against future wages. As he or she purchased daily necessities from an employer the sharecropper was charged more since the purchases were based on credit.

It is also interesting to note that the article claims this spate of lynchings and mob violence was checked by the activity of black women in Oklahoma: “backbone of mob rule broken when women lead determined citizens who put mob to flight—bravery an example to entire South—new spirit in Oklahoma.” 146 See “Lynching shocks civilized world,” Chicago Defender, January 8, 1916.

imposed elsewhere.”147 This resistance often took place at the individual level—Whayne notes how “everyday forms of resistance” such as foot dragging, dissimulation, and false compliance, were commonly used.148 There were times when collective action was taken as well, although often with very mixed or disastrous results as in the case of the

Progressive Homesteaders and Farmers Union of America (PHFUA).149

Nevertheless, despite the risks involved there was constant and continual resistance to the re-creation of the plantation system in the new lands of northeastern

Arkansas. Sometimes it was more overt such in the case of Steven Green who resisted eviction with a shotgun and then had to flee for his life.150 Other times it was more subversive (and thus less easily countered by the white power structure) such as in the case of the William Malone’s mother: “She was just I say a housewife and had a garden…she didn’t pick no cotton or chop no cotton as I know of.151 By not working outside of the home, Malone’s mother was able to maintain a degree of freedom from white control, thus making it an extremely subversive action.

World War I changed the South in other ways. Once the war started planters initially found themselves at odds with an intrusive federal government requiring that

147 Whayne, 57.

148 See Whayne, 56-57. Here Whayne draws on the earlier work of James C. Scott and his seminal work on peasant resistance: Weapons of the Weak. See James C Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).

149 Woodruff, 74-109.

150 Whayne, 57.

151 This is why they came to the region originally to escape the stultifying socioeconomic relations of the Old South. See Interview with William Thomas Malone, interview by Doris Dixon, Cotton Plant, Arkansas, July 18, 1995, Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South Digital Collection, John Hope Franklin Research Center, Duke University Libraries.

southern states supply a quota of soldiers for the national army.152 Woodruff notes how the “wartime mobilization spawned a liberal state apparatus that touched southern life in ways not experienced since the Civil War,” but also that “by operating through a decentralized structure of local committees [the federal government] handed enormous power to a regional elite that hardly needed empowering.”153 So while the federal government left the specifics of administering the draft to local southern white elites in order to meet the quota it was still necessary to place black men in uniform.154 The southern white elites who held power in northeastern Arkansas found this quite problematic for a number of reasons. For one, there was the obvious fear of arming blacks—one draft board in Arkansas asserted: “The Negro soldier is a danger to any community…their natural brutality asserts itself when in a pack and with arms.”155

Beyond the age-old fear of a black insurrection there was the less obvious, but just as disconcerting question of what was owed service members who came back from fighting overseas. Military service had for a very long time been equated with citizenship; to put black men in uniform was tacitly admitting that they were part of the body politic.156 If black men were called to the colors this would most likely exacerbate

152 Woodruff, 39.

153 This point cannot be overemphasized because here, again, just as in the case of the “sunken lands” the federal government not simply leaving southerners to their own devices, but rather tips the balance of power over and over and over again towards a wealthy white elite which used white supremacy as a tool to maintain control over both poor whites as well as African Americans. See Woodruff, 46-47.

154 Jeannette Keith, “The Politics of Southern Draft Resistance, 1917-1918: Class, Race, and Conscription in the Rural South,” The Journal of American History 87, No. 4 (March 2001): 1349-1350.

155 Statement by Craighead County, Arkansas, draft board. Quoted in Keith, 1351.

156 Paul Ortiz, Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 154-157. And those who served in World War I had an even more clear-cut claims to citizenship since they were supposedly fighting for democracy on the behalf of others: Woodruff observes how “having rendered their lives in service to the nation, whether as soldiers abroad or as workers at home,

the labor shortage already in place and further benefit black sharecroppers in their quest for higher wages and better treatment from large landowners.157

And this is precisely what happened. Spurred on by the new conditions on the ground and further emboldened by the self-confident black veterans returning from overseas African Americans decided to organize collectively for higher wages.158 Taylor describes how the creation of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of

America in Phillips County, Arkansas was a “measure how deeply black consciousness had changed in Phillips County during the war era.”159 Even though the last significant attempt at collective mass action by black sharecroppers, the Cotton Picker’s Strike in

1891, had been a colossal failure, African American sharecroppers sensed the time was right to try again.160 Individual resistance, ongoing and manifesting in many forms, transmogrified into collective resistance now that the balance of power had shifted so dramatically—one of what Scott referred to as “rare moments of political electricity”

black men and women knew that their efforts to fight a war for democracy implied citizenship. See Woodruff 66, 73.

157 Ibid.

Americans were already fetching top dollar because so many of their fellow citizens had traveled north to find higher-paying work in factories. See Woodruff, 39, 42.

158 Woodruff, 75-76; Taylor notes how “African Americans who ended up in the army and travelled to Europe may have encountered an unprecedented measure of equality. When they returned home, they expected to be rewarded with less discriminatory treatment and new opportunities for advancement in return for their service and sacrifice.” See Kieran Taylor, “’We Have Just Begun’: Black Organizing and White Response in the Arkansas Delta, 1919,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 58, No. 3 (Autumn 1999): 271.

159 Taylor, 268-269.

160 Mark D. Naison, “Black Agrarian Radicalism in the Great Depression: The Threads of a Lost Tradition,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 1 No. 1 (Spring 1973): 25.

whereby the “hidden transcript” once again broke out into the open.161 Large landowners were still suppressing wages outright and indirectly through their control of the marketing of sharecroppers’ cotton. Consequently, black sharecroppers formed their union to advocate for their interests and went so far as to consider hiring a lawyer to represent them in court, holding a meeting in a small church in the hamlet of Hoop Spur to debate their course of action.162

This was too much for local whites unaccustomed to this degree of assertiveness and fearful of any attempts to organize collectively by blacks. The union meeting was broken up as local law enforcement fired bullets into the church indiscriminately in the dead of night. The following day a massacre of all the African Americans in the community of Elaine and surrounding area commenced as armed whites from three states as well as federal troops were called into the area to hunt down union members.163 To this date it is not known how many African Americans died—estimates vary, but likely it was in the hundreds—in what has come to be known as the Elaine

Riot, or perhaps more appropriately, the Elaine Massacre.164 Whites justified the heinous brutality of the incident by arguing that members of the union were planning to murder local white landowners. The Helena World included a statement by leading white citizen E.M. Allen of Helena, Arkansas, explaining the origins of the incident: “The present trouble with the negroes in Phillips County is not a race riot. It is a deliberately

161 James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), xiii, 202-227.

162 Woodruff, 75, 82-86.

163 Taylor, 265-266.

164 Woodruff, 91. Officially five whites and twenty-five blacks died in the fighting. See Taylor, 266.

planned insurrection of the negroes against the whites.”165 Anti-lynching advocate Ida B.

Wells-Barnett, who traveled to the region to find out the truth about what had happened, came to a very different conclusion after interviewing black eyewitnesses.166 One eyewitness, Alfred Banks recalled the Hoop Spur incident: “the white people came about fifty yards of that church and got out of the cars and started to shoot in the church on the Negroes.”167

So even though a white elite large landowning group had established their hegemony to a large degree by the early 1920s in Northeastern Arkansas their power had been contested all along and it was never a foregone conclusion precisely the nature of power relations in this corner of Arkansas. Woods notes “the valiant efforts of

African Americans [made] for an alternative path of development” in the Lower

Mississippi Delta.168 The undeveloped region of Northeast Arkansas did not have the pre-existing social structure or cultural traditions that existed in the rest of Arkansas or the South as a whole.169 Migrants to the area came from the Midwest as well as from the South and there was a real possibility that it could become a haven for small farmers, both black and white.170

165 “Inward Facts about Insurrection,” Helena World, October 7, 1919.

166 Ida B. Wells-Barnett, 1-5.

167 Ibid, 18. Furthermore, during the trial of the twelve so-called ringleaders of the union charged with the deaths of the five whites two key white witnesses, T.K. Jones & H.F. Smiddy who recanted their testimony. See Woodruff, 99. 168 Whayne, 57, 87, 112, 126; Clyde Woods, Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta (New York: Verso, 1998), 16. Also see Langley M. Biegart, “Legacy of Resistance: Uncovering the History of Collective Action by Black Agricultural Workers in Central East Arkansas from the 1860s to the 1930s,” Journal of Social History 32, No. 1 (Autumn 1998) for a detailed discussion of how black contested the vision of development propagated by elite whites in the Arkansas Delta.

169 Whayne, 39, 56, 61, 87.

170 Whayne, 88, 99; Woodruff, 10-13, 30-31.

This was not to be as capital flowed into the region and wealthy entrepreneurs enlisted government support in their business enterprises in attempts to consolidate power.171 In a way World War I and the Elaine Massacre that followed it were both the apogee and the nadir of black power in the region. African Americans became increasingly assertive but paid a terrible price during the Elaine Massacre.172 Following the massacre many African Americans in the Arkansas Delta looked increasingly inward and outward—strengthening African community institutions such as the church and secret societies like the Freemasons, while others considered embraced Pan-

Africanism and joined organizations like the Universal Negro Improvement Association

(UNIA). A central motif of these organizations was black pride. Tolbert Chism recalled being taught black history as a child growing up in the 1920s: “I was taught in Black history that Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great, and all the great conquerors of the Far East armies had black generals in them.”173

As African Americans engaged in a process of re-entrenchment in defense of their rights, cotton proved again to be an unreliable business venture. The flush times during and immediately after World War I did not last—the price of cotton began to drop shortly after hitting its high-water mark of forty-three cents a pound and by the spring of

1920 cotton prices were around 15 cents a pound. The 1920s would prove to be a disastrous time for cotton farmers of a types in the South.174 According to Fite, “most

171 Woodruff, 23, 24, 31-32, 38.

172 Taylor, 265-267.

173 Woodruff, 105-117; Interview with Tolbert T. Chism, interview by Paul Ortiz, Brinkley, Arkansas, July 15, 1995, Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South Digital Collection, John Hope Franklin Research Center, Duke University Libraries.

174 Fite, 102-103.

southern farmers…found themselves in a crushing cost-price squeeze by 1920 and

1921,” meaning that their purchasing power had been severely eroded as cotton prices dropped lower and lower.175 The year 1923 saw a brief recovery in price to 30 cents a pound, but the high prices were not sustainable; the high price for cotton resulted in even more land being brought under cultivation ultimately creating a cotton glut due to overproduction.176 The boll weevil and other natural disasters also added to the general economic uncertainty of the era.177 Alabama sharecropper Nate Shaw recalled a run-in with the boll weevil in 1923: “I got what the boll weevil let me have—six bales. Boll weevil et up the best part of my crop.”178 Consequently, cotton farmers faced dismal prospects—if they were lucky enough to get their crop to market, they had very little control over the price they would receive.179

Small farmers found themselves particularly squeezed—unable to survive on such low margins, whereas some larger landowners were able to survive the declining cotton prices simply because of efficiencies of scale or by squeezing tenant farmers and sharecroppers.180 This was particularly the case in the new land brought under cultivation in the Old Southwest where, as Fite notes, “cotton farmers were turning to mechanization to lower costs and increase efficiency.”181 Smaller farmers, on the other

175 Fite, 103, 120.

176 Fite, 107.

177 Daniel, 6-16.

178 Theodore Rosengarten, All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (New York, Knopf, 1974), 221.

179 According to Fite despite attempts to form marketing cooperatives in order to raise prices only 8 percent of cotton was sold through marketing cooperatives in 1927-1928. See Fite, 104-111.

180 Fite, 98-101; Whayne, 121.

181 Fite, 109.

hand, had few recourses when cotton prices continued to slide lower and lower and they fell farther and farther behind on their mortgage payments.182 That being said, even some large landowners struggled, unable to afford the drainage taxes levied by the St.

Francis County Levee District in Northeastern Arkansas; some found themselves facing bankruptcy. Whayne observes how “After 1927 few delta landowners paid their taxes on time, and many failed to pay them at all.”183 Meanwhile white tenant farmers and sharecroppers would had hoped to become landowners one day themselves were increasingly frustrated as they were pushed further down the agricultural ladder to the status of wage laborers.184

White yeoman farmers and tenant farmers and sharecroppers took out much of their frustration on African Americans whom they blamed for their own declining fortunes.185 This often took the form of organized violence. Biles notes how, “reborn in

1915 the Klan limped along in virtual isolation for several years, until postwar Bolshevik scares, race riots, and rising xenophobia ignited a membership surge in 1920.”186 Many discontented whites joined the organization in the hopes of making Northeast Arkansas and other parts of the South a “white man’s country” where African Americans did not reside.187 he upsurge in racial violence following World War I often took the form of

182 Whayne, 140-142, 150.

183 Whayne, 141-142.

184 Daniel, xiv, 4; Fite, 113-114; Whayne, 142.

185 Woodruff, 131-132. Whayne, 99.

186 Biles, 10.

187 It is also worth noting at the same time that night riding and whitecapping could also be used to keep blacks from migrating up North in search of opportunities. It would seem that organized racial violence had many different purposes with the overriding purpose of controlling the lives of African Americans in the South. See Woodruff, 131-135.

burning homes and driving blacks off plantations.188 The NAACP catalogued some 454 lynchings and acts of racial violence across the South from 1918-1927. In Arkansas there were 28 lynchings throughout the 1920s.189 A 1925 cartoon in the Chicago

Defender rather poignantly pointed out the lack of federal concern with lynching showing Uncle Sam shouting, “Terrible, terrible, terrible,” over “death by illicit liquor,” while ignoring “violent death by mobs in the Southland.”190 The passage of Prohibition in

1919 gave the lie to the notion that the federal government was unwilling to intervene in the affairs of the South; it was just not interested in protect black civil rights.

Congressman Dyer of Missouri introduced several anti-lynching bills in the House, but they never made it past the South’s blockade in the Senate.191

As a result of these low cotton prices and increased racial violence, particularly following Elaine the African American migration to northern cities in search of better wages and better living conditions that began with World War I continued. According to

Biles, “The wartime movement continued in the 1920s: during that decade over 615,000 blacks vacated the South.”192 African Americans were considering immigration to places other than the North—not only places closer to home like rural Missouri but also farther afield in countries like Mexico, Brazil, or even Africa.193 Which is not to say that most

188 Woodruff, 132-136.

189 Biles, 8; Woodruff, 136.

190 “But, Uncle, have you noticed that other grave?” Chicago Defender, September 12, 1925.

191 Biles, 8-9.

192 Biles, 9; Woodruff, 139-140.

193 See Jarod Roll, Spirit of Rebellion: Labor and Religion in the New Cotton South (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 52-57; Woodruff, 117-118. This idea of mobility and a willingness to move in search of better opportunities dates back to Reconstruction when many African Americans moved to states like Kansas, Oklahoma, or even Florida in search of better economic opportunities and less restrictive racial environments. See Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (New

African Americans fled the South, a majority did indeed stay.194 Even as many African

Americans left the South, so many also stayed behind to fight for their rights (or moved to a different region of the South like the Missouri Bootheel).195 African Americans also continued to find strength through solidarity in their community organizations. As has already been noted, during the 1920s there was an uptick in membership in organizations like the NAACP as well as the UNIA.196

Despite being based in the North, the NAACP began waging a campaign for civil rights itself in the South. According to Woodruff the organization was a “new weapon” in the defense of black human rights as well as civil rights as the organization investigated a wide range of abuses from lynchings to peonage.197 Some poor landless black farmers formed local chapters in the Mississippi and Arkansas Deltas. And many more were reached by the organization through its literature and publications, namely The

Crisis which was published in New York with W.E.B Du Bois as its editor. NAACP publications like The Crisis connected black tenant farmers and sharecroppers on isolated rural plantations to the urban South and the urban North.198

York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1976); Jimmie Lewis Franklin, Journey Toward Hope: A History of Blacks in Oklahoma (Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1982); Paul Ortiz, Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).

194 Overall the share of blacks living in the South declined from 89 percent in 1910 to 78 percent in 1930. See Biles, 9.

195 Roll, 52-57; Woodruff, 125-127.

196 Roll, 62-63; 68-70. Woodruff, 114, 120-121.

197 Woodruff, 38-41.

198 Woodruff, 65-66.

Also part of this black radical tradition was Garvey’s UNIA which became particularly prominent among black setters in the Missouri Bootheel in the 1920s. Many of these settlers brought their affiliation with the UNIA with them when they emigrated out of Arkansas and Mississippi. They were attracted to what Roll describes as the organization’s “doctrines of self-determation, independence, and self-defense.”199

Nevertheless, unlike the NAACP, UNIA in the rural South found its chief constituency among well-to-do landowning blacks and black merchants, the leading members of

African American society. They interpreted the Cause Afric in their own way—while many were undoubtedly supportive of a new black nation overseas, for others the

Missouri Bootheel was seen as fulfilling the need for a black homeland.200 These black leaders attempted to follow the advice of Booker T. Washington by trying to pull themselves up economically through individual effort.201

Other, Winchester-wielding blacks, were quite assertive in defending their rights, not only in Arkansas, but also as far afield as Florida despite the long shadow cast by the Elaine Massacre and the uptick in racial violence across the South.202 Money Kirby from Magnolia, Arkansas, recalled how his mother “was the expert with a thirty-eight forty Winchester” and how a local white sheriff “passed the word around that that lady

199 Roll, 62-63.

200 Roll, 54-55, 62-65.

201 Roll, 64-67. As Roll describes it the UNIA was a paradoxical organization in the Missouri Bootheel. On the one hand the idea of blacks settling a new region in the South and striving for economic advancement under adverse circumstances is quite radical, on the other hand it sounds as though some of the Garveyite leaders had an understanding with local whites regarding the shape of the social order in the Bootheel. According to Roll, “It is possible and plausible that UNIA leades in the Bootheel received sustained protection from local planters who were members of the KKK…both had goals and assets that were mutually beneficial.” See Roll, 70-71.

202 Ortiz, 62-63; Woodruff, 127, 136-137.

has a sixteen shooter out there and don’t go out there and mess with her.”203 Despite the increase in racial violence blacks in the rural South never stopped fighting back.

Environmental crises in the 1920s exacerbated the existing structural problems of the southern cotton economy. Daniel notes how “Mississippi River floods in 1912,

1913, 1922, and 1927 and the 1930 drought combined with the Great Depression to ruin the southern economy.”204 The great flood of 1927 was particularly destructive, ultimately covering 26,000 square miles across seven Mid-South states. In Arkansas 24 million acres were submerged across 56 counties as the flood waters ravaged crops and drove countless men, women, and children from their homes.205 The Red Cross played a pivotal role in supporting and providing relief for the individuals displaced by the flood of 1927, providing food, clothing, shelter, and medical care for tens of thousands.206 Yet despite the ministrations of the Red Cross and continued assistance under the Red Cross’s Rehabilitation Plan, between the agricultural hard times of the

1920s and the multiple environmental catastrophes Woodruff does not exaggerate

203 Interview with Money Alan Kirby and Alan Oda Kirby, interview by Mausiki S. Scales, Magnolia, Arkansas, July 13, 1995, Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South Digital Collection, John Hope Franklin Research Center, Duke University Libraries.

Interview with H.L. Mitchell and Latane Lambert, interview by George Norris Green, April 4, 1975, transcript, Southern Historical Collection, #3472, Box 83, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC

In the North this manifested itself in the African Blood Brotherhood, an armed Black Nationalist organization. It was not exclusively a northern organization—they also had a chapter in Alabama for example. See Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919 – 1950 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2008), 37.

204 This is not to mention the ravages of the nefarious boll weevil which, according to Pete Daniel, began “its thirty-year conquest of the South in 1890.” See Daniel, 6-7.

205 Russell Bearden, "Jefferson County's Worst Disaster: The Flood of 1927," The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 43, No. 4 (1984): 326.

206 Bearden, 335.

when she claims that “Depression struck the Delta well before the 1930s.”207 The multiple crises undoubtedly reduced the already low standards of living (Red Cross relief workers were shocked at the high incidence of Pellagra among refugees) for both black and white tenant farmers and sharecroppers, making them increasingly dependent on either employers or other outside organizations such as the Red Cross or federal government.208

The process of relief distribution in the Arkansas Delta is enlightening in considering the changing balance of power in the Arkansas Delta and the effect of outside forces on that balance. Whayne notes that “Planters adapted to the economic and natural calamities confronting them and learned how to incorporate federal program and national relief efforts into their way of doing business.”209 Despite initial resistance and concerns that tenant farmers and sharecroppers might become dependent on outside sources for support, large landowners found ways to coopt this outside aid.

Since these large landowners (or their allies) represented the Red Cross at the local level they were able to find ways to benefit from the resources of the large national organization.

One of the ways they did this was by using Red Cross supplies as collateral to pay off their debts and pass them along to their workers during the drought crisis of

207 Woodruff, 115. According to Bearden under this program needy families received “a month’s supply of food, seeds for replanting crops, feed for livestock, and if needed, the necessary work animals for plowing, farm implements, and temporary shelter.” It seems unlikely however that all Arkansas were aware of the plan or that all who applied for assistance received it. Bearden notes that in Jefferson County 2,297 families were aid recipients. See Bearden, 337.

208 Bearden, 335-338.

209 Whayne, 140.

1930.210 Furthermore local committees created a make work program for out of work tenant farmers and sharecroppers—unemployed tenant farmers and sharecroppers would provide community service in exchange for Red Cross food and supplies. In actual implementation many of these individuals were forced to work on private plantations in exchange for Red Cross assistance.211 A national outcry followed when

Northern progressives found out what was going on in the South. The national spotlight had the effect of curbing the worst of the abuses and restrictions, but as Whayne notes,

“Those restrictions, however, did not shake their [planters] control over the relief supplies.”212 However, this incident made large landowners more amenable to outside intervention and provided a framework for how they would later engage with and work with the federal government.213

All the while the role of the federal government in the affairs of the South was changing little by little. The first major changes began with the United States’ entry into

World War I—for the first time since Reconstruction the federal government was intervening directly in the affairs of the South by drafting soldiers.214 The tempo of increased federal involvement accelerated with the passage of the Eighteenth

Amendment which prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages and

210 Whayne, 147-154.

211 Whayne, 152-154.

212 Whayne, 156.

213 Whayne, 156.

214 There was sometimes violent resistance to the daft including a sabotaged bridge (to impede the movement of draft enforcers) in Georgia even open rebellion in South Central Oklahoma. See Keith, 1335. For a detailed account of the Green Corn Rebellion see Nigel Sellars, “With Folded Arms? Or With Squirrel Guns?: The IWW and the Green Corn Rebellion,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma 77, No. 2 (Summer 1999): 150-169.

called for federal enforcement.215 Again, there was significant local resistance to this federal policy; Link observes that this intervention seemed to contradict “political traditions of self-government and local autonomy.”216 On the heels of these incursions came the McNary-Haugen bill, a bill which sought to address the growing national farm crisis in the mid-1920s. This plan would have intervened dramatically in the economic life of the South by calling for price supports and the dumping of surplus commodities on the international market. It was vetoed by Coolidge in 1928.217 The drought of 1930 provided another opportunity for the federal government to intervene directly (in a more benign manner) in the South, yet despite calls by Hoover for a multipronged aid effort it never materialized ultimately leaving the Red Cross as “the only hope for most drought sufferers.”218

The draft, national prohibition and natural and economic disasters stretched the role of the federal government in the South, laying the groundwork for the dramatic intervention of the Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, in particular the Agricultural

Adjustment Act of 1933.219 Over the course of the last two decades the federal government had learned that in order to implement federal policy buy-in from local southern elites was necessary. And since the South was largely rural this meant large

215William A. Link, The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1880-1930 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 311.

216 Ibid.

217 The bill was never particularly popular with southern cotton farmers as it was seen to benefit Midwestern farmers more. See Fite, 110-111.

218 Roger Lambert, “Hoover and the Red Cross in the Arkansas Drought of 1930, Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Spring 1970): 5.

219 Biles, 38-40.

landowners by and large. For their part, elite white southerners had discovered from their practical experience working with (or coopting really) the Red Cross that outside groups could be used to accomplish their own ends, namely the maintenance of a racially divided low-wage labor force.

So what conclusions can be drawn from a broader engagement with the history of the turn-of-the-century Arkansas Delta in respect to the formation of the Southern

Tenant Farmers’ Union? First of all, the course of development the Delta followed not only in economic terms, but also in political and social terms, was never preordained. As both Whayne and Woodruff noted this area was, for the purposes of landless black and white farmers, terra nova, a new land where economic mobility and success were possible for all. The sharecropping system as it developed here, while inherently unequal, did not have to be patently abusive and could have served as a stepping stone towards landownership (and in some few cases it did). However, as it actually developed, the sharecropping system in Northeastern Arkansas served only to impoverish tenant farmers and sharecroppers, while enriching large landowners at their expense. That being said, in the struggle over control for the Arkansas Delta it took decades for large landowners to firmly establish themselves as landless black and white farmers contested their control.

The federal government played an important role in shaping this regional development and tilting the playing field towards an elite white supremacist oligarchy.

The manner in which it shaped development to the benefit of those with power and to the detriment of those without depended on the color of one’s skin. In the case of landless blacks, the national government was a distant, disinterested entity; multiple

attempts to pass anti-lynching laws failed and the Reconstruction Amendments were no longer upheld. It often looked the other way in peonage cases as well, hesitant to intervene in the “internal affairs” of the South. In the case of landless whites, the government was often of two minds, at one point encouraging a class of yeoman farmers to homestead government land, while later on deeding that same land to their wealthier neighbors in the case of the “sunken lands.” The culmination of this federal intervention was the passage of the AAA which completely reshaped southern agriculture to the benefit of large landowners at the detriment of all others.

All along there was resistance. The story of the turn-of-the-century Arkansas

Delta is not simply a story of overt resistance or grudging acquiescence, but really one of adaptation, particularly by the African Americans who had immigrated there in search of better opportunities for themselves and their families. In the beginning there was hope that political participation and economic advancement were possible, not to mention the possibility of a less socially restrictive environment vis-à-vis interactions between blacks and whites. Over time, however, it became abundantly clear that political participation was no longer a feasible option for African Americans as a white primary and poll tax eliminated many black voters (and some poor whites) from the voter rolls. In response to this rollback of voting rights some blacks refocused their energies on economic advancement, beating a tactical retreat into their separate communities. Others considered unionization or leaving the South entirely for better opportunities working in Northern factories. Meanwhile poor whites often blamed poor blacks for their declining fortunes and limited economic opportunities. Consequently,

African Americans in rural Northeastern Arkansas found themselves caught between a

rock and a hard place—large landowners took advantage of them through the sharecropping system and poor whites terrorized them through vigilante violence in an attempt to drive them from the region. Nevertheless, throughout this period of time there was always “somebody willing to take the chance” and fight for social and economic justice.220

220 Marc S. Miller, ed, Working Lives: The Southern Exposure History of Labor in the South (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 9.

CHAPTER 3 ALWAYS SOMEBODY WILLING TO TAKE THE CHANCE: RADICAL TRADITIONS IN THE OLD SOUTHWEST

In July of 1934 during the brief lull between cotton planting season and cotton- picking season eleven white and seven black tenant farmers and sharecroppers met together at the Sunnyside schoolhouse next to the Norcross Plantation near Tyronza in rural Northeastern Arkansas. These men met to express their grievances and adopt a plan to fight the tyranny of area landlords. Or, as H.L. Mitchell more colorfully recalled, they met to decide whether or not to “go lynch a particular obnoxious plantation owner or form a legal organization.”1 A legal organization was formed in order to exert collective pressure against area landlords. The Great Depression was still raging, and despite the Roosevelt’s Administration’s efforts to ameliorate its worst effects, the situation had only gotten worse in cotton country. Roosevelt’s plan to save agriculture through a program of enforced scarcity implemented through the newly created

Agricultural Adjustment Administration had an extremely deleterious effect on tenant farmers and sharecroppers.2 As historian Nan Elizabeth Woodruff notes “planters

1 H.L. Mitchell, interview by Lawrence Goodwyn, Durham, NC, January 31, 1974, transcript, Southern Historical Collection, #3472, Box 83, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC; H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land: The Life and Times of H.L. Mitchell, Cofounder of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (Allanheld, Osmun & Co. Publishers, Inc., 1979), 47-48. Mitchell recalls how the impetus for the meeting took place when Hiram Norcross recalculated how many tenant farmers and sharecroppers he would need (after already hiring them for the season) and subsequently “evicted 23 of the nearly 150 sharecropper families. These people had no place to go. It was too late to find another place to farm…The first rumblings of open revolt against the landowners in Arkansas were heard here.” H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 47-48. Most likely these evictions took place during “lay-by season,” which according to George Stith was when “the crop was matured, and you had to wait until lit was ready to harvest.” George Stith, interview by Scott Ellsworth, Memphis, TN, April 16, 1982, transcript, Southern Historical Collection, #3472, Box 83, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

2. Donald H. Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union and the New Deal (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 17-19; Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 155-157.

controlled the application of the AAA, creating a nightmare for the destitute sharecroppers.”3 More specifically landlords were not sharing agricultural subsidies with tenant farmers and sharecroppers as outlined in section 7A of the Agricultural

Adjustment Act and had even begun evicting “unnecessary” workers since less land was being farmed as part of the effort to end overproduction and stabilize farm commodity prices.4

A venerable-looking, older black man named Ike Shaw listened attentively as his fellow tenant farmers and sharecroppers of both races shared their frustrations with the current state of affairs. After two white men raised the issue of whether to have a segregated union Shaw rose and began to speak:

“We colored people can’t organize without you and you white folks can’t organize without us. Aren’t we all brothers and ain’t God the Father of us all? We live under the same sun, eat the same food, wear the same kind of clothing, work the same land, raise the same crop for the same landlord who oppresses and cheats us both. For a long time now, the white folks and the colored folks have been fighting each other and both of us has been getting whipped all the time. We don’t have nothing against one another, but we got plenty against the landlord, the same chain that holds my people holds your people too.”5

Having said his peace Ike Shaw sat back down—his support for an interracial union helped sway opinion in favor of an interracial organization and the meeting moved on to other business.6

3 Woodruff, 147.

4 Mitchell, 41-42; Grubbs, 24-26, 41-43; Woodruff, 158.

5 Howard Kester, Revolt Among the Sharecroppers (1936; repr., Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 56.

6 Kester, 56.

What can we make of Shaw’s soliloquy in the Sunnyside Schoolhouse? Why was he so adamant that the union be interracial? Shaw had been a member of the black

Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. This union was destroyed during the Elaine Massacre when its members were hunted down by a white mob and federal troops who were called into the area to “restore order.”7 Shaw understood the danger of one oppressed racial group going it alone in their resistance to the landowning southern oligarchy.8 The memory of Elaine had a powerful impact on a number of those who joined the STFU.9 Those who had survived Elaine knew that for the union to have any chance of success members of both races would have to cross the color line. And by the end of the meeting it had been firmly decided to have an interracial union with both black and white members, a union that would further the interests of both races and address the systemic economic inequality in the Arkansas

Delta which affected them all.10

7 Woodward, 86-91.

8 Shaw had also lived through the resurgence of racial terrorism perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan and nightriders during the 1920s. Undoubtedly, he was aware that the very men he was considering aligning himself were, in some cases, the very men who had terrorized his community in the preceding decade. See Kester, 56; Mitchell, Mean Things, 47-48. Also, see Woodward, 131-133. It is also interesting to note that one of the two men who speak in favor of interracial union was Bert Williams, a man whose father had rode with Klan during Reconstruction. See Mitchell, Mean Things, 47.

9 George Stith recalled how his father told him about the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America: “that is one of the small organizations, I was told there were some small organizations who tried to organize for years to make things better. You might have heard of the Elaine riot—I am told by my father, that tried to organize to make things better, and this happened in many places where they tried some kind of an organization.” Stith, interview.

10 Kester, 56; Mitchell, Mean Things, 47-48. This did not mean that there was no friction between whites and blacks within the union. As Woodward notes, “Given the history of northeastern Arkansas, where nightriders employed violence to drive out black sharecroppers and landowners in the 1920s, involving terror all over the region, the interracial union had a hard row to hoe.” See Woodward, 164.

In this chapter I will discuss the merging of these parallel traditions and the profound effect this process had on the union and its approach to organizing in the

Arkansas Delta and beyond. This chapter will also show how men and women involved in earlier radical insurgencies were able to support and influence the Southern Tenant

Farmers’ Union—men and women like Oscar and Freda Ameringer who were an integral part of the early twentieth-century socialist movement.11 The STFU constitution was based on the Oklahoma Renter’s Union constitution that the Ameringers’ sent to the union.12 The union was also influenced by men like Ike Shaw and J.R. Butler who had been members of earlier movements that faltered in the face of sustained opposition from a landowning southern oligarchy. The Elaine Massacre influenced

Shaw to speak up on behalf of a interracial STFU, while the failure of the Green Corn

Rebellion likely taught Butler the limits of radicalism.13 Remnants from an earlier era of organizing, men and women like Charlie McCoy formed an easily tapped leadership cadre with experience organizing and growing a movement.14

11 James R. Grass-roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest, 1895-1943 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978), 36-38, 44-36, 283.

12 Mitchell, Mean Things, 49.

13 Kester, 56. Mitchell, Mean Things, 48-49.

14 Evelyn Smith Munro, interview by Mary Frederickson, April 17, 1976, transcript, Southern Historical Collection, Southern Oral History Program Collection, #4007, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC; Ward H. Rodgers, interview by H.L. Mitchell, April 30, 1976, transcript, Southern Historical Collection, #3472, Box 83, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. And there were countless others who bridged the gap from earlier radical movements and the STFU, men like Fred Mathews who had been involved with the Texas Populists and Covington Hall who had been involved with the Brotherhood of Timber Workers in Louisiana. See H.L. Mitchell and Latane Lambert, interview by George Norris Green, April 4, 1975, transcript, Southern Historical Collection, #3472, Box 83, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. Also, see “The IWW and the STFU: An Interview with H.L. Mitchell,” Industrial Worker, February 25-27, 1988.

Responding to the dramatic and often deleterious changes industrial capitalism wrought on the lives of workers across the nation severe labor unrest rocked the United

States in the decades of the 1880s and 1890s. As historian Howard Zinn noted, it was a time when “revolutionary talk was in the air.”15 The socialist movement arose in response to workers’ calls for a more equitable system of economic production. The

Socialist Party entered the national stage when it was founded in the summer of 1901 in

Indianapolis.16 At its height, the party garnered almost one million votes for its perennial presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs in 1912. It saw thousands of its candidates elected to state and local political offices across the country; thirty-three cities and towns were run by socialists. Together these elected officials instituted numerous reforms.17 In the Old Southwest the socialist movement was especially vibrant picking up where populism left off by challenging a system of agriculture production which was increasingly rigged against small producers.18 This grassroots movement was characterized by “remarkable growth” based on its ability to “organize methodically around pressing issues in the real-world of regional and local politics” according to historian James R. Green.19

15 Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present (New York: Harper Perennial, 1980), 253-265.

16 David A. Shannon, The Socialist Party of America: A History (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1955), 1.

17 Ira Kipnis, The American Socialist Movement, 1897-1912 (1952; repr., Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2004), 5, 422; Shannon, 5.

18 It is important to note that southwestern socialism was much more than simply “warmed over populism” as Green asserted. According to Green, there was some continuity between the two movements, particularly among the leadership—many early socialist leaders were radicalized former populists who had shifted even further left in their political orientation when their compatriots rejoined the Democratic Party. Green argued, “Populism and socialism in the Southwest represented significantly different constituencies on the basis of rather different ideologies.” See Green, xii-xiii, 391.

19 Green, xi, xiv.

The single biggest real-world issue was economic mobility or what was known in rural areas as the “land question.”20 Small farmers, tenant farmers, and sharecroppers, all struggled to purchase and hold onto land—the physical embodiment of the rural

American Dream. Yet high land prices and burdensome credit costs combined with low commodity prices made it extremely difficult for these men and women to climb the agricultural ladder of success.21 Much of the land in the Old Southwest was not under cultivation until the turn of the nineteenth century. Large swaths of public land were made available for purchase with the Homestead Act and subsequent legislation. As it turned out, however, many aspiring yeoman farmers from the Old South, both black and white, found themselves largely shut out of the process of land redistribution. Much of the best land went railroads and speculators in what Green referred to as “one of the juiciest barbeques of the Gilded Age.”22 Consequently, many aspiring yeoman farmers had to pay exorbitant prices for land and became encumbered by burdensome mortgages (if they could acquire farmland at all). Those tenant farmers and sharecroppers unable to afford their own farms became trapped in a perpetual cycle of debt under the abusive crop lien system. Clearly advancement up the rungs of the

20 Green, xvii.

21 Green, 54.

22 Green, 1-4, 84. Writing in 1912, Oscar Ameringer put it even more colorfully, “It seems that the sole purpose of all land legislation during the last three quarters of a century was to encourage landlordism and land speculation and to rob the farming population for the benefit of gigantic corporations. Uncle Sam squandered natural resources like a drunken sailor; or, better, he robbed his nephews and nieces like an unscrupulous guardian to enrich a few of his pets.” See Oscar Ameringer, Socialism for the Farmer who Farms the Farm (Saint Louis: The National Rip-Saw Publishing Company, 1912), 16.

agricultural ladder had stalled for many. According to Green, “the agricultural ladder was working in some areas of the Midwest, but in the Southwest the rungs were broken.”23

These besieged small farmers, tenant farmers, and sharecroppers were largely ignored by both the Republican and Democratic Parties.24 And so, the socialists stepped into the gap, using a variety of innovative tactics to build a movement from the ground up. Green astutely noted how “Socialism in the Southwest was an educational as well as a political force.”25 A coterie of fifty-four regional and local newspapers led by

Julius A. Wayland’s national Appeal to Reason with its over half a million subscribers kept the socialist message in front of farmers and provided a much-needed sense of community to those living on isolated farms.26 Weeklong “revival-style” encampments also fostered this sense of community while educating farmers about the class struggle.27 One key element of the movement was the organizer. At first drawing on former populists and veteran labor organizers from up North over time the party was able to build up an indigenous leadership cadre to spread its message of agrarian

23 Green, 69, 389.

24 Mark D. Naison, “Black Agrarian Radicalism in the Great Depression: The Threads of a Lost Tradition,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 1 No. 1 (Spring 1973): 50. Post-Reconstruction Republicans were much less concerned about agrarian matters than their antecedents—it was Lincoln after all who signed the first Homestead Act into law in 1862. Democrats, on the other hand, who claimed to be patrons of southern agriculture were entirely beholden to large landowners (and not entirely unfriendly to big business, either). See Green, xvii, 53; Shannon, 35-36; Zinn, 258. Jim Bissett, Agrarian Socialism in America: Marx, Jefferson, and Jesus in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1903-1920 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 106-107.

25 Green xi. In a nod to Lawrence Goodwyn’s analysis of the populist movement Green also noted how the “Socialist movement…provide[ed] its activists with a ‘schoolroom of ideology’ and ‘a culture of self- respect’ by borrowing many of the methods used by the earlier cooperative movement. This new movement also fulfilled the people’s need to ‘see themselves’ creating ‘new democratic forms’ much in the way the Populist movement as described by Goodwyn in its Texas and Kansas strongholds.” See Green, xix.

26 Shannon, 28-29. Green, xi, 17-21, 28.

27 Green, xi, 40; Shannon, 26.

radicalism.28 The core of that message was the concept of “use and occupancy.”29

Oscar Ameringer elaborated on this concept in one of his popular pamphlets, Socialism for the Farmer: “To prevent the holding of land out of use and to eliminate tenantry, we demand that all farm land not cultivated by owners shall be taxed at its full rental value, and that actual use and occupancy shall be the only title to land.”30 Rather than a deed that could be mortgaged and then lost, socialists called for a non-transferable, non- mortgageable title held by the government. A corollary of this was that land used to exploit others or for speculative purposes would be broken up into smaller farms.31

The Oklahoma chapter of the Socialist Party was particularly strong—it had the second largest number of dues paying members in the entire country.32 This is unsurprising considering that by 1910 the average rate of tenancy statewide was just over 50 percent. Again, this was just the average—in 27 counties in the southeastern

28 Green observed how the southwestern socialist movement was “painstakingly organized by scores of former Populists, militant miners, and blacklisted railroad workers, who were assisted by a remarkable cadre of professional agitators and educators…. this core of organizers grew to include rank-and-file dissenters patiently converted to the Socialist gospel by party preachers. The expanded core depended increasingly upon a much larger group of amateur agitators.” See Green, xviii, 44-48. Bissett disagrees somewhat with Green’s interpretation on the relative importance of professional organizers from outside the region and their contribution to the movement in Oklahoma. Bissett maintains that Green believed “that national socialist organizers schooled in the labor movement brought socialism to Oklahoma farmers on their southwestern organizing tours“; he calls this a view which “ignores the rich tradition of agrarian insurgency that is intrinsic to the story of the Oklahoma socialist movement. See Bissett, xvi.

29 Green, 28, 84-86.

30 Oscar Ameringer, Socialism for the Farmer, 30.

31 Oscar Ameringer, Socialism for the Farmer, 30. Under the plan Ameringer proposed in his pamphlet Socialism for the Farmer, there would be a “a graduated tax on the value of rented land and land held for speculation,” furthermore it called for “Absentee landlords to assess their own land, the state reserving the right purchase such land at their assessed value plus 10 percent.” See Oscar Ameringer, Socialism for the Farmer, 30.

32 Bissett, 126.

part of the state the rate of tenancy was 70 percent and above.33 And it was in this part of the state, the old Indian Territory, where the STFU was later able to make significant inroads.34 The state party was able to send six of its members to the state legislature and secured 175 county and local offices. In Roger Mills County the entire county administration was comprised of socialists. In many locations, the Socialist Party was supplanting the Republican Party as the chief challenger to the Democratic Party.35

Demonstrating their growing power, socialists in Oklahoma were almost successful in defeating a Grandfather Clause designed to disenfranchise African American voters in

1910—no small feat in a state that was culturally and demographically largely southern in nature. The socialist-inspired Fair Election Law, which would have increased the party’s representation on local boards of election, just fell short of the number required to become law.36

Just across the border in Arkansas, socialism was strongest in the mining communities of the Ozark foothills, especially in Sebastian, Scott, and Polk Counties.37

With support from Dan Hogan’s Southern Worker (and later the Huntington Herald) based in the mining town of Huntington the movement was able to eventually spread beyond coal country and make inroads into farming districts farther east, particularly

33 Bissett, 11-12.

34 See unlabeled list of STFU locals & “State and County Secretaries Report,” 1936, Reel 3, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; also see “Locals of the STFU,” 1937, Reel 7/8, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

35 Bissett, 126.

36 Bissett, 116, 131.

37 Green, 17, 76-77.

Pulaski, Independence, and Jefferson Counties.38 Moreover, while Arkansas socialism was never as successful as the neighboring Oklahoma movement, the party in

Arkansas still grew quickly to include almost 6,000 members in 121 locals throughout the state; in some locations the Socialist Party surpassed the Prohibition Party and the

People’s Party as the third largest party after the Democrats and the Republicans.39

The socialist movement in the Old Southwest collapsed during World War I, a victim of propaganda, vigilantism, and government repression.40 Across the country, the

Socialist Party was already under assault for its antiwar stance. In 1917 faced with the prospect of imminent American involvement in a European conflict an emergency national convention was held in St. Louis. Delegates selected a fifteen-member committee (which included Dan Hogan) to formulate the party’s position on the war. The majority report declared the party’s unequivocal opposition to American involvement, noting, “The mad orgy of death and destruction which is now convulsing unfortunate

Europe was caused by the conflict of capitalist interests in the European countries”; furthermore, it had nothing to do with “the cause of democracy.”41 Their bold stance gave opponents the pretext they needed to challenge socialists as “Un-American” traitors and therefore deserving persecution.42 Prominent socialists such as Kate

38 G. Gregory Kiser, “The Socialist Party in Arkansas, 1900-1912,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 40, No. 2 (Summer 1981): 126, 133, 137, 143.

39 Kiser, 122, 143.

40 Green, xii-vii, Bissett, 151-161.

41 “War proclamation and program adopted at the National Convention of the Socialist Party of the United States, St. Louis, Mo., April 1917,” www.marxists.org, (accessed June 25, 2018). Also, see Shannon, 94- 98.

42 Shannon, 104, 109-113.

Richards O’ Hare and Eugene V Debs who spoke out against the war were found to be in violation of the Espionage and Sedition Acts and were jailed.43 And while public hostility to socialism grew it was an abortive attempt at open insurrection by far-left radicals with tenuous ties to the socialist movement that really gave opponents of the movement in Oklahoma and surrounding area the pretext they needed to launch an all- out assault on the southwestern movement.

On August 2, 1917 in Seminole County, Oklahoma, Sheriff Frank Grall and Deputy

Bill Cross were searching for a group of tenant farmers. Disturbing rumors had been circulating about the activities of the WCU, a rural organization to which these tenant farmers belonged which had become increasingly radical since its inception in 1914. Grall had an informant in the organization who had tipped him off about a clandestine meeting near the Little River not far from Sasakwa, Oklahoma. When the sheriff and his deputy attempted to approach the men, they had been seeking a firefight ensued.44 Allegedly it was the tenant farmers who fired the first shot. Furthermore, according to the Wewoka

Capital Democrat it was a set up; WCU members had boasting of their plan to assassinate the sheriff earlier in the day: “the story of the shooting was told in Wewoka, Holdenville, and Ada two hours before the shooting actually occurred.”45 After three of the four tenant farmers involved were captured, they claimed that it was the fourth member of their group

43 Shannon, 112-115.

44 Nigel Sellars, “With Folded Arms? Or With Squirrel Guns?: The IWW and the Green Corn Rebellion,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma 77, No. 2 (Summer 1999): 150; Sherry Warrick, “Radical Labor in Oklahoma: The Working Class Union,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma 52, No. 2 (Summer 1974): 180, 182- 184, 189.

45 “Gunmen in County Jail,” Wewoka Capital-Democrat, August 16, 1917. The article stated, “It is commonly believed that these Negroes were being induced by the W.C.U. to assist the officers. A sinister feature of the affairs was that the story of the shooting was told in Wewoka, Holdenville, and Ada two hours before the shooting actually occurred.”

who had fired on the the sheriff and his deputy.46 Regardless of precisely how the encounter transpired, the gun battle was short-lived and left Cross injured and in need of medical attention; Grall and Cross retreated to Wewoka in search of aid and reinforcements.47

This incident marked the beginning of the Green Corn Rebellion, an anti-war insurrection launched by poor, disgruntled tenant farmers and sharecroppers in South

Central Oklahoma angered by recent draft legislation and unwilling to sacrifice their lives in what they saw as a pointless European war fought for the benefit of the wealthy.48 Walter Strong, a former member of the WCU explained their position in an interview two decades later: “They wasn’t fightin’ for democracy, nobody was. Germany was takin’ trade away from England, that was what they fought about…we wasn’t gonna fight somebody else’s war for ‘em, and we refused to go.”49 Statistics bear out this anecdotal evidence about the lack of enthusiasm exhibited by Oklahomans to fight; only half of those eligible registered for the draft and of those seventy-two percent requested exemptions from service.50 Tenant farmers in the Old Southwest were not just worried about dying in battle. They were worried about what would happen to their families in

46 “Gunmen in County Jail,” Wewoka Capital-Democrat, August 16, 1917.

47 Warrick, 189.

48 Seller’s notes how the WCU resurrected the “old Civil War Southern draft resister’s slogan: ‘Rich man’s war. Poor man’s fight.’” See Sellars, 159-160.

49 Walter Strong, interview by Ned DeWitt, Western Historical Collection, Works Progress Administration Historic Sites and Federal Writers’ Projects Collection, Box 43, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK; Green, 358-359.

50 Bissett, 148. Nationally the pattern was similar. According to an estimate by John Whiteclay Chambers II between 2.4 and 3.5 million men did not bother to register for the draft. Furthermore, an additional 37,649 men never showed up to induction or went AWOL from training. See Jeannette Keith, “The Politics of Southern Draft Resistance, 1917-1918: Class, Race, and Conscription in the Rural South,” The Journal of American History 87, No. 4 (March 2001): 1336.

their absence since they lived on the knife’s edge of poverty. Tenant farmers were poor and Oklahoma tenant farmers were the poorest of the poor.51 After journeying to

Oklahoma to organize for the Socialist Party in the very same area where the Green

Corn Rebellion would take place ten years later Oscar Ameringer recalled seeing

“humanity at its lowest possible level of degradation and decay” and concluded that

“The Oklahoma farmers’ living standard was so far below that of the sweatshop workers of the New York east side …that comparison could not be thought of.”52 These farmers also realized that many working-class northerners would be able to secure industrial deferments which meant a disproportionate number enlistments would be allocated to southern states. Poor southerners would be called upon to make the greatest sacrifices since as historian Jeannette Keith puts it “Conscription…proved extremely adaptable to the system of privilege found in southern communities. Those with wealth and political power could obtain exemptions or finagle positions behind the lines.”53

Consequently, on August 3, 1917 members of the WCU gathered on a bluff near the Pontotoc County farm of John Spears located approximately five miles northwest of

Sasakwa. A few days before Spears had raised a homemade red flag next to his barn with the words “Oklahoma for Socialism” on it thus signifying the beginning of the rebellion.54 Raiding parties were dispersed the previous day to destroy bridges and oil pipelines as well as cut telephone and telegraph wires in order to cripple local

51 Sellars, 151-152.

52 Oscar Ameringer, If You Don’t Weaken: The Autobiography of Oscar Ameringer (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1940), 227-233.

53 Keith, 1352.

54 Green, 359; Sellers, 150, 163; Warrick, 191-192.

transportation and communications networks in preparation for a march on Washington,

D.C. The rebels’ ranks would swell as compatriots from across the country joined the march. Along the way the rebels planned to subsist on barbeque beef and ripe corn thus giving the revolt its name.55 Local law enforcement responded quickly to the large, armed gathering at Spear’s Bluff. A posse of one thousand men (including National

Guard troops as well as local and federal law enforcement) led by the sheriff of

Pottawatomie County, Bob Duncan, assaulted the hill and dispersed the rebels in short order.56 Local newspapers like the Wewoka Capital-Democrat gloated in victory over the ill-prepared and presumably cowardly rebels: “The Boy Scouts of Wewoka could have routed the bunch who fight just like they farm. But no one knew how yellow the outfit was and for two days it looked as if a lot of help was really needed.”57 Yet according to

Walter Strong the truth was that the insurgents simply did not want to gun down friends and neighbors in cold blood: “Some of the men in the posse were neighbors of ours and we couldn’t shoot ‘em down in cold blood.”58

In the aftermath of the revolt members of the Working-Class Union were rounded up en masse. Out of 450 individuals who were ultimately arrested, 184 were indicted,

150 were convicted and almost half of those were sentenced to prison terms in either the state penitentiary in McAllister, Oklahoma or a federal prison in Leavenworth,

Kansas. Despite early indications that they government would seek the death penalty

55 Bissett, 151; Green, 359; Sellers, 150-151; Warrick, 190.

56 Sellers 151, 163-164; Warrick 191; Untitled article, Wewoka Capital-Democrat, August 9, 1917

57 Untitled article, Wewoka Capital-Democrat, August 9, 1917.

58 Strong, interview.

no one was sentenced to death; the longest prison term for leaders of the rebellion was set for ten years.59 Many prominent socialists were arrested in addition to WCU members. According to Ameringer, “a veritable white terror swept Oklahoma, and of course, we were on the receiving end.”60 The fear which followed the repression had a devastating effect on the socialist movement, so great that the party leadership decided to disband the party altogether.61 The Green Corn Rebellion was the death knell for socialism in Oklahoma. This small-scale regional red scare, which followed the insurrection, was, in turn, followed by an even more comprehensive national red scare in 1919 that brought the entire movement to its knees.62

Nevertheless, a core group of socialists remained true to their convictions even as the party collapsed in the face of sustained and systematic repression. Charlie

McCoy was one such individual. Charlie McCoy, or as he was affectionately known,

“Uncle Charlie,” was a holdover from this earlier era of radical politics. Evelyn Smith

Munro referred to him and his compatriots as “old time country socialists.”63 Born to an immigrant Irish father and a southern mother, by the time eighteen tenant farmers and

59 Green, 361; Sellars, 364. See “Death Penalty to be asked for those who Organized to Oppose the Selective Draft,” Shawnee Daily News-Herald, August 6, 1917.

60 Ameringer, 355; Bissett, 151-153; Green, 346-347. Green pointed out how “Opponents of socialism in Oklahoma used the wave of reaction that broke after the rebellion as an opportunity to destroy a political party that could not be as serious weakened without adopting thoroughgoing forms of repression.” See Green, 368. Bissett astutely observes that the Green Corn Rebellion gave Oklahoma Democrats the opportunity to employ “the politics of crisis with brutal effectiveness against the Socialist Party of Oklahoma” thereby finding a way of countering the party’s growing popularity. See Bissett, 153-154.

61 Ameringer, 356-357.

62 Shannon, 106-109, 125.

63 Evelyn Smith Munro, interview by Mary Frederickson, Laguna Beach, CA, April 17, 1976, transcript, Southern Historical Collection, Southern Oral History Program Collection, #4007, Louis Round Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

sharecroppers founded the union in 1934 McCoy had already reached the age of sixty- three.64 Old age had not dimmed his socialist fervor, however. While he is not as well- known as H.L. Mitchell or Howard Kester, he played a pivotal role in the union’s early days. McCoy’s home provided a safe space for planning sessions as well as resting place for travelling organizers and political candidates.65 McCoy played an important role as an organizer for the union as evidenced by his correspondence with H.L.

Mitchell. In a letter dated January 21, 1936 Mitchell wrote “I think it would be good idea for you to come down to Earle and Parkin this week. It will greatly encourage the people.”66 McCoy also provided much-needed organizational knowledge and tactical experience to the budding union— knowledge and experience that were essential to getting this social movement off the ground in the extremely hostile and uninviting environment that was Northeastern Arkansas.67 McCoy was pivotal as an early advisor to the union. It was McCoy who suggested that Clay East run as for sheriff of Poinsett

County, a plan which would have provided a degree of legal cover for radical activities in the area. According to East this decision to have him run for county-wide office was

64 Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 37; US Bureau of the Census, 10th Census of the United States, 1880, Washington D.C., National Archives and Records Administration, www.ancestry.com (accessed June 15, 2018); US Bureau of the Census, 15th Census of the United States, 1930, Washington D.C., National Archives and Records Administration, www.ancestry.com (accessed June 15, 2018); US Bureau of the Census, 16th Census of the United States, 1940, Washington D.C., National Archives and Records Administration, www.ancestry.com (accessed June 15, 2018).

65 Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 37. Grubbs, 63. According to Mitchell, “The McCoy’s always had a bed and three good meals to serve to all comers of the socialist faith.” See Mitchell 37.

66 H.L. Mitchell to Charlie McCoy, January 21, 1936, Reel 1, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

67 Kester’s Revolt Among the Sharecroppers which was published in 1936 quite aptly describes the kind of hostile environment union members faced. Things were so bad at one time, that outside supporter and socialist Powers Hapgood suggested the union purchase an armored car. H.L. Mitchell to Howard Kester, June 9, 1935, Reel 59, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“decided by an old socialist over in Truman, Arkansas.”68 Undoubtedly this “old socialist” was Charlie McCoy.

The significance of the fact that the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union was created in the heart of hostile territory cannot be overemphasized. The STFU was formed in the heart of enemy territory and these brave men and women had no idea when, or even if, reinforcements in the form of outside aid or pressure from the federal government would arrive. Thus, it was absolutely crucial that the union in its incipient stage make attempts to get the protection of the law on its side. Clay East was elected town constable of Tyronza in 1932. His hope was that once Tyronza had been thoroughly organized it would serve as a jumping off point for further union growth.

According to East, “I never did ever tell Mitchell what my ideas were, but I felt that if we would build a strong union in Tyronza and let these other people come in into that from outside and go back and organize their own people, it would save these guys.”69 East wanted to turn Tyronza into a safe space where organizers could gather without fear of retaliation and violence. And an armed Clay East with a pair of pistols on his hip and a badge on his chest was undoubtedly enough to make planters and their affiliates think

68 Clay East, interview by Sue Thrasher, September 22, 1973, transcript, Southern Historical Collection, Southern Oral History Program Collection, #4007, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. While East does not name McCoy (he could not recall the man’s name), in all likelihood he is referring to McCoy for a couple of reasons. First, he describes him as a “strong socialist, an old man,” which describes McCoy perfectly and second, because he references borrowing a book from him, Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason. Very few folks in rural Arkansas would have had such a book. According to Mitchell, “by the 1930s McCoy had the largest socialist library in Arkansas.” See Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 37. Furthermore, office secretary Evelyn Smith described McCoy the exact same way, as “an old socialist in Truman or somewhere” in her interview with Mary Frederickson. See Smith Munro, interview.

69 East, interview. H.L. Mitchell also mentions East’s plan to “organize the Township first” and how East only informed him of this plan forty years after the fact in an interview with Ward H. Rodgers. See Ward H. Rogers, interview by H.L. Mitchell, April 30, 1976, transcript, Southern Historical Collection, Southern Oral History Program Collection, #4007, Louis Round Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

twice about stirring up trouble within the confines of Tyronza township.70 The fact that the union in Tyronza initially had the law on its side provided necessary, if limited, cover for the union to grow.

McCoy with his past experiences in politics understood the importance of capturing local offices and supporting politicians who, even if they were not socialists, might be sympathetic to those who were. A case in point was a mayoral election in the town of Truman where McCoy lived. McCoy was appointed to this position after manipulating local election ballots to get his choice of mayor elected to office. McCoy and another socialist named J.H. Moody managed to finagle their way into the position of election clerks. Mitchell recalls how “while Moody cut off the electricity, Charlie switched the ballot box (which had been stuffed by socialists).”71 The new mayor rewarded McCoy with a city sanitation position cleaning outdoor privies, a valuable sinecure in sharecropper country.72 Political neophytes might have been shocked by

McCoy and Moody’s action, but these men understand what would happen if the Klan- backed opposition won the election. And since African Americans and (even many poor whites) had already been disenfranchised through poll taxes and literacy tests (not to mention outright fraud) one could make the case that elections in Arkansas at this point were already a sham.73 McCoy chose to fight fire with fire and protect the interests of

70 East, interview. In his memoir, Mitchell praises East’s bravery, particularly how he “faced down two mobs of planters” and recalled how East said “that if someone did something to him, he would stand and fight with his bare fists, with a knife, or a gun.” See Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 53.

71 Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 37-38.

72 Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 37-38.

73 Whayne, 56; Woodruff, 2-3.

himself and his fellow dissident socialists. It was this kind of out of the box thinking that

Charlie McCoy provided to the nascent tenant farmer and sharecropper’s movement.

Early correspondence between Charlie McCoy and H.L. Mitchell in 1935 and

1936 indicates the key role McCoy played in the early growth of the union. Even though he was never elected to the executive council McCoy was president of the Poinsett

County locals and the leader of one of the earliest and most important of the STFU locals in Truman; this local was the sixth local chartered and had enrolled five hundred members.74 Charlie McCoy’s wife, Evelyn McCoy, was also involved in the union and presumably helped Charlie with his letter writing since she was more literate than he was having been a schoolteacher.75 Correspondence between Mitchell and McCoy shows how, even after decades in the political wilderness, McCoy was still eager to participate in a new struggle to improve the lives of workers, invariably signing his letters “yours for a worker’s world,” “yours for socialism,” or “yours for the revolution.”76

His zest for real improvement of the lives of poor tenant farmers and sharecroppers remained undimmed by the passage of time. McCoy was a conscientious worker for the union. On one occasion Mitchell called on McCoy to bolster local unions by paying them a visit; McCoy replied, “I am awfully sorry I could not go to Cross County but I am still

74 Charlie McCoy to H.L. Mitchell, January 9, 1936, Reel 1, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Also, see untitled list of locals in Poinsett & Mississippi Counties. The Southside local in Truman is listed as chartered local number six with five hundred members enrolled and Charlie McCoy as secretary. Untitled list of locals, date unknown, Reel 59, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

75 Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 37.

76 Charlie McCoy to H.L. Mitchell, January 15, 1936, February 3, 1936, and September 23, 1936, Reels 1 & 3, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

under the weather…we have both been sick for over three weeks.”77 And even after leaving the town of Truman for a new home in Whippersville Hollow one of his first priorities was to begin organizing his new neighbors who were “hillbilly sharecroppers”;

McCoy requested a few copies of the Sharecropper’s Voice to hand out to his new neighbors.78

Oscar Ameringer and Freda Hogan Ameringer were also part of that vibrant

Southwestern Socialist movement, although their respective paths into the socialist party were very different. Oscar Ameringer was a German immigrant who arrived in the

United States seeking economic opportunity at the tender age of fifteen, only a few months shy of his sixteenth birthday.79 Upon his arrival, he had no particular political inclinations, although he was a precocious adolescent with an inquisitive nature coupled with a rebellious streak that oftentimes put him on the wrong side of those in authority.80

Remembering his childhood some five decades later, Ameringer recalled how his “war with teachers and authority in general started during my first morning in school.”81 What followed was a mediocre education by teachers who “would have made first-class animal trainers”; these teachers regularly imposed corporal punishment on young

Ameringer and, when that did not suffice, confined him to the Karzer, or school

77 H.L. Mitchell to Charlie McCoy, January 31, 1936 and reply from Charlie McCoy to H.L. Mitchell, February 16, 1936, Reel 1, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

78 Charlie McCoy to H.L. Mitchell and J.R. Butler, May 5, 1937, Reel 4, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

79 Oscar Ameriner, If You Don’t Weaken: The Autobiography of Oscar Ameringer (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1940), 40.

80 Oscar Ameringer, If You Don’t Weaken, 25-26.

81 Oscar Ameringer, If You Don’t Weaken, 17.

dungeon.82 America beckoned as a place where an iconoclastic lad might make something of himself on his own terms. And after arriving in the United States through

Castle Garden, New York, Ameringer began his peripatetic wanderings starting out in

Cincinnati, Ohio, as a worker in a furniture factory, followed by a stint as a portrait painter in Circleville, Ohio, a brief tour of duty as a military band director in a small town in Texas, and ultimately a long career as a labor organizer and newspaper editor in

Oklahoma where he would spend most of the rest of his life.83

Ameringer’s political awakening began in the Cincinnati public library reading about the heroes of the American Revolution—men like Thomas Jefferson, who, he found, were rebels just like himself: “These fellows had no more respect for high priests, princes, kings, and hand-me-down authority than I had.”84 Later he joined the Knights of

Labor during its push for the eight-hour workday, but had not yet become a committed radical, perhaps being more attracted to what the Knights could do for him in terms of wages and working hours than making sacrifices on behalf of a new brotherhood of man. When he returned to Germany for a few years a friend of his attempted to convert him to socialism to no effect. As Ameringer put it, “while I did not take the sawdust trail to the socialist converts’ bench that day, I left with…a feeling which afterwards made me more receptive to similar ideas.”85 Ironically perhaps while making quite a good living as a life insurance salesman in Columbus, Ohio someone gave Ameringer a copy of Henry

82 Oscar Ameringer, If You Don’t Weaken, 17

83 Oscar Ameringer, If You Don’t Weaken, 44, 80, 169, 227.

84 Oscar Ameringer, If You Don’t Weaken, 67-69.

85 Oscar Ameringer, If You Don’t Weaken, 142.

George’s Progress and Poverty. And soon thereafter he came into possession of a copy of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward. Now the seeds which had been planted in that public library and by the social-democrat friend back in Germany reached fruition—

Ameringer came to the realization that society was broken beyond repair and socialism was the only answer.86

Freda Ameringer’s life was similarly influenced by the immigrant experience, if indirectly. Her grandfather ran away from Ireland, arriving in the United States at the tender age of fourteen.87 Political radicalism seems to have run in the Hogan family— her grandmother was an abolitionist and it is quite possible that her grandfather fled

Ireland after getting involved in the independence movement there (perhaps he was running from the authorities).88 If he was not involved directly he was certainly sympathetic to the movement and passed on those sympathies to his son and Freda’s father, Dan Hogan. Fellow socialist Phil Callery recalled of Hogan that “he had all the eloquence and charm of Irish patriots in their early day struggles against England.”89

Dan Hogan began his long political career as the editor of Alliance Banner, a paper that supported the Farmer’s Alliance.90 Eventually he switched from Democrat to Socialist where he became very prominent in radical Arkansas politics—the Socialist Party

86 Ameringer, If You Don’t Weaken, 180-182.

87 Freda Hogan Ameringer, interview by James R. Green, December 11, 1977, interview 362B, transcript, Oral History of the American Left Collection, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University, New York, NY.

88 Freda Hogan Ameringer, interview.

89 Freda Hogan Ameringer, Autobiography, Box 3, folder 13. Oscar and Freda Ameringer Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, OK.

90Freda Ameringer, “Dan Hogan-Fighter for Labor -Dies,” American Guardian, January 25, 1935, Box 3, folder 12, Oscar and Freda Ameringer Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, OK.

nominated him for governor three times. According to Freda, “Papa was the perennial socialist candidate for governor of Arkansas.”91 He also ran for mayor of Oklahoma City in 1931 after moving there to be with his daughter who had begun assisting Oscar

Ameringer get the Oklahoma Leader up and running during World War I.92 Dan Hogan is the reason Freda Hogan became involved in radical politics. They were as close as a father and daughter could be, especially since Freda’s mother was an invalid which forced Freda to assume many of her duties.93

Freda Ameringer’s political awakening also seems to have taken place at a very early age. She became a red card-carrying member of the Socialist Party at the tender age of sixteen and was contributing articles to radical national newspapers and journals by the time she was twenty-years old.94 It was not simply a close father-daughter relationship or even the many radical visitors that came to the “House of Hogan” which

91 Freda Hogan Ameringer, interview; Freda Hogan Ameringer Autobiography, Box 3, folder 13. Oscar and Freda Ameringer Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, OK; Freda Ameringer, “Dan Hogan-Fighter for Labor –Dies,” American Guardian, January 25, 1935, Box 3, folder 12, Oscar and Freda Ameringer Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, OK.

92 Freda Hogan Ameringer, autobiography; “Hogan, Able Writer of Editorials, Dies,” Sooner State Press, January 26, 1935, Box 3, Folder 12, Oscar and Freda Ameringer Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, OK; Kay Blake, autobiography of Freda Ameringer, Box 4, folder 4, Oscar and Freda Ameringer Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, OK.

93 Michael Pierce, “Great Women All, Serving a Glorious Cause: Freda Hogan Ameringer’s Reminiscences of Socialism in Arkansas,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 69, No. 4 (Winter 2010): 297-298. See Freda Hogan Ameringer, Socialist Party membership cards, Box 4, folder 4, Oscar and Freda Ameringer Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, OK. Also, see Freda Hogan Ameringer, interview by James R. Green, December 11, 1977, interview 362C, transcript, Oral History of the American Left Collection, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University, New York, NY. Mrs. Hogan did cook for her husband’s many radical out of town guests when she was able. Freda Ameringer remembers how “Speakers routed by Pap nearly always include Huntington, so they could report and advise with Papa. Usually they stayed with us and seemed to enjoy mam’s meals as much as our eagerness to listen and learn from them.” See Freda Hogan Ameringer, autobiography.

94 See Freda Hogan Ameringer, Socialist Party membership cards, Box 4, folder 4, Oscar and Freda Ameringer Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, OK; Pierce, 300-301.

convinced Freda Hogan to become a socialist; the experience of living in a mining town and interacting with miners had a very real impact on the way she viewed the world around her. In an interview forty-plus years later in 1959 she could still recall with great vividness how dangerous the mines were before they were unionized: “It used to be a very heartbreaking experience when there would be a mine explosion and they would bring the men out, burned to a crisp, and you see their wives and children waiting at the pit head, sobbing and crying.”95 Freda Ameringer supported the cause of the miners wholeheartedly, making their fight her own, at one point even appearing before the state legislature in Little Rock on their behalf.96 In 1912 she travelled to the Socialist Party convention in Indianapolis as a delegate representing the interests of those miners. It was at that convention that Freda Hogan met kindred radical soul (and future husband)

Oscar Ameringer for the very first time. She recalls how long afterward Oscar told her

“how he laughed at the self-important way I moved around the convention floor. I may have been young, but Methuselah with all his years could not have been more confidant.”97

95 Kay Blake, autobiography of Freda Ameringer.

96 Freda Hogan Ameringer, autobiography. Her appearance was in regard to an attempt in 1907 to repeal Act 219, which was passed in 1905 requiring mine owners to pay coal miners for all the coal they dug. According to Historian Michael Pierce, “Before the act, the state’s mine operators would pay miners only for coal that was large enough to pass over a screen with openings one and an eight inches square. Even though operators sold the coal that fell through the screen, miner received no wages for digging it.” See Pierce, 313.

97 Freda Hogan Ameringer, autobiography. This is a particularly interesting observation coming from Oscar Ameringer. In interviews, Freda Ameringer always appears very humble, noting how she was “pushed ahead by her father and husband…more than her actual ability.” Perhaps some of the self- confidence she exhibited at the convention was the false self-confidence of youth, but just as likely, her self-deprecating language is a reflection of the place women occupied in society during the early twentieth century. Even though Freda Ameringer was a suffragist undoubtedly, she had still imbibed some of society’s expectations regarding a woman’s place or lack of a place in politics. See Freda Hogan Ameringer, interview by James R. Green, December 11, 1977, interview 362C.

Ultimately Freda Hogan became Freda Ameringer after marrying Oscar in New

York in 1930.98 In the period between meeting and marrying Oscar Ameringer she helped him raise funds for his newest newspaper venture, the Oklahoma Leader which was birthed during the difficult years of World War I when socialists were persecuted and even jailed for their radical beliefs. Freda Hogan had become sickly after spending too much time working in her father’s printing press and her doctor thought fresh air and travel would do her some good.99 Oscar and Freda crisscrossed Oklahoma soliciting funds from the party faithful ultimately succeeding in raising the requisite quarter of a million dollars to begin printing.100 Freda was an important part of this success. As

Oscar notes Freda was an expert at sniffing out funds for the newspaper: “What a salesman that ninety-six-pound girl was! Almost everyone can sell almost anything once. But to sell’ most anything to anyone three and four times over and be cordially received the fifth time-that’s real salesmanship.”101 Three years later her family joined her in Oklahoma. Oscar Ameringer orchestrated this migration of the Hogan clan, writing in the fall of 1917: “it is my hope that all of you leave the God-forsaken state of

98 Freda Hogan Ameringer, autobiography.

99 Ameringer, If You Don’t Weaken, 313. Ameringer believed that by setting up another socialist paper in a different region could help the struggling Milwaukee Leader, which was losing money due to its increasing unpopularity in the face of wartime fervor. The revenue from this second paper might be used to shore up the struggling Milwaukee Leader. Still, the Oklahoma Leader faced an uphill be battle from the very beginning since wartime repression was in full swing at this time and few of the 56,000 socialists in the state were willing to antagonize their more conservative neighbors. See Ameringer, If You Don’t Weaken, 305-316, 321.

100 Ameringer, If You Don’t Weaken, 308-314.

101 Ameringer, If You Don’t Weaken, 313. The Oklahoma Leader was published as a daily from 1920 until 1923. See Freda Hogan Ameringer autobiography.

Arkansas and come to Oklahoma and take the work up on the Leader.”102 Over time the two families became even more intertwined: after their marriage, Oscar and Freda

Ameringer took over the top floor of Dan Hogan’s home, an arrangement that lasted until 1941 when Oscar Ameringer passed away.103

By the time the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union was founded in 1934 Oscar and

Freda Ameringer had started another paper, the American Guardian.104 This newspaper had a wider, national readership.105 One such reader was the owner of a small gas station in Tyronza, Arkansas named Clay East, one of the founders of the STFU.106 The

American Guardian, then, furthered the socialist education of East, who had already been converted to the socialist cause after reading a copy of Letters to Judd by Upton

102 Oscar Ameringer to Dan Hogan, November 13, 1917, Box 3, Folder 6, Oscar and Freda Ameringer Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, OK.

103 Freda Hogan Ameringer autobiography.

104 The Oklahoma Leader foundered after Governor Jack Walton, a man it had championed as having the interests of the masses at heart, was found to be irredeemably corrupt. Walton had pretended to be for the common folk while taking campaign contributions from the Oklahoma elite. Then, in an effort to distract the public from his misdeeds, he launched a war on the Ku Klux Klan. Ultimately, Walton was impeached by the state legislature, destroying the progressive alliance that had put him in office and taking the Oklahoma Leader with him. See Oscar Ameringer, If You Don’t Weaken, 382-392. McAlister Coleman recalled how Ameringer once told him he “Had more labor papers shot from under him than Grant had horses.” See McAlister Coleman, “Oscar Ameringer-Laughing Radical,” The Voice of Youth, date unknown, Box 1 Folder 2, Oscar and Freda Ameringer Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, OK.

105 Oscar Ameringer, If You Don’t Weaken, 390, Unsurprisingly however, most subscribers were located in the Southwest and Midwest where Ameringer had been the most active as a labor organizer and newspaper editor. The American Guardian kept a weekly tally of subscribers and where they were from. The top six states in terms of subscriptions were Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri California, and Pennsylvania. Circulation crested at around 50,000 subscribers. “The Minute Man Army,” The American Guardian, December 21, 1934; “To Our Minute Men,” The American Guardian, September 6, 1935.

106 Clay East was one of the American Guardian’s Minutemen, readers who tried to get new subscribers for the paper. According to East, “I was one of the top Minutemen…I used different methods…whatever it took. I was a rough salesman then.” See East, interview. Mitchell similarly recalled East’s drive for subs, noting how “before he would give an order to a salesman, the salesman had to subscribe to the American Guardian. Then when the salesmen returned East asked him if he had read the paper. If not, East would not give him an order until he had.” See Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 28.

Sinclair which had been given to him by H.L. Mitchell.107 The American Guardian continued to advocate for the same constituencies the Ameringers had fought for all their lives—industrial workers and poor farmers. Anticipating the grievances of the

STFU in editorial after editorial Ameringer criticized a New Deal that displaced poor farmers as it took submarginal land out of production: “what our farmers are suffering from is not so much poor soil or insufficient soil, but an over-supply of variegated parasites and parasitical institutions that have bled them white.”108 For Ameringer the real issue in American agriculture was the exploitation of small farmers, tenant farmers, and sharecroppers by the rich and powerful. The American Guardian helped to increase the notoriety of the STFU by carrying news stories about union and its clashes with plantation owners. Not only was this publicity helpful for the purposes of raising funds and pressuring politicians, it also aided in recruitment by reaching potential union members like Otis Sweeden who went on to lead the Oklahoma chapter of the union.

According to Mitchell, “He [Sweeden] found an article the American Guardian, calling upon persons interested in helping the STFU to organize in their communities to write to

H.L. Mitchell.”109 Sweeden did so and within a year, due in large part to his organizing skills, the Oklahoma branch of the STFU had 7,500 members (almost one third of its total membership).110

107 East, interview.

108 Oscar Ameringer, “Farms for Farmers Who Farm the Farm,” The American Guardian, February 9, 1934.

109 Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 77.

110 Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 77.

Oscar Ameringer also provided invaluable aid to the union by sending a copy of the by then defunct Oklahoma Renters’ Association constitution to H.L. Mitchell. The

STFU Constitution was based largely on the document that Ameringer had helped draft in 1909.111 While there is no extant correspondence between Ameringer and the STFU beyond this copy of the constitution, Mitchell did personally meet with Ameringer on one of his organizing trips to Oklahoma.112 Furthermore, Mitchell had long known about

Freda Ameringer—in a letter written to her in 1985 he said: “I am trying to help as you are. I used to hear about Freda Hogan from old time Socialists before I even met

Oscar.”113 Undoubtedly, the Ameringers offered Mitchell sage advice and their unique perspectives on the New Deal, farmers, and renewed public interest in socialism.

Perhaps in conversing with the Ameringers Mitchell realized the union’s best option for expansion was into the old Southwest where the socialist movement had found such fertile soil three decades earlier. Oscar Ameringer even planned to visit the union’s cooperative farm near Hillhouse, Mississippi. This farm was to be a place of refuge for

111 A notation in the file states “original-on which STFU first constitution based –[1934] HLM Received from Oscar Ameringer, Editor American Guardian, Oklahoma City. Also, see “Constitution,” 1934, Reel 1, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. According to H.L. Mitchell, “Butler wrote the first union constitution, which was based on the bylaws of the Oklahoma Renters Union, sent by Oscar Ameringer, the editor of the American Guardian in Oklahoma City.” See Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 49. Nigel Anthony Sellers, “Oklahoma Renters’ Union,” Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History & Culture, http://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=OK074 (accessed November 11, 2017). Also, see Green, Grassroots Socialism, 81.

112 Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 80; also see H.L. Mitchell to Freda Ameringer, January 1, 1985, Box 1, Folder 5, Oscar and Freda Ameringer Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, OK.

113 Ibid.

evicted union members who were interested in trying out a new method of farming.114

Even Oscar Ameringer’s son, Siegfried, was connected to the STFU: he was on a list of potential Oklahoma donors sent from Otis Sweeden to H.L. Mitchell in 1938.115 It could be said that if Norman Thomas was the father who first conceived of the Southern

Tenant Farmers’ Union, than Oscar and Freda Ameringer were its godparents providing a sympathetic ear and encouragement to the union in its infancy.116

It was not just rural socialists who helped the STFU to grow in its early days.

African Americans who been part of an ongoing freedom struggle in the decades following the Civil War also joined the union, but only once it became clear that a class- based alliance between poor blacks and poor whites was the only viable option left in pursuit of economic independence. Following emancipation many African Americans believed a new era was dawning-or at least it appeared that way. These formerly enslaved individuals were no longer beholden to their “masters”; they were free to move, free to work wherever and for whomever they wanted, but most importantly, they were free to work for wages, a dignity long denied them. It seemed as though the long- awaited day of redemption often spoken of and hoped for had arrived.117 Yet these

114 Sam H. Franklin, Jr. to Oscar Ameringer, August 22, 1940, Box 8, Folder 10, Oscar and Freda Ameringer Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, OK; H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 132.

115 Otis Sweeden to H.L. Mitchell, June 22, 1938, Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Records, Library West, University of Florida, reel 1.

116 In the winter of 1934 during a visit to the Memphis area, Clay East and H.L. Mitchell first met Norman Thomas and showed him around the cotton country of Northeast Arkansas. According to Mitchell, “Norman Thomas told us that while he highly approved our belonging to the Socialist Party, what was really needed was a sharecroppers’ organization to fight for the rights of those being evicted and cast adrift…This was the real beginning of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, which was formed some months later.” See Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 39-40.

117 Ayers, The Promise of the New South, viii; See Stephen Kantrowitz, More than Freedom: Fighting for black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829-1889 (New York: The Penguin Press, 2012), 312-313. Although it is important to note that newly emancipated blacks were often not working for wages, but

black men and women were starting out with literally nothing, perhaps only the clothes on their backs. Nevertheless, there was a chance for upward mobility and the opportunity to create their own destinies in pursuit of the American Dream.118 Some chose to pursue that dream by moving out of the Old South and searching for a place to farm in the more sparsely settled Old Southwest which included Arkansas, Louisiana,

Texas, and Oklahoma. These states, even though partly settled by southerners before the Civil War, still had great swaths of public land potentially available for purchase.119

The cautious optimism and hope these men and women took with them on that journey westward quickly soured into bitter disappointment for many. Few African

Americans qualified under the Southern Homestead Act and the government sold public lands in the swampy regions of the Yazoo-Mississippi-Arkansas Delta to lumber companies who then sold off the cutaway land to the highest bidder—most African

Americans simply did not have the capital to compete in such a hypercapitalistic environment.120 Some Blacks were able to purchase small plots of land even while still

rather “shares” of the annual cotton crop. They were only paid at harvest time and the rest of the year often had to rely on credit that placed them in a financially precarious position and often meant most of the year they were broke or indebted to their landlords. See Pete Daniel, Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures since 1880 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 4-5; Gilbert C. Fite, Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture 1865-1980 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1984), 3-5. It is also important to note that almost immediately after black southerners received their freedom white southerners attempted to regain control over those formerly enslaved individuals through Black Codes passed in 1866. See Kantrowitz, 320-325.

118 Fite, 2.

119 Black migration to the Old Southwest did not happen all at once, but rather in waves during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Certainly, some families from the Southeast moved right after the Civil War ended. Yet, many more moved after the 1880s when the availability of lumber jobs increased in availability and after they had had time to accumulate the capital necessary for such a long- distance move. Subsequently the trickle of setters fleeing the worn-soil and paternalistic, white social hierarchy of the Old South became a flood. See Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 6, 22-24; Fite, 3; Daniel, 9, 15.

120Fite notes how only a few thousand African Americans filed for homesteads under the 1866 Southern Homestead Act. See Fite, 2. Lumber companies bought up much of the public land in the 1880/1890s in

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working as tenant farmers and sharecroppers on the lands of others. Economic mobility was not impossible, but economic advancement for poor Africans Americans (as well as for poor whites) was difficult under an agricultural system increasing geared towards large-scale production and efficiencies of scale.121 Furthermore, black families had to contend with the jealousy and hatred of neighboring whites who were upset at any sign of upward mobility among the black race. If a black individual became “too successful,” he or she was liable to face pressure to sell their property at below market value with the understanding that violence would follow if they did not acquiesce to white demands.122

Nevertheless, African Americans in the Old Southwest found ways of fighting back against racial injustice and economic inequality despite a deck stacked against their economic advancement. Often times this resistance simply took place at the individual level and included tactics that harkened back to the antellebum era.123 Yet, at certain times when national events disrupted the status quo and impeded on the relative social and cultural isolation of the South these individual acts of resistance coalesced

these Delta areas. And after they had harvested the timber they sold the land to farmers; much of this land ended up in the hands of absentee owners from up North or even overseas. Small farmers were able to buy land too, but during this period of time farming was increasingly characterized by consolidation. Family farming was on the decline as many small farmers lost their land and joined the tenant farmer/sharecropper ranks. Whayne, 9-19; See Woodward, 8-23, 32.

121Increases in black landownership as well as difficulties whites are having holding onto land and not being forced into tenancy arrangements. See Woodward 20-22; Fite, 34-35, 99. Daniel 163-168.

122 Whayne discusses how whitecappers tried to drive black tenant farmers and sharecroppers of the land since they were willing to work for less than their poor white counterparts were. Kieran Taylor cites the example of Silas Hoskins, a successful business owner who was murdered when he refused to sell his Tavern to white investors. See Whayne, 47-53. Also see Kieran Taylor, “’We Have Just Begun’: Black Organizing and White Response in the Arkansas Delta, 1919,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 58, No. 3 (Autumn 1999): 268.

123 Biegart, 74-79.

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into collective action.124 The cotton pickers’ strike of 1891 in Lee County, Arkansas is one such example (despite the fact that it never developed a critical mass of support regionally). This strike demonstrated the desire and ability of black tenant farmers and sharecroppers and to come together collectively and push for higher wages.125 We see similar attempts by black tenant farmers and sharecroppers to organize in favor of economic cooperation such as the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of

America which was formed in Phillips County, Arkansas in 1919.126 Both of these attempts to organize collectively were met with violence, but they demonstrate the readiness and willingness of blacks to push for greater economic justice during times of national unrest.

Collective action in the cotton fields was only one avenue of resistance that turn- of-the-century African Americans pursued. Migration and the Black Nationalism that accompanied it also proved to be a crucial vehicle for black aspirations, whether that meant creating all-black towns in Oklahoma such as Boley or creating black enclaves in the Missouri Bootheel.127 Emigration out of the Old South to virgin territory in places like

Oklahoma and Kansas was a popular idea during the heady days of Reconstruction and

124 Biegart, 84-88. Taylor, 269-274.

125 Biegart, 81-83. Naison, 50-51.

126 Biegart, 84-86; Naison, 51.

127 Jimmie Lewis Franklin, A Journey toward Hope (Norman: University of Oklahoma Pres, 1982), 17; Jarod Roll, Spirit of Rebellion, 64. Despite attempts at creating black communities and enclaves both Franklin and Roll note the difficulties of creating autonomous black spaces in the late nineteen and early twentieth centuries. According to Franklin, despite significant strides to create self-governing, autonomous black communities, “these communities’ never really escaped dependence upon an economic society controlled essentially by whites” and according to Roll even though Blacks made some headway in “their efforts to build an independent world in the Bootheel” they still needed elite white protection from less affluent white competitors. See Franklin, 18; Roll, 61-69.

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the darker days of Redemption. This migration out of the Deep South continued through the 1920s as the nexus of migration shifted to the Arkansas Delta and Missouri

Bootheel.128 Boosters like Edward P. McCabe called for African Americans to put down roots in new places such as the Oklahoma Territory which was opened up to settlement by non-Native Americans in 1889. Ultimately, twenty-six all-black towns took root in

Oklahoma. In these towns, African Americans could go about their daily lives largely uninterrupted by the the growing white supremacy throughout the rest of the South.129 In the state of Missouri, entire African Americans families moved into newly reclaimed

Delta farmland with hope of climbing the agricultural ladder to farm ownership. Between

1922 and 1925 more than 15,000 black migrated to the Missouri Bootheel in search of economic opportunity and freedom from white repression.130 The visions of black settlers in Oklahoma and migrants in Missouri were similar in that they emphasized self- reliance and advancement through racial separation. This values system embodied both

Booker T. Washington’s philosophy of economic advancement through hard work and self-help as well as Marcus Garvey’s calls for autonomy and self-determination.131

It seems no matter what African Americans did or where they went, white supremacy seemed to follow them. If they held their ground in their home communities and went on strike demanding higher wages, just as black cotton pickers did in Lee

County, Arkansas in 1891, they risked a violent backlash. In this case a white mob

128 Ayers 22-24; Franklin 11-13; Roll, 53. Woodruff, 30-32. For an excellent treatment of African American migration to Kansas, see Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (1977; repr., Knoxville New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992).

129 Franklin, 13-17.

130 Roll, 52-57.

131 Franklin, 17; Roll, 57, 63.

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cornered the strike leaders on a small island on the Mississippi River; those not killed outright when the white mob stormed their hideout were subsequently lynched.132 If

African Americans left their communities to try to escape the long reach of Jim Crow in far off Oklahoma or Missouri white supremacy was lying in wait for them there. Just three short year after becoming a state Oklahoma passed a Grandfather Clause in 1910 denying blacks the franchise.133 And in the 1920s those hoping to escape white supremacy and build a good life for themselves by moving into newly opened farmland in the Missouri Bootheel found working-class whites incredibly hostile towards them.

These poor white tenant farmers and sharecroppers viewed the Bootheel as a white man’s country and feared the prospect of competition from black tenant farmers and sharecroppers.134 Nevertheless, there was one last attempt at collective action by

African Americans in the Arkansas Delta in Mississippi County in 1919. Cotton prices had risen dramatically during the war and prices remained high after the armistice was signed. Black tenant farmers and sharecroppers wanted what they considered their rightful share of the bounty. And when they formed a union to advocate on their behalf local whites responded with violence.135

Late Tuesday evening September 30, 1919 Deputy Sheriff Charles Pratt, Special

Agent for the Missouri Pacific Railroad, W.A. Atkins, and a black prisoner, Ed Collins, set out from Helena, the county seat of Phillips County, Arkansas to arrest an alleged

132 Biegart, 81-83.

133 Franklin, 108-113.

134 Roll, 48-52, 61-62.

135 Biegart, 84-88; Naison, 51.

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white bootlegger in the nearby town of Elaine. Their search was interrupted by a flat tire near a black church at the hamlet of Hoop Spur. According to the Helena World as they approached the church in search of assistance the three men “were surrounded and fired upon.”136 As shots rang out in the darkness Special Agent Atkins fell to the ground mortally wounded; Deputy Sheriff Charles Pratt was also severely injured, leaving Ed

Collins to run to nearby Wabash to report the attack.137 The Helena World goes on to state that a posse was immediately sent out from nearby Helena to arrest those responsible for the assault, but upon approaching the crime scene the men “were surrounded and fired upon by the Negroes North of Hoop Spur.”138 It was later determined that Pratt, Atkins, and Collins had unwittingly stumbled upon a meeting of the radical Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. The Helena World reported how “a few rascally white men and designing leaders of their own race” had duped local blacks into joining the union and then pushed them to launch an insurrection.139 Twenty-one local white planters had been targeted for assassination after which their lands would then be distributed to union members.140

Yet, there were no plans to execute white plantation owners or to murder whites en masse. The members of the union simply wanted a fair settlement from the

136 “Statement by Committee of Seven,” Helena World, October 12 1919. O.A. Rogers, Jr. “The Elaine Race Riots of 1919,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 19, No. 2 (Summer 1960): 147; Woodruff, 86.

137 Woodruff, 86. Rogers, 147.

138 “Statement by Committee of Seven,” Helena World, October 12, 1919.

139 “Elaine Insurrection over Committee of Seven in Charge,” Helena World October 3, 1919; “Inward Facts about Negro Insurrection,” Helena World, October 7, 1919.

140 “Elaine Insurrection over Committee of Seven in Charge,” Helena World October 3, 1919; “Statement by Committee of Seven: Reputing Assertion in Little Rock Newspapers Bring Statement of Facts, Helena World October 12, 1919; “Slowly but Surely,” Arkansas World, November 1, 1919; Rogers, 149.

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plantation owners whose fields they farmed. Ed Ware was one such man-three days before the Elaine Riot he was offered a price of 24 cents and then 33 cents for his cotton, yet the going rate was 44.5 cents. He refused, and rumors spread he would be targeted for retribution for his refusal to sell his crop and would be lynched.141 Further context helps illuminate what really transpired the night of September 30, 1919. Earlier that day union members in nearby Ratio had met with Ocier Bratton, the son of Little

Rock attorney Ulysses S. Bratton to discuss the possibility of his father representing them. This meeting was interrupted by a group of heavily armed whites who struck fear into the union members, telling them that the meeting was over. Bratton observed that

“the Negroes were surprised at this turn, and some of the women…were pitiful in their abject terror.”142 Later on that evening, another meeting of the union was held late at night in the Hoop Spur church to also discuss the possibility of hiring Bratton as legal counsel. Just as at Ratio this meeting did not go unnoticed.143 According to eyewitness

John Martin white men shot into the church without warning or provocation: “I do know that four or five automobiles full of white men came about fifty yards from the church and put the lights out, and then started shooting in the church with about 200 head of men, women, and children. I was on the outside of the church and saw this for myself.

Then I ran after they started firing on the church.”144

141 Ida Wells-Barnett, The Arkansas Race Riot (1920: repr., Aquila, 2013), 10. Wells-Barnett succinctly pointed out the real reason for the riot: “‘The terrible crime these men had committed was to organize their members into a union for the purpose of getting the market price of their cotton, to buy land of their own and to employ a lawyer to get settlements of their accounts with their white landlords.” Wells-Barnett, 7.

142 Woodruff, 84-85.

143 Woodruff, 86.

144 Wells-Barnett, 17.

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But what accounts for those black men and women being in the church that night? Why join a union and then seek legal counsel—was it just because they needed help with settlement payments at the end of cotton season? Pressure on tenants and sharecroppers to sell cotton for much less than it was worth was only one prong of a multipronged system of economic oppression and exploitation. Another prong was debt.

Tenant farmers and sharecroppers often had to borrow money from their landlords against the crop they were growing to maintain themselves for the year. The interest rates were exorbitant—ranging from 40 percent to 70 percent in some locales.

Furthermore, tenant farmers and sharecroppers had to buy those daily necessities from a store owned by the landlord, or a merchant closely allied with him; the prices for goods bought on credit were usually much higher than the price for goods bought for cash. Beyond this, however landlords often neglected to furnish tenants and sharecroppers with receipts for the purchases they made so at the end of the year renters found out that they had almost miraculously broken even. Consequently, tenants and sharecroppers in the Arkansas Delta found themselves trapped in what Whayne characterizes as a “vicious cycle of debt.”145 Furthermore, the law stated that if a tenant farmer or sharecropper left before a crop was harvested, they forfeited their rights to the crop. Some landlords forced their tenants off the land before cotton picking season so they would not have to pay them.146

145 Whayne notes how economic historian Roger Ranson and Richard Sutch “concluded that credit arrangements were such that the interest rates charged by merchants ‘ranged from 40 to 70 percent’ for the South as a whole. Planter who did not themselves have commissaries made agreement with merchants to supply their sharecroppers.” See Jeannie M. Whayne, “Low Villains and Wickedness in High Places: Race and Class in the Elaine Riots,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 58, No. 3 (Autumn 1999): 306-307.

146 Woodruff, 82.

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This is precisely what newspaper editor and anti-lynching advocate Ida B. Wells-

Barnett found when she investigated what happened at Elaine. Interviewee after interviewee mentioned how the insurrection was a cover to take their crops. According to William Wordlow: “Just as fast as the Negroes lay their crops by they are driven from their homes and farms.”147 And Frank Moore stated that “the white people [of Phillips

County] were threatening to run us away from our crops before this trouble started.”148

These three tactics—unfair settlements, never-ending debt, and denying African

American tenant farmers and sharecroppers their wages by driving them off the land— individually these tactics were enough to keep most rural blacks in poverty, collectively they denied upward mobility to even the most hardworking, frugal tenant farmer or sharecropper. Black men and women organized the Progressive Farmers and

Household Union of America in response to this oppressive system of impoverishment and economic exploitation in the fall of 1919.

While this abusive and oppressive relationship existed for decades, it was the changing national climate during and after World War I that encouraged African

Americans to take a stand and demand what was due them.149 Furthermore according to the Helena World demands for workers from northern factories unsettled the labor market in Phillips County: “The organization of the Negro into a murder band was made possible by conditions that are grown up during the past two years…Before the war the great manufacturers north of the Mason-Dixon line…lost their cheap foreign labor. The

147 Wells-Barnett, 20.

148 Wells-Barnett, 21-22.

149 Taylor, 267-270. Whayne, 310. Taylor notes how “At the end of World War I, county residents confronted radically changing economic and social conditions.” Taylor, 267.

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turn prompted the South and unsettled conditions down here by offering Negro day laborers three times as much as they are receiving in the South.”150 The war had created a labor shortage thus giving tenant farmers and sharecroppers in rural

Arkansas more leverage against landlords; if landlords were not willing to negotiate with their tenant farmers and sharecroppers then those men and women could simply move north in search of more remunerative work.151

Another factor in this resurgence of black resistance were the returning veterans from Europe who it seen what the larger world look like outside of the constrained white supremacist hierarchy that exist in the Arkansas Delta.152 These black veterans learned that things were better in many other parts the world and brought home this belief that things should be better for them in Phillips County, after all they had put on the uniform and risk their lives for their country and had proven their value as men and as citizens.153

Lastly, cotton prices were at record highs leaving landlords without any justification for paying poverty wages to their tenants and sharecroppers. Those men

150 “Work for Negro Leaders,” Helena World, October 10, 1919. This was one instance in which the Helena World’s otherwise biased account of the reasons behind what happened at Elaine contained a kernel of truth. According to Taylor: “Wartime conditions expanded the range of options for black workers in the Mississippi Delta…The ensuing labor shortage left those remaining in a better position to bargain over wages, settlements, and working conditions.” See Taylor, 269. According to Biegart: “World War I had a profound effect on the southern black community. A shortage of labor during the war caused numerous labor agents to recruit black works to go north…White landowners greatly feared this loss of black labor.” See Biegart, 84. It is worth noting that this was not the first time a labor shortage had given black agricultural workers leverage over employers. See Biegart, 78.

151 Taylor, 269; Biegart, 78, 84.

152 Taylor, 270-271.

153 Taylor, 270-271. According to Taylor, when these veterans returned home, “They expected to be rewarded with less discriminatory treatment and new opportunities for advancement in return for their service and sacrifice.” Taylor, 271.

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and women wanted their share of the bounty. According to Wells-Barnett: “With cotton selling at 45 and 50 cents a pound…no padding of accounts nor inflation of process could use all that money for supplies and leave the Negro in debt and subjugation.

Another way to must be found to do this and keep the Negro’s wealth from him.”154

African Americans knew that cotton prices have been going up and up and up and wanted their fair share of the windfall. Perhaps they would have been content if prices had stayed low, but they knew how incredibly wealthy landlords were becoming on their hard labor and simply could no longer abide seeing their profits lining the pockets of others.155 This, then, is the social and economic context behind the meeting at the Hoop

Spur church and the resurgence of the African American freedom struggle in the Delta.

Sometime the morning of September 1, 1919 a white mob returned in force and burned down the Hoop Spur church to cover up any evidence of what really transpired the previous night.156 Phillips County Sheriff Frank F. Kitchens quickly raised a posse of

300 armed men to put down what in the white community was being called a black

“insurrection.”157 Word of this “insurrection” traveled quickly in the Delta and additional vigilantes streamed in from other parts of the state as well as neighboring states like

Tennessee and Mississippi.158 These heavily armed vigilantes descended on the nearby

154 Wells-Barnett, 10.

155 See Woodruff, 82. Woodruff notes that “During the war, planter had reaped most of the benefits of high cotton prices, continuing to pay their croppers a relatively low price for their crop. The 1919 harvest proved to be the most lucrative yet, producing the South’s first $2 billion dollar crop.” See Woodruff 82.

156 Wells-Barnett, 11; Woodruff, 86. According to Wells-Barnett they “burned the church down the next day so no bullet holes in walls, broken windows or dead bodies of Negroes would show the conspiracy of whites to kill black people.” See Wells-Barnett, 11.

157 Woodruff, 86; Rogers 148.

158 Rogers, 148; Whayne, 287.

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town of Elaine.159 To be black was to be suspect and to run was to admit guilt.160 The mayor of nearby Helena contacted the governor asking for federal troops to assist in putting down the “insurrection.” Tellingly when Colonel Isaac C. Jenks arrived with 583

US troops accompanied by Arkansas Governor Charles H. Brough he disarmed both blacks and whites.161 Nevertheless, indiscriminate killing of African Americans (many of whom had gone into hiding in the woods) continued.162 Confessions were extracted through torture. William Wardlow later recalled how “we was whipped like dogs to make stories on each other,” while Alfred Banks “was whipped three times in jail, also was put in an electric chair in Helena jail and shocked.”163 By the sixth day order was restored to

Phillips County and Colonel Jenks, Governor Brough, and most of the soldiers were recalled, leaving the county to grapple with the aftermath of what had just occurred.164

The official death toll after four days of violence was five whites and twenty-five blacks killed.165 Unofficially it is likely that on both sides the count was much higher, but

159 Rogers, 148. According to Rogers, these men “began to search and ransack the Negroes’ homes, arresting men and women indiscriminately…By early morning word circulated among the Negroes in the vicinity of Elaine that the whites were going to kill all Negroes.” See Rogers, 148.

160 Wells-Barnett, 17-18. Well-Barnett interviewed eyewitness E.D. Hicks who recalled what happened on October 1, 1919: “they were after all the colored people to kill them, so we ran into the swamp.” See Wells-Barnett, 17-18.

161 Taylor, 266; Whayne, 287; Rogers, 148; Woodruff 86. It seems unlikely that these federal troops were necessary to contain the insurrection it seems more likely that these federal troops were necessary to put the vigilantes in check. After all things have begun to spin out of control local landlords wanted to teach recalcitrant and rebellious tenant farmers and sharecroppers a lesson, however they still needed men women and children to work in the fields once that lesson had been received.

162 Taylor, 266. Well-Barnett, 18-19.

163 Wells-Barnett, 18-19; Woodruff, 88.

164 Woodruff, 86-90.

165 Taylor, 266; Whayne, 287; “Confidence Everywhere Restored,” Helena World October 5, 1919. Initial reports placed the number at five white’s dead and fourteen blacks. The Helena World noted that “Prisoners declared that more than twenty-five had been killed and many wounded…. It was considered

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disproportionately weighted towards blacks. Estimates of the number of African

American dead have been as high as 800; historians have more or less agreed the number is likely to be around 200.166 Despite union members’ attempts at self-defense, the conflict was a one-sided affair; Elaine was not an “insurrection” nor was it a race riot as it has been commonly been called—Elaine was, quite simply, a massacre of African

Americans who challenged their position in the southern social hierarchy.167 Of the hundreds arrested twelve were ultimately brought up on charges of murder and condemned to die in the electric chair, whereas sixty-seven received lighter sentences ranging from one to twenty-one years.168 Ultimately, those twelve men who were sentenced to death for murder never paid the ultimate price due to the timely involvement of the NAACP which worked tirelessly to overturn the conviction (which took years to achieve).169 In the more immediate term the arrest, conviction, and

probable that the total might be lightly increased in later reports.” Apparently, the Helena World decided to use the number the prisoners supplied.

166 Biegart, 98; Taylor, 266; Whayne, 287; According to Whayne, “There is considerable controversy over the number of blacks killed, with some contemporaries and historians concluding that hundreds may have died.” Biegart has a very detailed discussion of the various estimates given in the footnotes of his article, “Legacy of Resistance.” A recent report by the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, summarizes lynchings and episodes of racial violence in the South from 1877 to 1950. This report includes 245 deaths in Phillips County, the highest by far of any county in the entire South. Most of those undoubtedly were due the Elaine Massacre. See Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, third edition (Montgomery: Equal Justice Initiative, 2015).

167 Whayne, 287, 290; Rogers, 148. As Taylor notes, “Wartime conditions expanded the range of options for black workers in the Mississippi Delta.” Taylor, 269. Even though some African Americans were armed, they never stood a chance against the superior firepower and training of the U.S. Army (although many of the union members were former veterans). When whites went looking for expected weapons and ammunition caches, according to the Helena World all they found were old guns. See “Great Drive for Insurgents Under Way,” Helena World, October 6, 1919.

168 Taylor, 266; Whayne, 287; Woodruff, 90.

169 The prosecution’s case was weakened considerable when two key witnesses later recanted and claimed that it had indeed been the whites who fired the first shots and gone looking for trouble church. See Taylor, 277; Whayne, 291.

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sentencing of these local black leaders had a chilling effect on the community. Woodruff notes how “The Elaine Massacre cast a long shallow over the following decades”170

Elaine and the surrounding area received a reputation for being a hard place for blacks.

Stella Steals who lived a hundred miles away recalled her mother telling her never to visit Elaine because whites would kill her.171 African Americans tenant farmers and sharecroppers made no further attempts to unionize in the area. Instead, they continued to migrate out of the area—this was seen as a safer way to improve one’s fortune.172

Ike Shaw was a witness to the the Elaine Massacre. He bridged the gap between the Southwestern radicalism of the turn of the nineteenth century and a resurgent radicalism born of the hardships of the Great Depression in the Arkansas Delta and surrounding environs. Ike Shaw, just like Charlie McCoy, is representative of the kinds of people who brought important knowledge, networks, and abilities from prior movements into the nascent STFU. A decade and a half after the carnage of the Elaine

Massacre Shaw’s thirst for fundamental change for the lives of rural black southerners had not dimmed. Even though he was in his early fifties by the time FDR signed the

Agricultural Adjustment Act, middle age had not dimmed his zeal for to make something better for himself, his family, and his community. Just as importantly, Ike Shaw brought a tradition of resistance with him into the STFU.173 Historian M. Langley Biegart argues that the STFU “Grew so rapidly because it tapped into a black community in central east

170 Woodruff, 108.

171 Woodruff, 103.

172 Taylor, 282-283. Dramatically in the years following the Elaine Massacre the black population in Phillips County declined by almost 20 percent, whereas the white population grew 15 percent. See Taylor, 282-283.

173 Kester, 55-56.

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Arkansas that had a rich legacy of collective actions efforts by farm laborers.”174 This legacy provided black tenant farmers and sharecroppers with the wherewithal to participate in this latest contest between the plantation oligarchy and agricultural workers. Biegert notes how “Ike Shaw grew up in a world filled with sorties of local protestors who had come before him and failed…. with each generation the price of resistance grew at the same time that the courage and number of protestors grew.”175

Unfortunately, Ike Shaw has only left only the barest of traces in the historical record. He is only mentioned in passing in H.L. Mitchell’s memoir, Mean Things are

Happening in This Land. He is also briefly mentioned in an interview Lawrence

Goodwyn conducted with Mitchell in 1974. In this interview Mitchell recalled Shaw speaking up at the founding meeting of the STFU and stating the following: “Gentlemen you’ve made the right decision. We are going to have a legal organization. It’s going to be for all sharecroppers, black and white alike…as long as we stand by these principles nothing will break us apart.”176 Based on his relative absence from the historical record historian Jason Manthorne went so far as to argue that Ike Shaw was a literary device made up by H.L. Mitchell and Howard Kester since Shaw does not show up in the

STFU’s voluminous microfilm records. Manthorne argued that Shaw seems more like an amalgamation of multiple individuals, placed in the foundational narrative of the STFU to emphasize the importance of interracial cooperation, thus this foundational narrative

174 Biegart, 75.

175 Biegert, 74-75

176 Mitchell, interview by Goodwyn.

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“represented what the STFU should have been, not what it was.”177 Manthorne went on to suggest that “In all likelihood, Ike Shaw was a composite figure invented by Kester and Mitchell based in part on the real life John Allen and C.H. Smith and in part based on what they expected African Americans to be.”178

While Manthorne was certainly correct in many of his observations about the

STFU, particularly about how white leadership, most notably how Mitchell and Kester attempted to craft a public image of solidarity and interracial unity that was often in reality lacking. However, his argument that Ike Shaw was a fabrication, a literary device concocted to aid in crafting a pristine foundational narrative is incorrect and demonstrates the difficulty of accurately excavating the past, particularly when it comes to those marginalized members of society who oftentimes leave no written record of their lives behind (further complicating this process of excavation was the deliberate erasure and obfuscation of the past by a plantation oligarchy bent on maintaining not only physical dominance over farmworkers, but also cultural dominance). Ike Shaw was no mere literary device—he was flesh and blood; census records attest to this fact as do oral histories.179 As for his absence from STFU correspondence—the explanation for this is simple and straightforward—like many of his tenant farmer and sharecropper

177 Jason Manthorne, “The View from the Cotton: Reconsidering the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union,” Agricultural History 84, No. 1 (winter 2010): 26-27, 43.

178 Manthorne, 27.

179 US Bureau of the Census, 15th Census of the United States, 1930, Washington D.C., National Archives and Records Administration, www.ancestry.com (accessed December 28, 2017); US Bureau of the Census, 16th Census of the United States, 1940, Washington D.C., National Archives and Records Administration, www.ancestry.com (accessed December 28, 2017); Scott Ellsworth Interview with Partlow, Clark, Davis 1982. Also, see H.L. Mitchell, interview by Goodwyn.

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contemporaries Ike Shaw could neither read nor write (although according to Mitchell he was an excellent public speaker).180

The real, flesh and blood Ike Shaw had been a part of the agrarian radicalism that seemed to characterize the old Southwest. However, rather than becoming involved in the Socialist Party like Charlie McCoy or the Ameringers, Ike Shaw joined the Farmers and Progressive Household Union of America.181 Shaw had been at Elaine and had seen firsthand what happened when African Americans challenged the southern planter oligarchy alone. H.L. Mitchell recalled how at that founding meeting of the STFU Shaw relayed what he had witnessed and how “Afterwards they hunted down the leaders of the movement and just slaughtered them.182 Shaw (and C.H. Smith who was also an Elaine survivor and founding member of the STFU) had learned a painful, but important lesson from their involvement with the PFHUA. As Biegert points out,

“rather than frighten them away from union activity, the experience only taught them that better tactics were need for unionization to succeed…as long as unions were segregated any attempt at organizing black labor would be viewed as a race issue rather than a class issue and would thus be vulnerable to destruction from the powerful forces of racial violence.”183

180See H.L. Mitchell, interview by Goodwyn. Manthorne surmised as much himself, but he just could not believe that there was no residual record of Shaw anywhere in the STFU papers: “It is possible that Shaw never corresponded with the union’s leaders or that he was illiterate, but he surely would have turned up in some fashion in the STFU’s voluminous records.” See Manthorne, 43.

181 Kester, 56; Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 47-48.

182 H.L. Mitchell, interview by Goodwyn.

183 Biegert, 88.

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Ike Shaw pushed for the union to be interracial. His experience at Elaine had taught him that without cooperation, without some sort of solidarity based on shared economic grievances poor black and white tenant farmers and sharecroppers would get nowhere separately.184 Of course, this strategy was far easier to implement in theory than in practice. Race-baiting and violent appeals to white supremacy have long been a time-honored tradition in the South.185 In instances when appeals to white unity have not born fruit, appeals to class were attempted. George Stith remembers how plantation owners “tried to separate people by class and they tried to do it by race. Whichever was best to use, they used it.”186 While while Ike Shaw argued for interracial cooperation undoubtedly, he realized that interracial cooperation was still fraught with difficulty. After all, most frequently blacks who were targeted first for abuse. According to Clay East,

“they wasn’t rough on white men, but they beat Brookins [a black man] and put him into jail. They made a practice of that.”187 According to Mitchell during marches the STFU would put the whites in front of the blacks to offer them some protection.188 There were certainly instances of white union members being threatened and even assaulted (Clay

East had to escape a mob once in Forrest City), but those incidents paled in

184 Kester, 56. Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 47-48.

185 According to Goodwyn, “The classic method of preventing working people in the South who are black and white from getting together was to say to the white working people, ‘What are you doing with aligning yourself with those blacks?’” See Goodwyn interview with Mitchell.

186 Marc S. Miller, ed, Working Lives: The Southern Exposure History of Labor in the South (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 131. Clay East recalls how after he helped found the STFU local folks in Tyronza stopped using his service station. One such individual asked Clay, “Why have you gone against your own class of people?” See East, interview.

187 East, interview.

188 Robert L. Reed, interview by H.L. Mitchell, Seattle, WA, April 7, 1974, transcript, Southern Historical Collection, #3472, Box 83, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

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comparison to what was done to black union members like Eliza Nolden who was beaten so badly she later died in a Memphis hospital.189

In addition to external attempts to split the union apart there was also simmering tension from within. A number of historians have commented on this notwithstanding assertions by Mitchell of relative racial harmony within the union.190 Early accounts of the union largely took Mitchell’s description of race relations within the union more or less at face value. Subsequently, Naison asserted that “historians have underestimated the tenuousness of black membership’s commitment to biracialism” and Manthorne similarly commented on the “limits of biracialism” within the union.191 There were legitimate concerns by African American leaders such as McKinney and Whitfield that blacks were relegated to a secondary position in the union, particularly when it came to the Executive Council (which was mostly white).192 At the fifth STFU convention in

Cotton Plant, Arkansas McKinney publicly expressed these misgivings: “I was the first to call the Negro to go in with the whites. I gave my consent for them to join…Yet there has been some reservation that I have held and do hold, and I think no one has a right

189 East, interview; Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 88-89; Grubbs, 113. White rank-and- file members were targeted infrequently; it was white organizers or members of the executive council who faced the prospect of violence. Within the African American community anyone participating in the union was considered a fair target regardless of their standing in the union.

190 According to Mitchell after white union members showed up in court in support of black organizer, C.H. Smith, relations between black and white union members were largely amiable: “Thereafter, the few holdouts among the black sharecroppers joined union. Black and white unity had carried the day. There was never again any question that the union members would come to the aid of their brothers, black or white, in time of need.” See Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 54.

191 Naison, 61; Manthorne, 23. Few historians, however, imagined the STFU as an absolute interracial paradise. One of the earliest chroniclers of the union, Donald Grubbs, rather tenuously asserted that “within the STFU America’s greats problem, that of race relations, was solved as well as any realistic observer could expect.” See Grubbs, 66.

192 Naison, 59-60.

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to condemn me for it.”193 It seems that over time, McKinney in particular, came to feel as though Mitchell and the other white leaders of the union such as Butler were not paying enough attention to African Americans and giving them their rightful position within the union since they formed the majority of its membership.194

This white dominance must have been particularly galling considering the physical harm that black members endured despite attempts by white members to shield them from violence.195 Black organizers and leaders were targeted for particularly harsh treatment. Clay East recalled how Black organizer A.B. Brookins was jailed and beaten up. According to East, “they wasn’t rough on white men, but they beat Brookins up and put him into jail.”196 East also recalled how union opponents “shot up E.B.

McKinney’s house and I think they shot one of his boys.”197 McKinney complained about how it was blacks taking all the risks for the union cause: “Ask yourself the question, who have suffered, who have lost anything. Homes, property, life, or citizenship…Not

193 Naision, 58. Ultimately McKinney concluded that the only reason that poor whites joined the union was in the hope of becoming the new masters of their fellow black union members: “they [whites] now, in many cases eat with Negroes, but it must be remembered that they do it because they are hungry and cannot get the favors which they used to get so through this process they aim to move in on us and be our next masters.” See Naison, 60.

194 Naison, 59-61. Naison argues that by 1937 the union was over 80 percent black. See Naision, 58. Manthorne similarly argued that the STFU “was effectively a black union” with a white membership of between 15 percent and 33 percent white. See Manthorne, 37. Certainly part of the difficulty in estimating the racial composition of the union is that membership tended to fluctuate over time and the fact that so many participants never received union cards. And even though the records of the STFU are extensive, when it comes to membership rolls they are still rather incomplete. There is also the issue that Manthorne raised of Mitchell and others on the Executive Council misrepresenting the composition of the union in order to get more support from white northern liberals. Again, see Manthorne, 37.

195 Mitchell, interview; Reed, interview; H.L. Mitchell and Latane Lambert, interview.

196 East, interview.

197 East, interview.

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one white man or family, but the Negroes has.”198 The differential treatment black members received by opponents and fellow-union members alike must have been even more galling considering how black members were really the heart of the movement, not simply numerically but in terms of resources and organizational ability. Union members met in black churches either because poor whites did not have churches of their own or because the churches they attended were also attended by the local white ruling class.199 African Americans had more experience waging an insurgency against oppressive landlords.200 Furthermore it would seem that blacks were more committed to the union than whites. Clay East recalled how “the colored guys back there…were more solid than the whites. They’d go ahead and sacrifice and get killed or beat up or anything else before they’d give up.”201 In this context it is perhaps unsurprising that

McKinney would take extreme umbrage at the fact that the restrooms were segregated in the union offices in Memphis and ultimately attempt to create an all-black union.202

It is not entirely clear whether or not Ike Shaw sympathized with the McKinney in his attempt to recraft the union into a solely black organization. Shaw was still working

198 Naison, 60.

199 Rodgers, 10; H.L. Mitchell and Latane Lambert, interview; Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 27. Also, see Marc S. Miller, Working Lives, 129. According to Stith, “But the whites had a problem. Where they belonged to a church, the higher-ups also belonged, and they couldn’t get the church to have a meeting. So, they had to come to a Negro place in order to have a meeting.” See Marc S. Miller, Working Lives, 129.

200 H.L. Mitchell and Latane Lambert, interview.

201 East, interview.

202 Naison, 59, 65. Naison notes that “Among the things that McKinney complained about was the fact that the toilets at the STFU’s offices in Memphis were segregated. He wrote Harris saying, ‘Keeping us humiliated with every form of JIMCROWism as they always have done, even right here in the office. They will not allow our women to inter the rest room, they bar them with a sign sawying white only.’” See Naision, 65.

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with the union into the 1940s so apparently he decided to stay the course under the

STFU’s existing leadership structure.203 Having grown up in the South and being from

Mississippi Shaw undoubtedly understood the risks of creating an interracial union and likely knew that for it to be successful in the racially repressive South blacks would have to pragmatically take a back seat to whites if the organization was to be a viable one.204

There were also very important practical and strategic regions to have white members overrepresented on the executive council. First, was the issue of education; to be in a leadership role at a minimum, members needed a basic level of literacy. According to

George Stith, “The problem was that blacks in the agricultural field didn’t have leaders with enough education to do what was necessary.”205 Many black union members could neither read nor white—in fact, Ike Shaw was one such individual—his education was limited to rhetoric and speech.206 Second, the union was always struggling to find

203 Naison argues that most African Americans did not agree with McKinney’s position and those that did were more likely to stop participating entirely than to form a new all-black union. According to Naison, “McKinney’s position was not supported by most Blacks in the union…. Black membership tended to express its discontent with the union by becoming inactive rather than by defection.” See Naison, 61. According to Elizabeth Davis, “Ike Shaw who stayed down below us was telling us about it. It was so nice for the colored to get together and try to organize.” See Corrine Partlow, Deacy Real Clark, and Elizabeth Davis, interview by Scott Ellsworth, Memphis, TN, April 16, 1982, transcript, Southern Historical Collection, #3472, Box 83, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

204 Both the 1930 and 1940 census denote Shaw’s birthplace as Mississippi. See US Bureau of the Census, 15th Census of the United States, 1930, Washington D.C., National Archives and Records Administration, www.ancestry.com (accessed December 28, 2017); US Bureau of the Census, 16th Census of the United States, 1940, Washington D.C., National Archives and Records Administration, www.ancestry.com (accessed December 28, 2017). Mitchell also believed that Shaw originated in Mississippi, saying “I always thought Ike Shaw was on Percy’s plantation down in the Mississippi Delta, because there’s where he came from.” Mitchell, interview with Goodwyn. Mississippi had a particularly bad reputation when it came to black/white relations. When H.L. Mitchell wanted to introduce George Stith to a white union member who hailed from Mississippi, Stith replied, “Mississippi—no, I don’t think so.” See Stith, interview.

205 Marc S. Miller, Working Lives, 138.

206 In an interview with Lawrence Goodwyn H.L. Mitchell recalled the extent of Ike Shaw’s education: “Afterwards I learned that Ike Shaw couldn’t read or write his name. He had been educated though by

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outside funds for its work. The individuals best suited to solicit these funds were white men such as H.L. Mitchell and Howard Kester. Mitchell was well-connected to the

Socialist Party and Kester was well known in liberal church circles. Stith maintained that

“A black man wasn’t recognized enough to get into places where he needed to go….So a black person as president could not have been too successful in getting a lot of outside help.”207 And even though many white radicals and progressives wanted to help uplift tenant farmers and sharecroppers in the Old Southwest, their support may not have been so forthcoming if the organization had been led by African Americans.

And black members still played important roles in the union primarily at the local level. Naison describes the union structure as being two-tiered with whites handling publicity and fundraising and black fomenting the day-to-day resistance at the ground level.208 Both black and white tenant farmers and sharecroppers went on fundraising trips to New York and Chicago; they also picked the Department of Agriculture in

Washington, D.C. Ike Shaw went on one such trip to Washington. According to fellow union member Corrine Partlow Shaw came back rather dejected from that trip to the nation’s capital. Partlow recalled that Shaw “came back very quiet” and when he did finally talk about his experience said he was told “To better my condition I should take

some well-educated white man probably who used language a hell of a lot better than I can today.” Mitchell, interview with Goodwyn.

207 Marc S. Miller, Working Lives, 138; Woodruff, 160-161.

208 According to Naison, “When the terror descended, the organization began to operate on two distinct levels. In the field, it was an underground organization that met, organized, and carried out its actions secretly…The national officers on the other hand, functioned as lobbyists and publicists, travelling to speak before Congressional committees, attending fundraising affairs in New York and Chicago, and being interviewed by the press.” See Naison, 57.

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my family and go North and go to work.”209 This response undoubtedly threw cold water on Shaw’s hopes and aspirations that the federal government would intervene in the

Arkansas Delta and improve conditions there for tenant farmers and sharecroppers.

Shaw did not give in to resignation; he refused to leave his community. Partlow remembers him saying, “I tell you, my condition in Edmondson will never be better.”210

Ike Shaw knew that if only African Americans held the power in the Delta there were entitled to under the Constitution there would be no need to go up North in search of work. This was never possible because the Roosevelt Administration allowed profit- oriented development in the Delta to trump cooperatively based community development.211 Nevertheless, Ike Shaw did not abandon his quest for racial equality and economic opportunity; he remained active in the union at least until 1943, far past the union’s heyday.212

In conclusion, there was clear continuity between earlier radical agrarian social movements in the Southwest and the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union. The union built on the foundation laid by these earlier movements, adopting their tactics and beliefs as well as relying on former members. Paying attention to the attendees at that first, inaugural meeting of the union in the Sunnyside Schoolhouse this becomes abundantly clear. There was Ike Shaw who had been involved with the Progressive Farmers’ and

Household Union after World War I, declaring his firm support for an interracial union:

209 Partlow, Clark, and Davis, interview.

210 Ibid.

211 Clyde Woods Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta (New York: Verso, 1998), 7-8.

212 Ibid.

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“We are going to have a legal organization. It’s going to be for all sharecroppers, black and white alike. As long as we stand by these principles nothing will break us apart.”213

There was also Mr. Payne, who according to Clay East, “had been in a union in England and he had a lot of experience there. In the mines, as I understood it. And, he was a real union man.”214 Alvin Nunally, the chair of the meeting, had once been a member of the Farmers Educational Cooperative Union of America and during the meeting declared, “We need an organization like the FECU of A.”215 The putative founders of the union, Clay East and H.L. Mitchell, joined them. And while much has been made in the historiography (and by Mitchell in his memoir) about the connection between Norman

Thomas and the STFU, East and Mitchell were just as equally influenced by Debsian socialism as they were by the socialism of the 1930s. Mitchell heard his first socialist speech in 1920 when the party was pushing for Deb’s release from prison for speaking out against World War I.”216 While East was a Minuteman for Oscar Ameringer’s

American Guardian.217

Others, both near and far, white and black, with deep roots in the old Southwest’s radical agrarianism, soon joined these eighteen men. From nearby came J.R. Butler who had once been a member of the Working Class Union and Charlie McCoy who

213 Mitchell, interview with Goodwyn.

214 East, interview. Kester also remarked on this man in Revolt among the Sharecroppers, noting, “An Englishman with a ready hand for keeping minutes and writing letters was chosen secretary.” Kester, 56.

215 Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land, 47; Kester, 56; H.L. Mitchell, interview with Goodwyn. Nunally was also involved in the Socialist Party. Manthorne believed that Kester and Mitchell obscured “the socialist Nunnally’s role in organizing the STFU and pushing for interracial cooperation.” Manthorne went on to state that “Kester undoubtedly sought to combat the ‘outside agitator’ charge that was sure to be lobbed at the union.” See Manthorne, 26-27.

216 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in this Land, 11.

217 East, interview.

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Evelyn Smith Monroe once characterized as one of the “old-time country socialists” who supported the union.218 Black preachers who had been active in black associational life joined them: one-time Garveyite E.B. McKinney and A.B. Brookins, a man who joined everything there was to join according to Mitchell.219 From a distance Oscar and Freda

Ameringer, Covington Hall, and J.E. Clayton offered advice and support. All of these individuals formed a bridge between earlier white and black radical social movements in the rural Old Southwest. They provided the union with its first leaders and, to large degree, its ideology and tactics, particularly with regard to its policies of racial inclusion and non-violence. The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union was not an aberration; it was the culmination of decades of resistance by working-class farmers to a New South vision of consolidated agricultural production where a few would wealthy plantation owners benefitted from the hard labor of poor tenant farmers and sharecroppers.

218 Smith Munro, interview. H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 48.

219 Smith Munro, interview; H.L. Mitchell, interview with Goodwyn.

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CHAPTER 4 I WOUDN’T STAND FOR IT: THE ROLE OF AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN IN THE SOUTHERN TENANT FARMERS UNION

On the morning of May 18, 1936 tenants and sharecroppers chopping cotton in the fields looked up to see their fellow workers marching through the fields in a moving picket line and calling on them to lay down their hoes and join them. Former STFU executive secretary H.L. Mitchell commented on the novelty of this, noting “A new kind of picketing started spontaneously. There were long lines of men, women, and children marching down the roads…all the people in the line were eight or nine feet apart, and the number increased as hoes were thrown down and all work on the plantations ceased.”1 Journalist Priscilla Robertson similarly commented on this strike and the picket line: “This was the famous time when the picket line marched twenty miles, round and round the fields where people were still working dropped their hoes to come and join the singing ranks.”2 The strike was centered in three northeastern Arkansas counties: Crittenden, St. Francis, and Cross. Ever since the union’s formation these counties had been the center of its struggle for higher wages and better working conditions.3 Anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 individuals were involved in this cotton choppers’ strike.4

1 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land: The Life and Times of H.L. Mitchell, Cofounder of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (Allanheld, Osmun & Co. Publishers, Inc., 1979), 87.

2 Priscilla Robertson, unpublished article, 1937, Reel 43, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

3 See “Strike Bulletin No. 2” May 23, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

4 The union’s news release from May 18, 1936 estimated that “five thousand cotton choppers and day laborers, members of the Southern Tenant Farmers‘ Union will hang up their hoes and strike for higher wages.” By day five the estimates were lower, between 3,000 and 4,000. See “News Release,” May 18, 1936 & “Press Release,” May 23, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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The reaction by area planters was perhaps unsurprising. Historian Donald

Grubbs points out that “the strike vote was taken almost three months in advance, and the results inevitable leaked out giving the planters abundant time to plan counter- measures.”5 Consequently, they had time to decide how they would respond. In a reprise of the 1935 wave of terror, planters responded with brutal and unrelenting force.

Beatings and even murders occurred with astounding regularity. C.J. Spradling from

Earle, Arkansas in Crittendon County wrote of how one black women received “a whipping with sticks and straps of leather” and requested that the union “send me some protection here.”6 Just two weeks earlier Spradling had also sent in a letter detailing the

“grave danger” the president of his union local was in: “Dr. Watson was hunting for him with clubs and Boss Dulaney and Arby Lancaster and R.E Moore has threatening to hang his hide on a pole. I will tell you things is get serious around here.”7 Eliza Nolden, a sixty-year-old African American woman, was beaten so severely she later died of her injuries. And Frank Weems, a black man, was beaten and presumed dead.8 And when the Reverend Claude Williams and Willie Sue Blagden, both white, went to investigate and prepare for Weems’s upcoming funeral they were attacked and beaten as well.9

5 See Donald Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union and the New Deal (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 102.

6 C.J. Spradling to STFU, June 8, 1936, Roll 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

7 C.J. Spradling to STFU, May 24, 1936, Roll 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

8 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 87. Weems later turned up alive in Chicago with a harrowing story of escape from his attackers.

9 See “Latest News Flash” and “Special News Release” June 15, 1936 & June 16, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Mitchell astutely noted the differential treatment these stories of inhumane abuse received in the press: “The beating of a white woman and a white minster became a nationwide human-interest story. No attention was paid to Eliza Nolden, a black woman soon to die from the effects of a severe beating, nor to the serious condition of white sharecropper Jim Reese, injured for life, or to the fact that Frank Weems, a black sharecropper, who had presumably been beaten to death. After all, these three people were just sharecroppers.”10

Eliza Nolden was one of many unsung black female leaders in the STFU; black women played integral roles in the rise and early successes of the Southern Tenant

Farmers’ Union. While most previous histories of agricultural workers unionism in the twentieth century have emphasized male leadership, and have centered on charismatic leaders in unions such as the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, the Alabama

Sharecropper’s Union, and the United Farm Workers I argue that it was black women in small rural communities who formed the indispensable core of the union’s grassroots leadership and made possible its tremendous growth. Most previous histories of the union have given these women relatively short shrift—this is perhaps unsurprising considering the dearth of evidence regarding their involvement and the lack of written material they left behind. Nevertheless, union leaders and historians have hinted at the important role played by these black women.

This chapter will name some of the most prominent African American women in the union. It will describe their level of participation and delineate what kinds of responsibilities they held. And finally, it will seek to explain why these women were so

10 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 88-89.

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active in a union dominated at the top by white and black men. I argue that there were three crucial factors which created the conditions under which these women felt that they could occupy crucial leadership roles in union locals (a local being a small community-based group of individuals). First, the dream of land ownership which represented economic security motivated them to become involved in the union during a time when land tenure was becoming increasingly unstable. Second, a higher level of literacy when compared with their male counterparts provided them with the skills they needed to succeed as union officers. Third, prior leadership roles whether in fraternal organization, churches, or in the community as midwives, provided them with training as community leaders and prepared them for leadership in the union. The increasingly desperate conditions in the Delta and surrounding environs pushed many women who might not otherwise have become involved in a radical protest movement to do so. Their families and communities were threatened by dramatic changes in agricultural production and so these women acted accordingly—they fought back.

As did the planters. During the cotton chopper’s strike of May 1936 planters also attempted to employ strikebreakers from what H.L. Mitchell described as the “the floating labor supply” in nearby Memphis.11 There was an already established pattern of

WPA local administrators dropping folks from the rolls during cotton picking and cotton chopping seasons. One local union secretary, Nathan Wiley, commented on the effect of this policy, stating “We condemn the practice of the WPA furnishing low paid workers

11 H.L. Mitchell letter to Gardner Jackson May 6, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In a letter dated April 9, 1936 to Norman Thomas H.L. Mitchell also commented on the WPA problem despite assurances by WPA official Aubrey Williams to Eleanor Roosevelt that the WPA would provide aid to tenant farmers and sharecroppers. See Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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to our our places thereby bring on stagnation wages for all.”12 The union had prepared for this eventuality, in a letter to union supporter Gardner Jackson, H.L. Mitchell stated that “Our members are talking of placing a picket line at the end of the bridge on the

Arkansas side. We hope to get the Workers Alliance to cover the Tennessee side also should it become necessary.”13 Yet to all appearances, it was not enough—historian

Roger Biles observes how under political boss Ed Crump, “Memphis authorities aversion to unions extended beyond factory workers to include the discontented

Arkansas sharecroppers who formed the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union.”14 Biles points out that as a result of this alliance between Memphis elite and their counterparts in rural northeastern Arkansas planters “loaded up dozens of workers each morning in

Memphis and trucked them across the Harahan Bridge to work in the fields.”15 In a letter to the mayor of Memphis union supporter Lettie H. Wittherspoon indicted the entire city government asserting “Your city through your Chief of Police Will Lee seems determined to force these poor negro and white workers on the farms back into slavery…Men are arrested in Memphis by order of your Chief of Police and fined on charge of vagrancy.”16

12 Letter from Nathan Wiley to union central office, April 2, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

13 Ibid.

14 Roger Biles, The South and the New Deal (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1994), 91-94.

15 Ibid., 94.

16 Letter from Lettie H. Witherspoon to the mayor of Memphis, June 16, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Despite these obstacles, the union decided to move ahead with a general strike of tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and day laborers on May 27, 1936 only a little more than week after the cotton pickers’ strike was first called. According to a press release put out by the union, “The sharecroppers and tenants felt that they had been ‘left out in the cold’ and demanded that since their conditions were no better than the day laborers that a general strike of all workers be called.”17 Despite the optimistic tone of this press release the situation on the ground was grim in northeastern Arkansas. In addition to the beatings and murders of prominent union members, some strikers were arrested on trumped up charges of vagrancy and sentenced to work on private prison farms.18 One such farm was run by P.D. Peacher, a city marshal in Earle, Arkansas.19 Peacher chased off Evelyn Smith and another young woman who accompanied her as they attempted to investigate the situation covertly, claiming they were looking for a good place to have a picnic. Peacher was unable, however, to prevent the indomitable

Sherwood Eddy from interviewing the thirteen prisoners he held in his stockade.

Brimming with indignation, Eddy wrote “Our histories should be revised in misleading us that slavery was ever abolished in Arkansas.”20

17 Press Release, May 28, 1936. Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Also see letter dated May 28, 1936 from Howard Kester to the Reverend James Myers, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

18 Grubbs, 114-118. According to historian Donald Grubbs, “legalized private prison farms operated all over Arkansas.” See Grubbs, 115. And this practice of leasing prisoners convicted on dubious charges such as “vagrancy” was not limited to Arkansas. The Jonesboro Daily Tribune in its November 5, 1936 edition ran an article titled, “Federal Peonage Charges Placed Against Florida Turpentine Camp Group.” Peonage was a uniquely southern problem that lasted well into the twentieth century. For an excellent treatment of this topic see Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York: Anchor Books, 2008).

19 “Earle City Marshal Charged with Peonage, Osceola Times, October 9, 1936.

20Evelyn Smith Munro, interview by Mary Frederickson, Laguna Beach, CA, April 17, 1976, transcript, Southern Historical Collection, Southern Oral History Program Collection, #4007, Louis Round Wilson

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Meanwhile families began to starve; cotton chopping provided them with their only source of income to feed themselves during the late spring and early summer months. A letter from Clara Jones, president of a local in Round Pond, Arkansas detailed this desperation in a June 13, 1936 letter stating that “the members are in great need of food and those that are getting supplies are so little [that] they are not able to help those that are hungry.”21 Even worse this was the third attempt by Jones to receive a response; apparently, she had written in requesting aid twice already since the strike commenced. At the top of her letter is scrawled the note, “Don’t know about letter.”22 It is possible that the union was so flooded with correspondence during the strike that the letters were somehow misplaced. Just as likely is the possibility that union opposition was tampering with outgoing mail. Another president of a woman’s local in Parkin,

Arkansas, Viola Smith, also requested aid, noting how “the [strike] happen and have stop me from work out of the field and I can’t get no job. I have got house rent to pay and my husband is sick and I need help no food have I got.”23 That women, and black women in particular, were taking the lead in organizing the social spaces represented by these locals is incredible and absolutely essential for understanding how the union developed in the way it did as quickly as it did.

Library, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC; Sherwood Eddy to Attorney General Homer Cummings, May 21, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

21 Letter from Clara Jones to the union central office June 13, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

22 Ibid.

23 Letter from Viola Smith to H.L. Mitchell, June 13, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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And the pleas of these local women leaders did not go entirely unnoticed. The union, of course, attempted to provide temporary assistance in the form of small allotments from its already grossly depleted treasury. Yet a recent fundraising trip up

North by two of the union’s most prominent members, E.B. McKinney and Walter

Moskop, had failed to produce even modest results, thus leaving the union in desperate financial straits even before the strike was called. In an unsigned letter (possibly from

Norman Thomas or some other New York ally) dated May 4, 1936 and titled

“Memorandum on the Arkansas Situation” the author states that “Moskop and McKinney have done good on the trip but they have not made money.”24 A May 6, 1936 letter from

H.L. Mitchell to Gardner Jackson also noted the failure of this fundraising trip: “We were depending on the sum of $1,000 to be raised in the East, two of our best men have been up there on a tour, that hasn’t panned out as it should have…just how we can handle it I do not know.”25 And all the cash in the world could not buy the cooperation of local merchants in small towns where local elites were extremely hostile to the union.

The union sent out letters soliciting grocery orders up to two dollars on behalf of union members, but the historical record is unclear as to whether these appeals had any effect.26

24 Unsigned letter (possibly from Norman Thomas or some other New York ally) and titled “Memorandum on the Arkansas Situation,” May 4, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

25 Letter from H.L. Mitchell to Gardner Jackson, May 6, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

26 Letter from H.L. Mitchell to “merchant,” in Earle, Arkansas, June 4, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Planters also attempted to break the union apart from within, sowing seeds of discord and misinformation like in the case of Dr. Chas Young, a union member, who switched sides during the strike. Union member Carey West of Earle, Arkansas commented on his activities claiming that “He have been here I wasn’t here but I heard that he was talking against the union but it didn’t take no effect on the union.”27

According to West her local’s secretary was telling folks that there was no grocery money to be had from the central union office and that they might as well chop cotton.

Whether this secretary was under the influence of local planters is hard to say; he may simply have been discouraged and worried that folks would starve if they did not chop cotton. It may also have been the that the union was slow in responding to requests for grocery money and this spurred the secretary to urge folks to go back to work chopping cotton.28 Planters also tried to use spies to locate where locals were holding meetings so they could accost key union members. According to Austin Williams a Mr. Earnest

Selcy was “trying to pay someone to locate where we hold our local meeting they wants to get me and Matthew Hinton and Arto French.” This letter also mentions the flogging of a Mary Williams and “the brother of big Sam” by a group of seven men. 29 Leon

Turner also wrote in about the problem of traitors in the ranks and asked how they

27 Carey West to central union office, May 26, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is hard to say what effect Dr. Young’s perfidy had on the union; West herself acknowledged that she was having trouble getting her women’s local to meet in the same letter. Ultimately Young was suspended and expelled from the union for his anti-union activities. See “Minutes of Executive Meeting,” July 3, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

28 Ibid.

29 Austin Williams to H.L. Mitchell, June 15, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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should be dealt with in an undated letter from the Spring of 1936. Mitchell’s response affirmed the unions’ commitment to nonviolent action and detailed how “they should be given a trial by their locals and if found guilty should be expelled for the Union and their names published. That is sufficient punishment for betrayal…No other method should ever be used by the Union.”30

Planters made a concerted effort to interrupt the free flow of information between the central union office in Memphis and locals in northeastern Arkansas. There are numerous letters in the historical record detailing how planters were interfering with union mail. A letter written by James Lightning of Hughes, Arkansas made a special request of H.L. Mitchell: “Please don’t send me no more papers out here if you don’t it is going to cause trouble out here with my boss.”31 And a letter from Willie Mae Smith and

Walter Thomas of Edmondson, Arkansas detailed the practice of the post office using union mail as an “index to the union for the landowners.”32 The situation was so bad it even created rifts in families. One secretary’s father would go to the post office to claim his mail and then hand it over to the planters. Consequently, the local demanded that he

“stop his father from getting the mail and also stop carrying it to him”; when the

30 See letter by Leon Turner filed under May 4, 1936 and response letter by H.L. Mitchell dated May 4, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

31 See note by H.L. Mitchell dated April 4, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Also see James Lightning of Hughes, Arkansas to H.L. Mitchell, July 28, 1936, Reel. 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

32 Also see letter from Willie Mae Smith and Walter Thomas of Edmondson to H.L. Mitchell. This letter was likely dated July 21, July 22, or July 23, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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secretary failed to do so he was discharged from his duties.33 Planters also applied pressure to local religious leaders who formed an essential base of support for the union and even brought in outside black ministers to speak out against the union.34 The arrival of the Reverend P.E Gibson to Osceola, Arkansas was announced in the July 10,

1936 edition of the Osceola Times under the caption “Colored Minister Opposed Tenant

Union.”35 According to the article the Reverend Gibson had delivered a number of addresses in Northeast Arkansas by “special request” and his meetings were well- attended by whites as well as blacks.36

Mitchell and company tried to bolster the spirits of besieged union members with news that planters in Mississippi County had capitulated to the union’s demands for higher wages and that a group of small landowners in Crittenden County had agreed to sign contracts with union members if they could remain anonymous. H.L. Mitchell predicted optimistically, “While every plantation has not yet felt the full effects of the general shutdown, we are confident that within three days all work will stop except where Union Contracts are signed.”37 A little more than a month later in early July the general strike was declared a success and union members were largely left to their own

33 See unsigned letter from Whitmore, Arkansas dated July 6, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

34 A June 3, 1936 letter written to H.L. Mitchell from Gould, Arkansas details how “the preacher at the church we were was holding our meeting come there the fourth Sunday of February and kill our union dead.” See “unsigned letter,” June 3, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

35 See “Colored Minister Opposed Tenant Union,” Osceola Times, July 10, 1936.

36 Ibid.

37 “Press Release,” May 28, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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devices to negotiate with employers. For union member Lula Parchman of Madison,

Arkansas the situation had not improved—her landlord “talked to me as though I was a dog…and told me if I didn’t move or work he would have the law to put me out. He let his crop grow bad now he want me to work at 0.75 cents a day.”38

The strike did not end in total victory for the union. Mitchell blamed the premature end of the strike on a lack of rain which reduced the need for cotton chopping rather than determined opposition from planters without and subversives within.39 Despite its decidedly mixed results the strike did put the union to a greater degree than before into the national spotlight, particularly the attack on Claude Williams and Willie Sue Blagden.

As Grubbs notes, “planters had made the mistake of beating a minister and smacking a white woman’s posterior…more than any single event, the beating made the nation demand action on behalf of sharecroppers.40

Why was this strike so important? In terms of its length, the number of individuals involved, and even its outcome, which was mixed at best, the strike seems relatively inconsequential. Writing forty years later, H.L. melancholically observed, “No material gains were made. Wages offered for plowing and hoeing remained at near $1.00 instead of the $1.50 a day demanded. No contracts were signed.”41 What is particularly interesting, however, is another observation made by H.L. Mitchell that women, particularly African American women were prominent during this strike. Referencing the

38 Lula Parchman to H.L. Mitchell, August 20, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

39 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 92.

40 Grubbs, 113.

41 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 92.

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Blue Woman’s local of Wabbaseka, Arkansas he observed how “This group of women was most active in the strike of 1936. All were black.”42 He also commented on this phenomenon somewhat greater detail in a 1975 interview about how women were sometimes officers in locals, “particularly black women.”43 Mitchell was not alone in noticing the important role played by black women in the union. Former union central office secretary Evelyn Smith Munro commented on the important role that black women played in the union in an interview in 1973. According to Smith, “there were women who took a lot of leadership in the union too; there weren’t just men…one was

Henrietta McGhee…they organized. They used to get up and make speeches. They used to make motions. You know, they participated. They held office, I think.”44 Union president J.R. Butler similarly commented on the important role McGhee, a black woman, played in the union, stating how “she was as active as any other union member that we ever had.”45

It seems clear that black women played key roles in the union. it comes to black women union members. This chapter will attempt to address some important questions such as who these African American women were and how were they able to assume such pivotal roles in the union despite being triply marginalized by class, race,

42 Mitchell, Mean Things, 105-106.

43 H.L. Mitchell and Latane Lambert, interview by George Norris Green, April 4, 1975, transcript, Southern Historical Collection, #3472, Box 83, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

44 Smith Munro, interview.

45 J.R. Butler, interview by Sue Thrasher, September 21, 1973, transcript, Southern Historical Collection, #3472, Box 83, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

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and gender. It will also look at the resources and traditions they drew on as they fought for the respect they felt was due them as workers and human beings.

Henrietta McGhee was one of these black union women; McGhee was a widow and the president of a union local in Round Pond, Arkansas.46 And she was jailed for trespassing during the 1936 cotton pickers strike.47 She became a vital leader in the union and was called upon to represent the union n fundraising trips. On one such trip to Washington D.C. she was part of an STFU delegation which included two colleges students, Janet Frazier and Hazel Whitman, as well as sharecroppers D.A. Griffin,

Myrtle Lawrence, and the secretary of the union, H.L. Mitchell.48 Mitchell’s characterization of McGhee is particularly interesting, especially in how he contrasted her with her fellow sharecropper, Myrtle Lawrence. In Mitchell’s memoir Lawrence comes across as something of a country bumpkin in contrast to McGhee who comes across as a very articulate spokesperson for the union who could play on potential donor’s sympathies by telling of her experiences on the Arkansas prison farm.49

According to Mitchell, “Henrietta was a natural leader, an actress who could amuse as

46 See survey of locals, June 13, 1937. Reel 6. This Round Pond local 283 was almost all black and called Belsha. Also see J.R. Butler, interview.

47 Ibid; Mitchell, Mean Things, 117.

48 Mitchell, Mean Things, 117-118.

49 Mitchell details how with each telling her story of mistreatment on the prison farm became more severe; in earlier iterations of this story she had to pick up brush—by the end of the tour she had been forced to pick up heavy logs all by herself. See Mitchell, Mean Things, 118-119. Elizabeth Payne seems to think that Mitchell favored McGhee over Lawrence, stating how “Mitchell promoted McGhee’s leadership but curtailed Lawrence’s public visibility.” See Payne, 9. She goes on to state that “Lawrence and McGhee had similar assets: each was amusing, intelligent, and inspiring. Black women, however, could occupy cultural spaces in reform circles forbidden to white women.” Women who were white should either be “haggard” or they should be “ladies.” See Payne, 10.

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well as inspire people.”50 Reminiscing thirty-seven years later, J.R. Butler similarly recalled how McGhee “went with us on trips to New York and Washington, one place and another and made speeches before groups and was a big help in getting contributions”51

Two of the trips that McGhee took on behalf of the union are particularly illuminating with regards to how black women were treated in the Northeast. Mitchell notes how McGhee was asked to speak briefly on the hardships faced by women whose husbands would be called to go off to fight at the “Keep America Out of War

Congress.” When McGhee found a place to eat lunch the waiter refused to serve her.

Some women who had heard her speak earlier that morning at the congress came to her rescue using the ruse that she was a visitor from a foreign country who worked in one of the numerous embassies in Washington D.C.52 What is particularly interesting here is not only the high level of segregation which permeated Washington D.C. during an administration containing so many advocates for social justice, but also McGhee’s response. According to Mitchell, when faced with this situation she demurely “turned to leave, mumbling, ‘where can I go.’”53 Why did she presume she could eat in a white establishment in the first place? Perhaps her recent actions on behalf of the union had emboldened her, convincing her that a new era of greater racial equality was dawning.

50 Mitchell, Mean Things, 119.

51 Butler, interview.

52 Mitchell, Mean Things, 119.

53 Ibid.

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Her foray to this Washington, D.C. delicatessen disabused her of such notions rather quickly.

The second trip also occurred in the Northeast—in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Here McGhee was attending the inaugural convention of the Congress of Industrial

Organizations in 1938 following its split with the American Federation of Labor.54 Again, a restaurant is at the center of the story. And apparently, McGhee was still testing the boundaries of segregation in the Northeast. She was refused service again, by a waitress this time. And again, a white woman came to her aid—this time the indomitable advocate for racial equality and wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eleanor

Roosevelt, who invited McGhee to sit at her table.55 But in this instance, McGhee’s reaction to the waitress’s assumption that she was Puerto Rican and therefore allowed to dine with a white woman is quite telling. Unlike in Washington D.C., where McGhee decided to play along with the subterfuge that she was a foreign national here she had no qualms about honestly divulging where she was really from and who she really was—“I’m a nigger. Nigger sharecropper from Arkansas.”56 Even though McGee had thoroughly learned that the supposedly enlightened North could be just as racist as the

54 Butler, interview. Butler remembers the convention as taking place in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Nevertheless, the convention did take place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from November 14th-18th 1938. Perhaps Butler is remembering a CIO convention of a subsequent year. http://library.pitt.edu/labor_legacy/CIOConvention.htm & https://www.britannica.com/topic/American- Federation-of-Labor-Congress-of-Industrial-Organizations#ref230618

55 Butler, interview. Butler points out how at the Southern Conference for Human Welfare in Birmingham, Alabama in 1938 Eleanor Roosevelt refused to sit in the white section and instead placed her chair in middle of the black and white seating sections. Rebuffing the attempts of local police to make her move under the pretense of a more comfortable chair she replied, “You’re very thoughtful and I appreciate it. But do you know something, everywhere, I go, they give me those soft, spongy chairs to sit in and I get so tired of them. It’s always a treat for me to get a chance to sit on a nice, hard, straight chair.” See Butler, interview.

56 Ibid.

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South, she regained her assertiveness by reclaiming her true identity as a black woman sharecropper.

Deacy Real was another black woman who took a leading role in the union; she joined in 1937 after the cotton picker’s strike.57 Prior to 1974 Mitchell and Real had never met even though both played important roles in the union. After a lecture at the

University of Washington-Seattle Mitchell sought out Real who had been affirming

Mitchell’s remarks throughout his talk, exclaiming, “Say on, brother, tell it like it was!” 58

In her interview with H.L. Mitchell, she claimed that “I never did get no card, but I was really active in it and I attended the meetings, and I told all about it all down through St.

Francis County.”59 She was also a teacher at a union-sponsored night school where she helped her fellow members gain basic literacy skills.60 Her story not only demonstrates the very decentralized nature of the union, but also one component of its radical program for profound social change—educating poor blacks and whites in the rural

South, which was a deeply revolutionary act. And it demonstrates that the union was looking for more than palliatives to rural poverty in the South. Real grew-up in an all- black community and was part of a landowning family-her stepfather owned 40 acres of

57 Real had heard of the strike and its success (albeit somewhat limited); perhaps this is a reason she joined the union. She eventually left the union and the area in 1940 when she moved to Kansas City. Deacy Real, interview by H.L. Mitchell, April 5, 1974, transcript, Southern Historical Collection, #3472, Box 83, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

58 Mean Things 120. Their happenstance meeting years after the end of the STFU serves to confirm Mitchell's assertion in his memoir about the union’s fluctuating membership. Estimates have varied wildly with most scholars settling on a number of 40,000 or under. Mitchell placed estimates much higher, perhaps as high as 100,000. And union membership statistics did not necessarily include union supporters—even Deacy Real acknowledges that she never received a union card even though she was very active in the union.

59 Real, interview.

60 Ibid.

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land and her Uncle 360 acres.61 According to Real, “until I got grown and married out, I didn’t know there was such a thing as race prejudice, because I didn’t come in contact with it…we had our own problems, and lived to ourselves.”62 This perhaps in part, explains her taking such an active role in educating her fellow union members. Perhaps her membership in a landowning family and all black community provided her with an assertiveness and self-pride that some of her fellow black union members lacked, having been schooled in the tradition of southern racial deference.

This lack of deference and a finely tuned sense of right and wrong comes through quite clearly in the story Deacy Real told about the theft of parity checks by white landowners. Real’s husband, Edward, could not read or write and when the annual parity checks from the Agricultural Adjustment Administration were sent out their landlord demanded their share of the parity payment. Real’s husband assented, signing his “X” on the check so that the landlord could cash it. When Deacy Real heard about this she threatened to leave her husband if he handed over the next check: “You put your X on that check. I’m going to leave you, because that’s our money.”63 She would not accept being cheated out of what she felt was rightfully hers by a white, upper-class male or an accommodating black, lower-class male. The next time the checks came in her husband did not sign, but the postmaster refused to turn the check over to the

Reals. Deacy Real tried to contact the White House as well as exploring other avenues

61 Ibid. This farm was somewhere between Brinkley and Wheatley.

62 Ibid.

63 Ibid. They were working at Shellhouse Farm which was located between Forrest City and Goodman.

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for assistance. John F. Hynds, an organizer for the union, wrote to Dallas, Texas where the checks were issued.

Two government agents showed up and discovered that the check had been sitting in the post office (her landlord’s daughter worked in that very post office) the whole time; Real’s persistence finally paid off. Nevertheless, her bold stance had very real consequences, according to Real they “went without money for a season” and undoubtedly their landlord cut off credit placing them in a difficult position. It is likely they had to turn to other members of community, perhaps Real’s landowning Uncle, for help during this time.64

This lack of deference was something Real exhibited more than once. At one point, Real was employed as a cook for a white woman in Keiser, Arkansas. According to Real this woman simply could not cook meat; she could bake, but just could not seem to gauge the temperature at which meat was done. Real’s responsibilities were limited primarily to cooking meat and this did not include bringing in firewood from outside. Her employer seemed to think differently and at one point threatened physical violence if

Real left the house without ensuring there was enough dry firewood in the kitchen.65

Real’s initial response fell well within social norms; she said nothing and held her tongue (this was the kind of deference expected of blacks in the Jim Crow South). Real could not hold her tongue forever and finally, after calming down said, “I’m a full-grown woman…the day you slap me, that’s the day, I’m going to slap you until I get tired.

64 Ibid.

65 Ibid.

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When I get through slapping you, then I’m going to choke you to death…I know they are going to hang me for slapping you, but I am damn sure I take you with me.”66

Marie Pierce was also another black woman who held a prominent position within the union. In 1936 she was one of only two women selected to be on the Executive

Council.67 Furthermore, she was one of only a handful of paid organizers. Apparently she was in high demand as a speaker—Pearl Williams of Earle, Arkansas wrote to her:

“We are write you for you to come at once we want you to come Friday night…we need some instruction from you and that is why we want you to come back out here…to give us some good talk.”68 In her capacity as an organizer, she was also intimately involved with at least two other locals in Crittendon County—local 134 and local 30.69 And the level of her involvement in the union on the eve of the strike is demonstrated by a letter she wrote to the central office on April 10, 1936 a little more than a month before the strike was launched. In this letter, she gave strategic advice about the necessity of launching a strike sooner rather than later because folks were getting ready to start chopping cotton. She also expressed concern that people were losing heart: “We are doing all in our power to get the people to meet and pay their dues, but can’t, seems

66 According to Real, “I was one of those crazy niggers.” Ibid.

67 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 113.

68 “Report to Executive Council,” May 15, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This report outlined plans to employ twelve organizers—six part-time and six full-time. Marie Pierce was listed among the part-time organizers which included John L. Handcox, Henry Keyes, J. McBass, and Henry Pierce (presumably her brother or other male relative as his name is listed with hers). It may be that these plans were largely aspirational for in the same report there is quite a bit of talk about fundraising and the acknowledgement that an additional $350 a month was needed to meet proposed operating expenses.

69 Letter to local secretaries, April 18, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This letter contains a list of local contacts in Crittenden County, Arkansas. Marie Pierce is listed as the contact for locals 134 and 30.

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that they are falling back from us.”70 In an attempt to bolster spirits and raise money for those unable to afford their dues Pierce even organized a Jubilee fundraiser which netted $2.30. Commenting on the fundraiser, Pierce noted, “Our Jubilee Contest was

100% although it rained a little our expense was $2.60 and we made $4.90, hoping to go higher. I did that so those who did not have money could buy stamps and buttons.”71

The next time Pierce’s correspondence shows up in the historical record is towards the end of the strike in late June. By this time, Pierce had been forced to relocate to Memphis, having been evicted from her home. She was unable to return to the area having been warned to stay away: “Our pastor from Jennett told us not to try to get our things because the mob gang sure is searching for us.”72 Pierce was in rather desperate straits and requested money for rent and food through an intermediary, her nephew, who delivered the letter. Pierce wrote: “I am proud to say I am yet mending.”73

Adding to her already heavy load was the death of her father only a week before; she had been unable to attend the funeral. Nevertheless, Pierce still seemed determined to engage in the struggle, closing her letter requesting “some interesting literature to read.”74

70 Marie Pierce to union central office, April 10, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

71 Ibid.

72 Marie Pierce to H.L. Mitchell, June 29, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

73 Ibid. Pierce suffered from lung disease. See Fanin, Labor’s Promised Land, 164.

74 Marie Pierce to H.L. Mitchell, June 29, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Subsequent letters written over the next two months repeated many of the same themes. Pierce was still in desperate need of financial support. Her health was still a concern even though she planned to find work as a nurse or maid.75 Her brother, Henry, found work, but the work was not constant.76 And Pierce was still trying to collect everything she had left behind in Arkansas. One letter contains an extensive list of things that she needed such as “clothes out of dresser drawers, bed clothes, all of sheets, spread, window shades, all of medicines, mange cure, hair dressing, stove, tub”—basically everything a household needed to function.77 Despite these troubles— being chased from her home, being unable to attend her father’s funeral, financial insecurity, and poor health Marie Pierce still exhibited a determined commitment to the union and the movement of landless farmers. From her exile in Memphis Pierce notes in a letter from late August how she “wrote a letter to the locals out in Jenett and

75 Marie Pierce to union central office, July 11, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Despite her assertions that she was looking for work, Pierce was unable to travel far. She requested clothing to be sent to her, “I would come myself but afraid to chance it that far yet awhile.” Perhaps she was overly optimistic in her assessment of her own ability to work soon or perhaps the situation was so dire she felt she had to work regardless of her poor health.

76 Marie Pierce to H.L. Mitchell, August 24, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

77 Marie Pierce to H.L. Mitchell, July 17, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. To retrieve these left behind items she enlisted the assistance of union president, J.R. Butler, who was supposed to meet her husband at the Harahan bridge on a Saturday evening. Based on the list it is apparent that the Pierce’s had to leave their home quite abruptly; by all appearances they fled with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.

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encouraged them to meet and pay their dues.”78 She also kept up with current events with regards to the tenancy problem.79

She even planned to go on organizing trip for one of the locals she had been working with in Arkansas: “I am to go out there and work a little with the president and secretary next Sunday.”80 Nevertheless, she was still dogged by financial worries and pressures, particularly from a landlord who was demanding payment. She plaintively explained how “we are behind with everything…So I am asking you let me have the amount to pay him and 75c to buy a bottle of this medicine.”81 Pierce’s health still had not improved to the point where she was able to work. She stated “I am still improving ever way except my digestion the doctor gave me a bottle of medicine which seems to help me very much, but don’t have any more to take…if I was only able to work I would it would mean so much to me, but like it is I can’t do any better.”82 For his part, even though Mitchell seemed to considered Pierce a vital part of the union, he still turned down her request for funds, stating, “I’m sorry that I will not be able to send you the money you ask for. We simply haven’t it.”83 Still, he encouraged her to attend an

78 Marie Pierce to H.L. Mitchell, August 24, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

79 Ibid. She notes how she had read a newspaper which included not only the governor’s position on the tenancy issue, but also included the perspective of H.L. Mitchell and even Norman Thomas.

80 Ibid.

81 Ibid. See letter from Marie Pierce to H.L. Mitchell, August 24, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

82 Ibid.

83 Letter from H.L. Mitchell to Marie Pierce, August 25, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He did, however, provide Pierce with travel funds for the organizing trip to northeastern Arkansas that she

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organizing school for black union members which was to be held for two weeks on the

Delta cooperative farm in Mississippi.84

What inspired, what drove black women like Henrietta McGhee, Deacy Real, and

Marie Pierce to risk so much and become involved with the Southern Tenant Farmers’

Union? And are these women exceptional or representative? Fanin weighs in on this question with regards to Marie Pierce, noting how “Although remarkable, Pierce was not exceptional.”85 Evelyn Smith Munro noted that “there were women who took a lot of leadership in the union too; there weren’t just men.”86 And George Stith similarly observed how “Women were very active and made a lot of the decisions.”87 And based on the union’s predominantly black racial makeup it seems safe to infer that most of these very active women were black.88 H.L. Mitchell’s testimony buttresses this assertion. In an interview with George Norris Green he said, “I think there were probably more black women that came than white women” and continues discussing the

had mentioned in her letter. He seemed particularly concerned with her statement from her August 24, 1936 letter that some members “are in doubt and thinks the union is all over with.”

84 Ibid.

85 Fanin, 164.

86 Evelyn Smith Munro, interview.

87 Marc S. Miller, ed, Working Lives: The Southern Exposure History of Labor in the South (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 132.

88 Historian M. Langley Biegart points out that by 1937 the union was 70 percent black, noting that “Although the STFU was an interracial organization, it grew much faster among the black population than the white.“ See M. Langley Biegart, “Legacy of Resistance: Uncovering the History of Collective Action by Black Agricultural Workers in Central East Arkansas from the 1860s to the 1930s,” Journal of Social History 32, No. 1 (Autumn 1998): 88.

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involvement of black women later in the interview, nothing how “sometimes local officers were women and that was probably truer of black women.”89

Why else did African American women become so involved in the union? In an undated letter to H.L. Mitchell black union member Lee Dora Bryson requested “a plat of this Homestead Land in St. Francis County…these planters here are going to put all the southern tenant farmers union off they land and we won’t have no where to make a living for our self.”90 And writing in response to repeated inquiries from union members about land. Mitchell again and again reiterated that the union did not have any land to give to members: “The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union is an organization of poor people It has no land now nor has it ever had.”91 Thus it seems quite clear that land ownership was a strong motivating factor in the involvement of poor farmers in the union including black women. Why were black women so interested in land ownership? Du

Bois makes it quite clear that physical freedom was not enough for formerly enslaved individuals. Writing at the same time as STFU members were searching for land of their own, Du Bois imagined how different the present might have been if during the Civil War there was “A small but determined and clear-thinking group of who said: ‘The Negro is

89 H.L. Mitchell and Latane Lambert, interview. Fanin lends credence to this notion that black women were more active than white women. In a survey sent out by the union in 1937 Fanin observes that “African American women were more active in the sample locals, with all seventeen black locals being run by women, compared with one white local, which had Cara Knight as its head, and three mixed-race locals under female control.” See Fanin, 165.

90 Lee Dora Bryson to H.L. Mitchell, undated letter, Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Records, Library West, University of Florida. Reel 7/8.

91 H.L. Mitchell to Bennie Walker of England, Arkansas, September 29, 1936, Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Records, Library West, University of Florida STFU Papers, Reel 3. Mitchell closes the letter stating, “I hope that you will be able to find a place, and that will continue to work in the union.”

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free and to make his freedom real, he must have land.’”92 Writing seventy years later,

Ortiz observes that for newly emancipated blacks in Florida “inexpensive land” was one of the “keys of liberty.”93 Land at its most basic level represented a kind of economic autonomy and self-sufficiency without which blacks knew they would fall prey to the depredations and abuses of racist, white southerners.

Land ownership, political participation, and citizenship were all intimately interconnected. Without property rights, political rights were insecurely effervescent and vice versa. Historically, voting rights have been tied to property ownership. Historian

Alexander Keyssar notes that “In the early nineteenth century…states generally granted the franchise only to property owners” and historian Steven Hahn echoes this sentiment, observing that “Political rights…could be justly and safely claimed only by those groups of people who had—owing to self-possession, property ownership, and direct power over others—the independence necessary to resist worldly manipulations and tyrannies.”94 Land ownership helped blacks avoid being coerced into voting for those for whom they did not wish to vote. A property owner could not be coerced like a tenant farmer or sharecropper could. And land ownership bestowed African Americans with dignity, the self-pride to hold their heads high in the local community. Historian

Mark Naison argues that “This commitment to land ownership as the basis of personal

92 W.E.B Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 (New York: The Free Press, 1935), 165. Du Bois also notes the importance of education for real freedom in the same passage.

93 Paul Ortiz, Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 9. The other “keys of liberty” were “the right to bargain with employers, free public schools, and the elective franchise.”

94 Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2000), xvi; Steven Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2005), 212.

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dignity was deeply rooted in the Black community.”95 At the root of this desire by landless farmers for their own land was a hunger for basic dignity and equality as human beings—a dignity that has been denied them for so long under slavery’s lash.

And this search for landed independence and dignity transcended generations.

Historian Sydney Nathans describes how one black family held onto land purchased from former owners after freedom as “heir land.” It was the wish of the family matriarch,

Alice Hargress, that the land “Paul Hargris and other forebears had bought…should stay undivided, open to and for all the heirs.’”96

This dream of land for newly freed African Americans almost became a reality— the Sea Islands and other confiscated land in South Carolina were actually redistributed among formerly enslaved individuals under General Sherman’s Special Field Order No.

15 signed in 1865. Du Bois observed how “Thousands of Negro families were distributed under this circular, and the freed people regarded themselves for more than six months as in permanent possession of these abandoned lands.”97 And plans were made to make homesteads available from public lands and land confiscated from

Confederates for the nonpayment of taxes. According to Du Bois, a Freedmen’s Bureau

Bill called for the “distributing of public land among freedmen and white refugees in

95 Mark D. Naison, “Black Agrarian Radicalism in the Great Depression: The Threads of a Lost Tradition,” The Journal of Ethnic Studies 1, No. 1 (Spring 1973): 50.

96 Sydney Nathans, A Mind to Stay: White Plantation: Black Homeland (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017), 241.

97 Hahn, 145-146 & Du Bois, 73, 393. According to Du Bois, “All the Sea Islands, from Charleston to Port Royal, and adjoining lands to the distance of thirty miles inland, were set aside for the use of the Negroes who had followed his army…Thy were given, however, only possessory titles, and tin the end, the government broke its implied promise and drove them off the land.”

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parcels not exceeding forty acres each…with an eventual chance of purchasing.”98 This bill never made it past Andrew Jackson’s veto. And when a the Republican-dominated

Congress attempted to override the veto a group of Republicans concerned with the supposedly dangerous precedent of confiscation of property broke ranks and refused to help override the veto.99

As Sydney Nathans observes, “none of the plans for black landholding came to fruition—not confiscation, not set-asides.”100 And so the freedpeople who had successfully worked the land on their own (and paid for that land with generations of blood and sweat) were forced to once again come under the supervision of their former owners or leave. But no matter where they went they would still be beholden to a class of people who still viewed them as inferior in every way and not worthy of citizenship.101

Du Bois astutely observed that “A forty-acre freehold would have made a basis of real democracy in the United States.”102 This real democracy, one based on the principles of equality delineated in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the

Constitution and inclusive of blacks and whites alike was not to be.

98 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 274, 601.

99 Nathans, 134. Nathans points out that “Among more moderate Republicans, the principles of confiscation met firm opposition. If the government could seize the estates of planters, why couldn’t it confiscate the property of corporations, bankers, and landholders in the North and the East, all in the name of equality or compensation.”

100 Nathans, 134-135.

101 Although Hahn does note that at least initially in early days right after the war, “freedpeople used the rumors of land redistribution to bolster their own bargaining positions” and goes on to note how “freedpeople refused to enter into labor agreements for 1866 despite the prodding of planters and Freedmen’s Bureau agents alike.” See Hahn, 152-253.

102 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 602.

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Despite these failed attempts at land redistribution and even though African

Americans were poorly positioned take part in homesteading when public lands in the

South were made available after the Civil War, African American still found ways to purchase land and become landowners during and after Reconstruction.103 According to historian Jack Temple Kirby, “Blacks usually obtained land in one of two ways: Being known and trusted by a white patron…or like some new white landowners of the 1920s and 1930s, black moved into eroded, weevil-infested land as planters abandoned it.”104

And even before the boll weevil devastation than began in the early 1900s, many planters in the post-Civil War environment had decided that plantation agriculture was no longer worth their time and effort particularly with falling land values and bumper crops that never seemed to materialize in the late 1860s and early 1870s.105 This is precisely how the Hargress family which Nathans discusses in A Mind to Stay got ahold of their land.106 The process of land acquisition varied by state, region, and county, but despite steep obstacles according to Hahn, “By the turn of the twentieth century, more than one in five African American ‘farm operators’ in the South owned some or all of the soil they tilled.”107 And in some states such as Florida, where black landownership was

103 Nathans, 133-135.

104 Jack Temple Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920-1960 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), 242.

105 According to Nathans, “By the fall of 1868, escape was on the minds of many. Planters began to think of abandoning the region and starting anew in the West. California was the fantasy of whites as they imagined a more remunerative world.” See Nathans, 121, 132-133.

106 Nathans, 132-140.

107 Hahn, 457. According to Hahn, “Prospects for landownership were more favorable in the upper and border South than in the Deep South” and Kirby found that “black-majority counties actually had more black farm owners than whites in the censuses of 1920, 1925, and 1930. See Hahn, 457; Kirby, 34.

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just under 40 percent, the rate was much higher.108 In fact, black landownership throughout the South ranged from lows of around 10 percent to highs in the mid-to- upper 40 percent range.109 Still, on the whole black farms were smaller than white farms, averaging in size from fifty acres to sixty acres.110

How successful were African Americans in acquiring their own land in Arkansas, particularly in the county’s where the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union had its greatest strength: Crittenden, Cross, Mississippi, Poinsett, and St. Francis counties? The statewide average percentage of blacks who owned their own farms in Arkansas based on the 1930 census was 11 percent. The average percentage white farmers who were owner-operators was almost quadruple that—39 percent.111 Of course, there was a great deal of fluctuation in land ownership rates between counties. The five counties mentioned all had above average levels of tenancy ranging from 94.8 percent in

Crittendon to a relatively low of 79.8 percent in Poinsett. Similarly, each of these counties had a below average level of black farm ownership ranging from a high of 7.6 percent in St. Francis County to an unmeasurable percentage (less than 100 individuals) in Poinsett County.112 There are couple of takeaways from these raw statistics about black land ownership in Arkansas. First, that in contrast to other

108 Ortiz, 197.

109 Charles S. Johnson, Statistical Atlas of Southern Counties: Listing and Analysis of Socio-Economic Indices of 1104 Southern Counties (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941). Georgia, Arkansas, and Mississippi were all in the 10-11 percent range whereas Florida, Maryland, and Virginia were in the 40-48 percent range.

110 Kirby, 34.

111 Johnson, Statistical Atlas of Southern Counties, 57.

112 Ibid, 60-67.

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Southern states such as Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky relatively few African

American farmers in Arkansas owned their own land. This was despite the fact that much of the Arkansas Delta had been an undeveloped region in the early twentieth.

This lack of development presumably would have afforded outsiders an opportunity to acquire land.113 As Whayne points out, however, this was simply not the case, even though many settlers “clamored for the opportunity to homestead few hundred acres and carve out an independent existence for themselves…By the end of the second decade of the twentieth century, both plantation and prohibition had prevailed. The remaining homesteaders struggled on.”114

And second, that despite significant impediments to land ownership in Arkansas for African Americans some still managed to achieve their dream of landed independence, a dream which still motivated the black women of the STFU.

The ways in which African Americans became landowners were diverse. There was no one path to landownership for blacks in Arkansas. Tolbert Chism who lived just outside of Colt, Arkansas talked about land ownership in his family. His great-grandfather, Dick

Mitchell, managed to save up a small fortune. According to him, “Dick Mitchell, he was a mighty man, stout. Couldn’t read or write, but he could count. And they say that he would dig ditches for people and clear new ground for them, and they paid him by the acre…He would take that money, carry it home, and hide it somewhere around the

113 Whayne, A New Plantation South, 1-2.

114 Ibid 2-3.

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house.”115 When he died an uncle found the money and used it to purchase a farm.116

William Malone grew up near Cotton Plant, Arkansas and still owned the land his father had purchased.117 He did not know precisely when his farmer came into the possession of the fifty-four acres, “I’ll tell you it was there when I was born. I was born there and I don’t know whether he was out of debt with it when I got big enough to work or not.”118

Money Kirby grew up in Biscoe, Arkansas. His grandparents inherited land because they were part-Indian, and the land was their share of a reservation.119 His wife, Anne

Kirby, also came from a family of landowners near England, Arkansas. She did not know how they came in possession of that land, but it was a significant amount— enough that “my grandfather as his children got older and got ready to get married he gave them all two or three hundred acres of land apiece…He also built a school for the children in our area.”120

Black landowners in Arkansas during the 1930s were often clustered in or nearby towns and communities with significant African American populations such as Caldwell,

115 Tolbert Chism, interview by Paul Ortiz, July 15, 1995, Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South Digital Collection, John Hope Franklin Research Center, Duke University Libraries.

116 Ibid.

117 William Thomas Malone, interview by Doris Dixon, July 18, 1995, Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South Digital Collection, John Hope Franklin Research Center, Duke University Libraries.

118 Ibid.

119 Money Alan Kirby and Anne Oda Kirby, interview by Mausiki S. Scales, July 13, 1995, Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South Digital Collection, John Hope Franklin Research Center, Duke University Libraries.

120 Ibid.

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Arkansas.121 One former resident of Caldwell, Delores Woods, noted how “my father was buying his own farm and my great-grandmother…owned their own farm and basically in the community where I was all blacks owned their properties.”122 Living in such a community could offer a degree of insulation from the abuses of the outside world. Woods goes on to note that “I was kind of sheltered by living in a black community and they all land owners.”123 This was especially possible when blacks in such communities were in public positions of authority. This was the case in

Edmondson, a majority-black community just twenty miles from Memphis, Tennessee.

According to Mary L. Jones, a delegate to the third annual STFU convention, “In our town, Edmondson, we have a colored town, a colored mayor and a colored policeman.”124 This undoubtedly provided union organizers with more latitude than they would have had in a white-dominated town like Forrest City where both Delores Woods and Thelma Nash recalled lynchings at the county courthouse.125

121 Delores Twillie Woods and Thelma Woods Nash, interview by Mausiki S. Scales, July 19, 1995, Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South Digital Collection, John Hope Franklin Research Center, Duke University Libraries. The most recent census data for Caldwell shows it to be a white-majority town; it is possible the demographics have changed since Delores Woods lived there in the 1930s or perhaps, she was remembering a black landowning hamlet near the town. She and her family were farmers, so it is likely that they and other black landowners would not have lived in the town proper. In an interview conducted with Tolbert T. Chism by Paul Ortiz on July 15, 1995, Chism talked about a black community called Jericho which took in part of Colt, Caldwell, and Palestine, Arkansas. See Chism, interview.

122 Woods and Nash, interview.

123 Ibid.

124 STFU Minutes from Third Annual Convention, Reel 4, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Money Alan Kirby described Biscoe, Arkansas the same way. According to Kirby, “The postmaster was black. The little constable there was black. The only doctor in town was black. The superintendent of that school was black and had all black teachers.” See Kirby, interview.

125 Woods and Nash, interview. It is also important to bear in mind that we cannot always assume racial and class solidarity—some wealthy African Americans would exploit others. William Thomas Malone noted how dangerous prosperity could be, “you take some of us, black and white, get a dollar in their pocket and we don’t know each other…It might be some that get more an hour than you, turn their back

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In practical terms living in one of these all-black communities had important consequences for how residents interacted with the wider, white dominated world. It inculcated a lasting sense of self-worth and dignity in residents that extended beyond the borders of the community. Money Kirby, who grew up in the majority black community of Biscoe, Arkansas, elaborated on this, saying “I didn’t have any reason to believe that I was inferior to anybody. We owned our own home and everything…I didn’t grow up in a kind of subservient environment with that kind of attitude.”126 This sense of dignity made possible resistance to white oppression. And this resistance was often much more overt that what Scott describes as being part of the “hidden transcript.” And it was bolder than the nonviolent kind of resistance espoused by Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. This was conspicuous resistance, armed resistance at the end of a gun. Tolbert Chism talked about this kind of resistance in his interview. According to him, “Every black house in the community at one time had a

Winchester in it.”127 And when a group of vigilantes tried to run the African Americans out of that community they counted the cost and found it too high. Chism recounted the words of the vigilante leader, Clem Simmons, “Now, I tell you, all of those houses in the community we’re going to destroy, they have a Winchester in them...it would be the best thing to turn around and go back and leave all of those black folks alone.”128

when they see you coming.” See William Thomas Malone, interview. We must cautiously approach the notion that being black automatically translated into cross-class, racially-based solidarity. 126 Kirby and Kirby, interview.

127 Chism, interview.

128 Ibid. Even though Tolbert heard this secondhand—it seems very likely things proceeded just as he described them. He seems to have heard it from a relative of his, Forrest Chism, who was one of the leaders in the black defensive forces. It is also worth noting that these armed blacks seem to be a variant of the Florida “Winchester Negro” that historian Paul Ortiz describes in his book, Emancipation Betrayed, 82-84.

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Living in one of these communities enabled resistance to white oppression. I argue that these communities or islands of resistance to a greater or lesser degree provided a sense of basic human dignity coupled with economic independence and a degree of political autonomy. As Money Kirby noted in describing his family (and community) heritage: “they tolerated, but never did accept Jim Crowism, segregation, or sub-humanism or any of those types of things, those stereotypes that were thrown at blacks.”129 Based on the aforementioned landowning statistics for Arkansas and on the individual experiences of sharecroppers and tenant farmers who wrote in to the union asking for assistance, it seems clear that while these islands of resistance existed they provided insufficient protection and aid to local tenant farmers and sharecroppers.

There were simply not enough of them. Even though this lack of a substantial number of black landowners in Arkansas was an impediment to movement building, it was also a driving force. As has already been noted, black men and women, landless farmers working in the cotton fields, exhibited a deep desire for land of their very own.

The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union offered the best hope for landless farmers in the cotton-producing regions of the Old Southwest to become landowners. This call for land was clearly exhibited in the “Ceremony of the Land,” written by Howard Kester and first used at the union’s second annual convention.130 In it the union’s rallying cry,

“land to the landless,” was repeated time and again in a call and response-style interaction between reader and audience. The ceremony ended with the reader saying,

129 Kirby and Kirby, interview.

130 “Second Annual Convention Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union—Ceremony of the Land”—Howard Kester, Evelyn Smith, Reel 1, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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“By means of this ceremony we have dedicated our lives to the task of securing land, freedom and bread. Divided we [fall], but united in the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union we shall inherit that for which we have worked, labored and died. To the disinherited belongs the future.”131 And the union put forward a detailed plan for land ownership for landless cotton farmers, arguing that the current federal plans were insufficient: “the proposals embodied in the Bankhead-Jones Bill and Resettlement Administration are purely palliative and do not begin to approach a fundamental solution the problems of tenancy.”132 Instead the union called for a new homestead law to be passed. Under the union’s plan, however, it was the government which would ultimately hold title to the land. As long as farmers paid the government for use of the land it was theirs to use in perpetuity.133 Ultimately none of the union’s proposals regarding homesteads or cooperative farms were adopted by the federal government. Instead a small number of loans were provided for the purchase of small farms under the Resettlement

Administration and its successor, the Farm Security Administration, which only reached a small minority of landless farmers.134 Mitchell, in his interview with George Norris

Green observed that “Black women had more education than the black men or white men or white women among the sharecroppers.”135

131 Ibid.

132 “Resolution on Land.” Second Annual Convention Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, Reel 1, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

133 Ibid.

134 M.S. Venkataramani, “Norman Thomas, Arkansas Sharecroppers, and the Roosevelt Agricultural Policies, 1933-1937,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol 47, No. 2 (Sept. 1960): 245-246.

135 H.L. Mitchell and Latane Lambert, interview by George Norris Green, April 4, 1975, transcript, Southern Historical Collection, #3472, Box 83, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

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And education, in part, seems to have provided black women with the skills and determination to be an integral part of the STFU. African Americans were particularly concerned with education. As historian William A. Link notes, even though both southern whites and blacks came to embrace education following the Civil War, “The approval by blacks was immediate, enthusiastic, and millennial.”136 Accordingly, African

Americans thronged to Freedmen’s Bureau schools as well as the schools opened up by religious and charitable institutions in the early days of freedom.137 Nevertheless, support from local and state governments was still desperately needed. And it was not forthcoming.

Even schools for southern whites in comparison to the North were critically underfunded and had been for quite some time.138 Adequately funding schools for formerly enslaved individuals was largely a nonstarter for state and local governments.

And so individual black communities had to invest in the education of their young. And rural black women were intimately involved in this process. According to historian

Jacqueline Jones, “The saying ‘chickens for shoes’ referred to women’s practice of using the money they earned selling eggs and chickens to buy shoes for their children so that they could attend school in the winter.”139 Ned Cobb’s father decided to not send

136 William A. Link, The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1880-1930 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 5.

137 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, (1903; repr., New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1994), 57- 60.

138 In describing education in the antebellum South, William Link notes that “While New England and the Midwest established publicly financed, tuition free common schools between 1820 and 1860, the South created a more elitist structure…even whites had only limited access to common schools. Underfunded by states and localities, they operated in erratic fashion.” This modus operandi of southern education continued well into the Progressive Era. See Link, 4.

139 Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 91. Even with the influx of funds from northern

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his son to school so that he would not have to pay for his schooling, “My daddy, when he had the opportunity, he never did send me to school long enough to learn to read. If he sent his children he’d have to supplement the teacher’s salary. But if he don’t send his children, if don’t cost him nothin and there’s nothin said…I didn’t get a education.”140

Even so those who were unable to attend these schools could still benefit from the education of those who did. Ernestine Burghes Saunders, growing up in the early twentieth century, tells of how her illiterate grandfather “knew everything that was going on because his children read the newspaper to him every night. And when I grew up and started taking languages, he would have me say things to him, he let me read to him.”141 The education of a few still brought benefits to the many.

There are a number of reasons why education was so important to African

Americans and why mothers in particular were so willing to sacrifice so that their children could learn. Undoubtedly part of the equation was a desire by blacks to demonstrate their equality. If black children could achieve a level of education commensurate with that of white children it would undermine notions of white racial superiority. Link notes how black “schools symbolically but decisively repudiated the

philanthropists by and large black schools were woefully underfunded and not everyone made the decision to help fund their children’s education. Not all parents were willing to make such sacrifices, particularly when it involved not just shoes, but teachers’ salaries.

140 See All God’s Dangers 25.

141 And despite being enslaved at birth, her grandfather learned a trade following the granting of his freedom at the end of the war and opened his own business. And even though he was illiterate he was a very intelligent man. Saunders tells a story of how she tried to play a trick on him once when she was reading: “’I didn’t feel like reading so I skipped some sentences. He said, ‘Ernestine.’ I said, ‘Yes?’ ‘Go back. Re-read what you were reading to me Didn’t sound right.” And I didn’t try to play that trick on him anymore.’” See Hope and Dignity. 134.

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intellectual and psychological underpinnings of slavery.”142 And presumably some simply wanted to learn because it was a privilege denied them for so long. Of course there were financial reasons to want to achieve literacy. In the postbellum era contracts were the way newly freed people and landowners negotiated the terms of labor. Being unable to read and write placed blacks at a stark disadvantage. And this is precisely what happened to Ned Cobb when he cosigned on a note with his landlord. “I signed the note but I didn’t know what I was signin’ when I signed; he didn’t tell what it was but a note.”143 Achieving basic literacy skills was part of a method of economic self- improvement (and economic self-defense).144

Education was also important because it could be harnessed to instill a sort of race pride in the next generation of African Americans. Tolbert Chism who grew up near

Colt, Arkansas during the Great Depression recalled how he “was taught in black history that Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great, and the great conquerors of the Far

142 The Paradox of Southern Progressivism 5.

143 Theodore Rosengarten, All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 151. The subterfuge went even further. According to Cobb the landlord “had us come in to the bank there but one at a time to sign and had a different paper for each of us, but it was all for the same note. A joint note is a bad one…And if you didn’t understand it, they just took advantage of your ignorance.” See Rosengarten, 151.

144 And as political avenues for expression became closed as Reconstruction wound down and the forces of white supremacy reasserted themselves, education and economic advancement became even more important since it was the only way for African Americans to move forward as a people and as individuals. Du Bois notes how following the “revolution of 1876…a new vision began gradually to replace the dream of political power—a powerful movement, the rise of another ideal to guide the unguided, another pillar of fire by night after a clouded day. It was the ideal of ‘book-learning’” See Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 5. And for Du Bois education was much more than simply a developing a skill set. There was an ongoing debate between Du Bois and Washington over the meaning of education and the place of blacks in post- Civil War southern society. Du Bois was quite critical of what he called Washington’s “gospel of Work and Money” which threatened to “almost completely overshadow the higher aims of life.” See Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 30-31. According to Du Bois, “The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.” See Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 52-53.

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East armies had black generals in them.”145 Chism goes on to talk about learning such things at a vespers service at the Fargo Agricultural School: “This is where the head of the school, who was Floyd Brown, that was well up on that history about blacks, their background, their origin, and what have you, would talk and tell us about our past and our ancestors.”146 And even though blacks were less literate on the whole than whites in the South the rates of literacy among rural black women began surpassing those of rural black men by the second generation after slavery.147 Jones posits that this was a

“farmer’s daughter” effect, arguing “girls probably worked in the fields less often, and in proportionately smaller numbers, than boys, and their parents seemed more willing to allow them to acquire an education.”148 Undoubtedly much of this resulted from the gendered division of labor in the fields. Cotton agricultural work proceeded in three distinct stages: plowing, chopping, and picking: men participated in all three stages of cotton cultivation, women, on the other hand, only participated in two and had other domestic responsibilities. Consequently, rural black women had more time to attend school since they were needed less in the fields than rural black men.149

145Chism, interview. There was an STFU local in Colt although Chism does not mention this in his interview.

146 Ibid.

147 Jones points out how the “In 1910 the Bureau of the Census remarked upon the higher female literacy rates among the younger generation by observing ‘Negro girls and younger women have received at least such elementary school training as is represented by the ability to write, more generally than have Negro boys and men.’” See Jones, 92. And overall illiteracy rates among blacks fell from almost 80 percent in 1870 to just under 20 percent in 1930 according to the National Center for Education Statistics. See https://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/lit_history.asp. Accessed April 1, 2017. It is worth noting that these were averages taking into account the entire black population, northern and southern, urban and rural. Clearly rates of illiteracy in the rural South were much higher than 20 percent.

148 Jones, 87. Can give an example from the census here comparing education between black men and women in a family.

149 Ibid. Jones also posits that mothers were particularly concerned that their daughters have a better shot in life than they did. Rural black mothers knew the fate which awaited their daughters if they were not

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This is not to say that the educational achievement of black women far outstripped that of black men, but in a movement where so many individuals were illiterate even a very basic level of literacy qualified woman for leadership positions.

George Stith tells of how he was chosen for a position as his union local’s secretary:

“The friend of mine who carried me to the meeting was secretary of the union…He made a motion that I become secretary for the union because I could read better than he could.”150 And even though George Stith was a black man rather than a black woman what happened in his case is still representative of the process that was taking place across the movement with regards to black women.

The Stith story illustrates how basically anybody with rudimentary writing and reading skills could be selected as an officer in an STFU local. And again, the folks most likely to possess such skills were black women. Journalist and STFU historian Van

Hawkins echoes Jones and others by asserting that “by-and-large, women got more education [than men].”151 This is demonstrated by a survey of 111 locals from 1937.

Twenty of these locals were mixed sex locals, having both men and women. And of those twenty, seventeen were black locals. Each of those seventeen black locals were run by black women.152 And again, it was likely black mothers who were pushing the

educated. Jones asserts that “black mothers were particularly concerned about rescuing their daughters from a fate they themselves had endured.” See Jones, 91.

150George Stith, interview by Scott Ellsworth, Memphis, TN, April 16, 1982, transcript, Southern Historical Collection, #3472, Box 83, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

151 Van Hawkins, interview by Matthew F. Simmons, Jonesboro, AR, November 3, 2017, transcript, Arkansas Delta Cotton Culture, Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL.

152 Fanin, 165. Fanin correctly points out that “Representing almost a fifth of the sample survey, this was a significant mobilization of plantation women.” See Fanin, 165.

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hardest for greater educational opportunities for union members and their families.153

Resolution No. 15 passed at the second annual STFU convention in Little Rock,

Arkansas called for “free textbooks, decent school houses, adequate transportation and free meals for all school children” and the prohibition of “the diversion of school funds” and the prevention of “discriminatory practice against Negro schools.”154 Journalist Myra

Page, a contemporary observer at the second annual convention, highlighted some of the problems with African American education in her notes. The quality of instruction was one big issue. According to Page, “planters on school boards give teaching jobs to

Negroes on own plantations so money spent in his store.”155 The result was, of course, poorly educated students and slightly wealthier planters.

Educational work was an integral part of union activity. In fact, The Southern

Tenant Farmers’ Union in 1935, a bulletin put out in preparation for the second annual convention, claimed that education “is the most important subject with which we have to deal.”156 The section on “educational work” highlighted the many ways in which tenants and sharecroppers had been educated about the union—whether that be through mass meetings with outside speakers of note, bulletins and pamphlets, or the union’s own

153 Better elementary school education was an important goal of the union even though it has received little attention by historians in comparison with the goal of fair wages, land ownership, and the enforcement of civil rights protections guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

154 STFU Convention Proceedings: Official Report of Second Annual Convention, Reel 1, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

155 Myra Page Notes on the STFU, Subseries 5.2., Folder 305, Myra Page Papers #5143, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

156 See H.L. Mitchell, The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union in 1935, “Educational Work,” Reel 1, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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newspaper, The Sharecropper’s Voice. Written material was particularly important for keeping members informed since they were often living in isolated locations off the beaten path with relatively little contact with the larger outside world. Accordingly, this document called for a “program of adult education…Such a program as this will meet with serious opposition from the planters. They do not want workers who can read and write and figure.”157 And women were particularly crucial to this educational campaign.

Based on union surveys it was the “wives and daughters of Union men as a general rule have more education than the men and it is the women who must do the greater part of the educational work for which there is such a crying need.”158 Deacy Real was one of those women: “I really did work for that Union because I even taught night school. Mr.

Hynds would pick me up in his car at night, and he would take me these little schoolhouses where these old people was going to school to help them learn how to read and write.”159 Now the precise content of those night classes is unknown—clearly basic literacy was one goal, and a very important one.160 It is also entirely likely that there was a labor history or black history component. In fact, these schools may have anticipated the Citizenship Schools of the 1960s which combined lessons in civics and literacy.161

157 Ibid.

158 Ibid. See H.L. Mitchell, The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union in 1935, “Women’s Work,” Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Records, Library West, University of Florida, Reel 1.

159 Interview by H.L. Mitchell with Deacy Real, April 5, 1974.

160 Ned Cobb was very clear about how detrimental his lack of education had been to him, “I didn’t have no right to no education whatever. I was handicapped and handicapped like a dog. When I was deprived of book learnin, right there they had me dead by the throat.” See Rosengarten, 542.

161 Charles M. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1995), 70-77. These citizenship schools were an offshoot of the Highlander Folk School, a school for social activists organized in the 1930s to teach

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Another reason why African American women became especially prominent and extraordinarily active in the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union has to do with the kinds of roles or positions they occupied in their families and communities. These prior leadership roles equipped black women with the skills as well as the connections and networks to assume key leadership roles within the union at the local level. Historically in the South black women have more often been heads of household than their white female counterparts. Black women have also assumed leadership roles beyond the home, oftentimes occupying prominent roles in the community as lay church leaders, teachers, and midwives.162 These were positions of trust that served as a bridge to leadership roles in the union; these prior leadership roles made possible the union’s tremendous growth by tapping into pre-existing networks. On the surface, it may seem extraordinary that some of the most marginalized and oppressed members of southern society were able to become forceful agents of change. Yet, prior leadership roles and already existing networks of communication and cooperation allowed black women to not only become part of a burgeoning social movement, but at the local level to actually lead it.

The uniquely prominent role of black women in the family dates back at least to the days of slavery in the United States (if not farther).163 Slaveholders considered

ordinary folks how to positively impact their communities. Its students included coal miners, mill hands, and small farmers. According to Payne, “Highlander’s work was guided by the belief that the oppressed themselves, collectively, already have much of the knowledge needed to produce change…The emphasis on developing others was crucial to Highlander’s conception of leadership.” See Payne, 70-71.

162 Hahn, 26; Jones, 3-7.

163 Jones notes how West African society appears to have been less patriarchal than European society, noting how “In Igboland (present-day southeastern Nigeria), women possessed considerable authority in the realms of commerce, defense, and family life. Igbo wives had control over their own farmland, and

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enslaved men and women as no more than chattel, thus normative concepts of morality did not apply to their treatment. Enslaved individuals were merely economic units of production and consequently slaveholders faced little to no moral opprobrium from the community when they broke up the families of enslaved individuals.164 Black women were used as breeders with no regards for their own wishes or desires regarding monogamy within marriage. Jones notes how in Their Eyes Were Watching God, the character Nanny states, “Ah didn’t want to be used for a work-ox and a brood-sow and

Ah didn’t want mah daughter used dat way neither.”165 One result of these exogamous marriage patterns was a proliferation in female-headed households.166 An equality of oppression undermined any notions of male superiority; black men and women were both treated poorly under the slave regime.167 We also see the relative value of enslaved men and women changing over time. Hahn notes how over time, “the status of women in the slave community increased owing to their work as nurses, midwives, caretakers, and educators, while the status of many men may have diminished as they lost he stamina and strength to perform tasks.”168 All of these factors contributed to undermine male dominance in the black community, thus leading to a less patriarchal, male-centered and more matrifocal society.169

their community and kinfolk supported them if they sought to remove themselves from abusive spousal relationships.” See Jones, 26.

164 Hahn, 15-17.

165 Jones, 9.

166 Hahn, 17, 28, 40.

167 Jones, 13, 18.

168 Hahn, 39.

169 Hahn, 40; Jones, 30.

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This less hierarchical, less male-dominated family structure seems to have continued during Reconstruction and the early twentieth century. One way in which this manifested was that black women made known their desire to no longer work full time in the fields like the men. Hahn points out how southern landowners “complained frequently that black women…refused to work, were lazy and troublesome, wished to live off their husbands and employers, and seemed more interested in ‘playing the lady.’”170 This is not to say that black women withdrew into a cloistered existence as paragons of white, middle-class domesticity. They still faced a “matrix of shifting obligations” that included housekeeping, childrearing, and agricultural work as well as other supplemental, waged labor.171 Nevertheless they demanded the basic freedom to decide how to allocate their time to best take care of their families. And even though, the basic African American family unit was a nuclear one headed by a black male, just as important were “kinship clusters” and “networks” which provided an extra layer of support in difficult times such as when a husband had to travel to find work.172 And

Jones notes that even though, “men headed individual households, it was not unusual to find an elderly woman presiding over a group of people who in turn cared for her.”173

And as many as one in ten black households was led by a women from 1880-1900.174

170 Although it is safe to say that this benefitted the family as a whole and not just black women since it allowed black men to demand higher wages due to fewer workers being available while at the same time it freed up black women to devote more time to their domestic duties as wives and mothers. See Hahn, 171.

171 Jones, 81.

172 Jones, 81-82.

173 Jones, 89.

174 Jones, 87.

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Thus black households were “elastic” in the sense that their composition could change dramatically and encompass immediate family, extended, family, and even non-blood kin.175 These flexible family units and waged labor outside the home gave black women a degree of authority oftentimes not shared by their white counterparts.

What relevance does the structure of black families have to the development of the social movement which manifested itself as Southern Tenant Farmers Union?

Family leadership by black women prepared them for grassroots leadership roles in the union. Prominent among these union women were widows and single mothers.176

Women such as Lula Parchman and Maggie McMarris.177 These women had the most to lose if the union failed—they lacked the financial support of a spouse, had the fewest resources, and consequently were most beholden to the benevolence of their employers. Yet these same women stood up and acted boldy against the interests of those same employers. One explanation for this is desperation. According to Fanin the

“structural burden” of having to combine “fieldwork, childbearing, and homemaking “as well as the “absence of another set of adult hands for field work left them in an economically vulnerable position” and this accounts for these women’s involvement in the STFU.178But there is another explanation—these women had already been assuming family leadership roles for decades and so assuming leadership in the union

175 Hahn, 17-19; Jones, 81-82

176 Fanin, 177.

177 Lula Parchman to H.L. Mitchell, April 5, 1936, Maggie McMarris to union central office, December 21, 1936, William R. Amberson to Howard Kester and H.L. Mitchell, undated letter (sometime in 1936), Reel 3, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

178 Fanin, 161.

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was a natural transition. These black women saw an opportunity to make things better for themselves and their families and took it, not out of desperation, but out of hope.

And they understand their role in the union as a continuation of their maternal role in the family. Mary Lee Moore in a letter to Evelyn Smith asked that her “name go in forever in this great movement the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union as a founder mother.”179

The black church has long been considered the heart and soul of the black community fulfilling a dual role as spiritual/cultural center of gravity for the community as well as a place of political activism. According to Nan Elizabeth Woodruff the black church is “the center of black cultural and political life.”180 And Stephen Hahn describes antebellum black religious congregations as both “houses of politics as well as…houses of worship.”181 During the antebellum period in the South white ministers would preach to blacks as well as whites, sometimes together and sometimes separately. In those services the message always emphasized obedience to one’s owner.182 This selective interpretation of Scripture, ostensibly preached to ensure a spiritual life of moral rectitude, was designed to ensure compliance to the will of slaveholders. Enslaved individuals did frequently try to hold religious meetings away from the prying eyes and supervision of their white antagonists. These meetings were often clandestine as any congregation of unsupervised enslaved individuals made slaveholders especially

179 Mary Lee Moore to Evelyn Smith, December 20, 1938, Reel 9, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

180 Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 167.

181 Hahn, 43-44.

182 Hahn, 45-48. Sometimes black ministers preached to mixed congregations as well, but when they did preach to interracialaudiences it was always under the watchful eye of a white minister. See Hahn, 47.

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uneasy, particularly after the insurrections of Gabriel and Denmark Vesey which both seemed to have a religious component. Clandestine meetings were held in secret in the slave quarters or outdoors under “brush arbors.”183 This Christianity of the enslaved was led by lay ministers and spiritual guides; its informality and relative spontaneity created an opportunity for women to play a role as leaders in the spiritual life of the community.

Hahn observes that “Slave congregations may well have provided exceptional room for women to speak and exercise devotional authority.”184

Again, during Reconstruction and through the early twentieth century African

American churches remained important centers of black culture and community. Hahn observes that during Reconstruction in the South, “Blacks turned to the church not only for their spiritual need but also as the center of their ‘civilization’”185 Freedom meant that these community institutions were under less direct supervision. Author and activist

Angela Davis notes how during the first decades of the twentieth century the church

“provided the main source of autonomous social space for African Americans”186 Other kinds of meetings were perhaps considered suspect by whites, but under the aegis of religious instruction churches were clearly much more than merely houses of worship.

Churches maintained their political importance as centers of resistance to white

183 Hahn, 45-48.

184 Hahn, 49. Jones similarly notes how even though “The formal task of spiritual leader remained a man’s job” older women who interpreted dreams and strange events were able to bring “the real world closer to the supernatural realm and offered spiritual guidance to the ill, the troubled, and the lovelorn.” See Jones, 37.

185 Hahn, 329.

186 Angela Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 137. Also talks about women contesting leadership of men in church too.

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supremacy in addition to the obvious spiritual purpose they served.187 And women continued to play an important role in the black church as elders and lay leaders, but not ordained ministers. According to Jones, “‘Spiritual mothers’ served as the ‘main pillars’ of Methodist and Baptist churches, but they also exercised religious leadership outside formal institutional boundaries; elderly women in particular commanded respect as the standard-bearers of tradition.”188 There were many black men who were either part-time ministers and or lay preachers with very little formal theological instruction, thus barriers to enter the ministry in some capacity were relatively low. The less hierarchical and ad hoc nature of many black churches provided women with a space to assume a mantle of leadership that was often denied their white female counterparts.189

Several organizers within the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union number were black ministers—part-time preachers who both farmed and preached, men like E.B.

McKinney, C.H. Smith, and A.B. Brookins.190 These “cotton patch preachers” were key to the explosive growth the union experienced in its first couple of years.191 M. Langley

Biegert notes how “The involvement of the black church may have accounted in part for

187 Fanin, 289-295; Whayne, 194; Woodruff, 167. Whayne argues that “The black church in particular was often a politicalizing institution, whereas Fanin also emphasizes the influence of conservative churches (both black and white) on preserving the status quo in the cotton South. He notes how even though “the church provided the foundations upon which a variety of organizations could be built” and how this “community represented a structural basis for social mobilization yet had traditionally failed to advance any ideas or ideology that might challenge southern custom.” See Whayne, 194; Fanin, 289.

188 Hahn, 462-463. Jones 96; Whayne, 194.

189 Fanin, 295-296. Other institutions also contributed to the strengthening of community ties and the formation of nodes of resistance to white supremacy, particularly fraternities and self-help societies such as the Prince Hall Masons or the Female Protection society of Alachua County, Florida. See Hahn, 463; Ortiz, 105-107, 174.

190 Fanin, 295; Mitchell 52, 66; Whayne, 193; Woodward, 165-167.

191 See Mitchell, Mean Things, 66.

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the unusually high levels of support this union received in a short amount of time.”192

The union frequently used churches for gatherings as well as school houses and even under bridges, but in churches the meetings could be held under the conceit of a religious gathering.193 Social gospel Christianity and radical unionism were incorporated into the STFU’s ideology. Consequently, the Southern Tenant Famers’ Union was much more than a union, or even a social movement; it was more akin to a spiritual movement or a religious awakening in many ways. Fanin characterizes the union as a “movement that promised to realize material and spiritual dreams.”194 Meetings of local oftentimes resembled Bible studies and one recruit thought the union was a new kind of church.195

Many women who had grown up in the church were able to easily transfer the leadership skills they had developed there into the union. Former union member Corrine

Partlow described one such women who would sometimes lead the her local’s meeting:

“We had a lady sometimes, Della Winston, a sanctified lady. She was a preacher. She would speak.”196 Carey West accompanied Father Bass on his organizing trips.197

192 Biegert, 85.

193 Naison, 52; Whayne, 193; Real, interview.

194 Fanin, 288-298. Fanin notes that “Religion—as provided by a motivated and confrontational band of preachers and propounded in a radical context—was one way of drawing people in to the union and enabled many of these preachers to spread a social gospel that the minister of the established churched failed to. See Fanin, 300.

195 Lula Parchman to union central office, April 27, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In this letter Parchman gives a report of a local meeting which was opened with a song, followed by a prayer by the chaplain, and then a scripture reading from 1st Corinthians. Also See Grubbs, 64.

196 Interview by Scott Ellsworth with Corrinne Partlow, Deacy Real Clark, and Elizabeth Davis, April 16, 1982.

197 Carey West to H.L. Mitchell, January 13, 1936, Reel 1, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Being a teacher was also another kind of preparatory role that provided women with the skills and community standing to take up leadership roles in the union. Being a teacher meant one possessed a certain standing in the community. We know that at least one local secretary, Carey West, was a teacher by profession. According to her, “Ever since

I quit going to school that’s been my job ever since I been grown that what I was taught to be.”198 Naomi Williams, a member from Gould, Arkansas, was also a teacher by trade, but had to give it up because it paid so little—she had could not afford childcare on a teacher’s salary.199 And Deacy Real taught literacy skills to union members.200

Corrine Partlow also remembered union efforts to educate members who could not read or write: “Well, some of us didn’t have no education much, and them who couldn’t read and write, they would show them how.”201 So the STFU not only drew on an already established cadre of teachers who were local leaders to help grow the union, but it also used them to help educate members. And members were not just taught basic literacy skills, as important as those were (particularly in their financial dealings with landlords and merchants). They were educated about the purpose of the union and the need for systemic change in southern agriculture and even more broadly southern society. All of this was part of overcoming what historian Lawrence Goodwyn referred to as “deeply ingrained patterns of deference permeating the entire social order.”202 So the

198 Carey West to H.L. Mitchell, January 8, 1936, Reel 1, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

199 Miller, 122, 125.

200 Real, interview.

201 Partlow, Clark, and Davis, interview.

202 Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 300.

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significance of these black, women teachers was both their position and their practice as part of “movement recruiting” and “movement educating.”203

A midwife was also another kind of community role that could provide a woman with the skills and respect necessary to mobilize tenant farmers and sharecroppers.

Midwives were absolutely crucial to the community. According to Emily Herring Wilson, the skills of a midwife “were as essential a man’s knowing how to plant and to plow.”204

Beyond delivering babies a midwife was often the closest thing folks in isolated rural communities had to professional medical practitioners. Midwives were often de facto doctors when doctors were not available or too expensive.205 Midwives often knew something of herbs and home remedies in addition to their training as birthing experts.206 And the role of midwife often ran in families from generation to generation.207

Thus the trust a midwife engendered was not only based upon her record and skills, but the abilities and reputation of her forebears. And perhaps most interesting of all, black midwives delivered the babies of poor rural whites who could not afford a white doctor.208

Thus, a midwife could form a bridge between rural black and white communities, a goodwill ambassador of sorts. Hagood, in her study of the Piedmont and the Deep

203 Goodwyn, xviii.

204 Emily Herrring Wilson and Susan Mullally, Hope and Dignity: Older Black Women of the South (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983), 37.

205 Ibid., 43.

206 Kirby and Kirby, interview.

207 Wilson and Mullally, 42; Woods and Woods, interview.

208 Wilson and Mullally, 43.

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South, observed how “There were a number of mothers who expressed commendation or regard for individual colored women, usually ‘grannies.’”209 Accordingly the clientele of the black midwife was the very kind of person the union was most interested in, a poor black or white tenant farmer or sharecropper. Undoubtedly the STFU included midwives among its ranks—Deacy Real’s mother was a midwife and it does not stretch incredulity to believe that she imparted the esteem of the community, if not the skills of a midwife on to her daughter who was to become a leader in the union.210

What do we make of these black women? It seems clear that preparatory leadership roles as heads of household, as church elders, as teachers, and as midwives enabled these African American women to assume key leadership roles at the local level in the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union which helps account, in part, for the union’s tremendous growth early on. Were these women the embodiment of the “New

Negro,” a more assertive African American that emerged in the wake of the World War I amid calls for greater equality at home as black men were sent to fight for freedom overseas.?211 Davis quotes Daphne Duval Harrison who noted that women’s blues during the roaring twenties ‘introduced a new, different model of black women—more assertive, sexy, sexually aware, independent.”212 Did the self-perception of black women fundamentally shift during this time? Perhaps, but if so, only by degrees. As

Ortiz points out, the “New Negro” is largely a fiction. The Florida Movement (and

209 Margaret Jarman Hagood, Mothers of the South: Portraiture of the White Tenant Farm Woman (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1939), 179. “Granny” was a term for a midwife.

210 Deacy Real, interview.

211 Ortiz, 178, 230.

212 Davis, 37.

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certainly other similar movements across the South) of the 1920s was “an intergenerational social movement that drew from the creative energies of young and old alike.”213 Resistance to white oppression was ongoing, not characterized by

“decades of African American acquiescence or accommodation,” but rather by continuous resistance “which ebbed and flowed with the vicissitudes of time.”214 These black women continued traditions of self-reliance and resistance which dated back to slavery. There was a continuity of resistance to oppression based on land, literacy, and leadership.

213 Ortiz, 178.

214 Ortiz, 178.

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CHAPTER 5 GROWING A MOVEMENT: FUNDRAISING, PUBLICITY, AND STRATEGY

In August of 1936 a March of Time newsreel titled “King Cotton’s Slaves” played in movie theaters across the United States. This short film detailed the efforts of the

Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union to raise wages and improve living conditions for the millions of tenant farmers and sharecroppers across the South.1 In a mix of interview footage and dramatic reenactments the film portrayed the cotton pickers strike of 1936 in northeastern Arkansas as well as the assault of Claude Williams and Willie Sue

Blagden, two union supporters, by large landowners.2 The fact that the plight of tenant farmers and sharecroppers in the Old Southwest was being broadcast to such a large audience seemed to bode well for the union. Certainly, the union had already received a great deal of notoriety from press coverage of the Williams-Blagden incident which made headlines across the nation. According to historian Donald H. Grubbs, “Suddenly the public was horrified, and even southern newspapers, cherishing chivalry, published reproving articles. More than any other single event, the beating made the nation demand action on behalf of sharecroppers.”3 The March of Time newsreel reached even more people than those newspapers did extending the reach of the story to include folks who either did not have access to the articles or were simply uninterested in reading them. According to film historian Stephen E. Bowles, “between 1936 and

1 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things Happening in This Land: The Life and Times of H.L. Mitchell, Cofounder of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (1979; repr., Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), 110.

2 Claude Williams was a radical minister and Willie Sue Blagden was a radically-inclined member of a prominent Memphis family. See H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 94-95, 110-111.

3 Donald H. Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union and the New Deal (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 113.

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1942, the [March of Time] series played to weekly audiences of nearly 20,000,000.”4

This level of exposure was a publicity coup for the STFU.

This short film was important not just because it spread the story tenant farmers and sharecroppers in the South and thus acted as a catalyst for further union growth, but also because it was the result of existing extensive public outreach. This makes the showing of the film in August 1936 an excellent entry point into a discussion of one of the reasons why the STFU was able to grow as quickly as it did in its first two years of existence from a small group of eighteen landless farmers in a small rural schoolhouse in northeastern Arkansas to a much larger group of thousands of landless farmers located across the Old Southwest.5 This chapter will explore how union leaders, particularly H.L. Mitchell went about the process of enlisting the support of outsiders— non-tenant farmers and sharecroppers—such as socialist Norman Thomas, radical minister Howard Kester, and progressive philanthropist Gardner Jackson to publicize the plight of the union as well as raise funds for its support. THese individuals were connected to larger organizations or networks which allowed them to further spread the story of the STFU’s fight in the cotton fields. Howard Kester is the perfect example of this process—he was made aware of the union through the Socialist Party and then, according to Grubbs, went on to publicize the union’s plight to the “left wing of national

4 Stephen E. Bowles, “And Time Marched On: The Creation of the March of Time,” Journal of the University Film Association, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Winter 1977), 7. According to H.L. Mitchell the film was shown in 6,000 theaters throughout the nation-3,000 less than the number Bowles cites. That being said even, even if we take into account the smaller audience the film probably still reached upwards of 13,000,000 individuals. See H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 100.

5 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 50, 100.

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Protestantism.”6 These funds were desperately needed to hire lawyers and post bonds for legal cases, to provide relief for evicted union members in addition to paying organizers for the basic task of organizing and building up the union.7

In the case of the STFU this kind of outside support was absolutely necessary because the power structure in the Arkansas Delta was severely unbalanced with large landowners controlling everything from the government to mainstream churches to the commissaries where tenant farmers and sharecroppers bought their daily necessities. In fact, every aspect of a tenant farmer or sharecropper’s life was somehow touched by this totalizing system of control.8 One of the best examples of this power imbalance and the way that landless farmers were viewed by those above them in the social hierarchy is a comment made by agricultural economist Lewis Cecil Gray to Gardner Jackson.

Jackson asked him why there were no tenant farmers on the President’s Commission on Farm Tenancy: “Pat, you wouldn’t tell us we had to put a chicken on a poultry board would you?”9 It was easy for Gray, a college-educated New Deal bureaucrat, to

6 Norman Thomas has been credited for the initial idea for starting a union of tenant farmers and sharecroppers. He also provided funding for a survey of conditions in the Arkansas Delta See Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, 28-29, 75-79.

7 J.R. Butler to unknown recipient, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

8Daniel 3-6; Gibert C. Fite, Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture, 1865-1980 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1984), 4-15. This is perhaps one reason why in her survey of white tenant women in 1937 sociologist Margaret Jarman Hagood found many did not go to church and that of those who did, it was nontraditional churches that they most often attended. According to her study, “In the Deep South group there are more families who attend church four or more times a month and all of them are of the Holiness denomination.” See Margaret Jarman Hagood, Mothers of the South: Portraiture of the White Tenant Farm Woman (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1939), 172-173, 231-232, 239. It is important to point out a couple of caveats—one, this study did not take place in northeastern Arkansas and two, obviously there are many reasons why white tenant women might not attend church regularly.

9 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 108.

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marginalize and dehumanize tenant farmers and sharecroppers—they were powerless and arguably the poorest members of society. A study conducted in 1934 by socialist

William R. Amberson of Memphis, Tennessee under the auspices of the League for

Industrial Democracy and the Socialist Party showed that the average annual income of tenant farmers and sharecroppers was $262.00. A a study conducted in 1933-1935 by

Charles S. Johnson, Edwin R. Embree, and W.W. Alexander found that the average cash income of tenants and sharecroppers was a paltry $105.43.10

With this in mind it becomes clear that it was absolutely imperative that the tenant farmers and sharecroppers of the STFU find outside support. And while political and religious radicals were some of the union’s earliest supporters it also looked for allies among African American advocacy organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Negro Congress

(NNC), labor organizations such as the American Federal of Labor (AFL) and the CIO

(Congress of Industrial Organizations), and among college students.11 It also considered forming partnerships with farm organizations like the midwestern Farmers’

Holiday Association and the communist Alabama Sharecropper’s Union.12 Of course,

10 Charles S. Johnson, Edwin R. Embree, W.W. Alexander, The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy: Summary of Filed Studies & Statistical Surveys 1933-1935 (1935 repr., Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1972), 12- 13; Norman Thomas, The Plight of the Share-Cropper (New York: League for Industrial Democracy, 1934), 20-24.

11 Walter White to Howard Kester, December 4, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; John P. Davis to H.L. Mitchell, January 29, 1936, Reel 1, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; “American Federation of Labor Endorses The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union,” October 17, 1935, Reel 1Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Atley Delaney to H.L. Mitchell, March 27, 1936, Reel 1, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

12 John H. Bosch to H.L. Mitchell, July 18, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; “To All

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appealing to such a broad swath of organizations with different policy goals and political orientations could be a fraught experience as is demonstrated by the complicated relationship the union had with the ASU and the AFL (and later the CIO). How much influence should the union allow outsiders to have on union policy? What outside advice should or should not be taken? Would financial support be withdrawn if the STFU fell out of favor over a disagreement over strategy or tactics? And were limited resources best spent trying to cultivate widespread support among progressive and radical northern organizations or should the focus of the union be entirely on building up the union from the grassroots? Did the union develop a successful blueprint for cooperation that anticipated the coalition-building of the civil rights era? It is these other individuals, particularly women as well as men, that this chapter will discuss.

When the March of Time newsreel was released it seemed as though the STFU had succeeded in bringing significant national attention to the plight of the tenant farmers and sharecroppers, potentially paving the way for additional contributions and assistance as well as public pressure on the federal government to intervene in the

South. Nevertheless, the portrayal of the situation in northeast Arkansas by March of

Time was somewhat lacking. The March of Time was a new kind of newsreel developed by journalist and film director Louis De Rochemont.13 There were many, particularly those on the left of the political spectrum who felt that the March of Time was a sensational, superficial take on current events. One such critic, Shelley Hamilton, noted

Agricultural and Rural Workers,” National Committee for Unity of Agricultural and Rural Workers,” February 7, 1935, Reel 1, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

13 Stephen E. Bowles, “And Time Marched On,” 10-11.

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how it was “mainly interested in ‘disturbance,’ in ‘smacking strong’ in order to ‘sell some film.’”14 It was not just its sensationalist approach to news that made it such a problematic medium—its makers claimed a certain journalistic objectivity and neutrality, but as William Alexander notes, “it was this objectivity” that was “never quite objective enough.”15 In the case of the struggle in northeastern Arkansas, the newsreel attempted to take a middle ground by showing one scene where a landlord unbelievably explains to his tenant that just like him, he is not getting rich. This scene must be juxtaposed with a scene of a contingent of landlords driving off to assault union member and “teach them…that this union business is going to make things worse.”16

Despite the muddled attempt at objectivity by the film, it was still received with tempered enthusiasm by the union and its allies. Socialist Sidney Hertzberg of the

Workers’ Defense League, writing to H.L. Mitchell on August 11, 1936, described what he had heard of the film expressing disappointment that Mitchell’s scene had been cut, but also noting that “they tell me it is still a very good thing.”17 In his response, Mitchell expressed relief that his scene had been cut and commented that “A very good job was done I believe.”18 Other union supporters were more critical (though even Hertzberg and

Mitchell were measured in their praise of the newsreel). Philanthropist and supporter

14 William Alexander, “The March of Time and the World Today,” American Quarterly, Vol 29, No. 2 (Summer 1977), 189.

15 William Alexander, “The March of Time and the World Today,” 185. Critics on the left detected what Irving Lerner in the July 9, 1935 edition of the New Masses described as “militantly alert capitalism.” Ibid., 187.

16 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 109-110.

17 Sidney Hertzberg to H.L. Mitchell, August 11, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

18 H.L. Mitchell to Sidney Hertzberg, August 12, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Gardner Jackson thought it was “better than I feared it might be, though it still leaves a lot to be desired as effective organizing material.”19 And Willie Sue Bladgen, one of the subjects of the film, writing from Baltimore on August 28th to H.L. Mitchell observed, “It is pretty good…except the end and the editorial comment.”20 Yet the film was a success in the sense that it kept the STFU in the public and by doing so in such a manner that a broad swath of the population would see it whether they wanted to or not (newsreels were played immediately before popular movies in theaters). It may not have formed the best material to build an organization, but this kind of publicity was priceless in terms of making the plight of the landless farmers of the South a topic of kitchen table conversation.

Even though “King Cotton’s Slaves” had limited use as an organizing tool it was still concerning enough as propaganda to motivate Arkansas large landowners to take steps to ensure that it did not play in theaters within their sphere of influence. In a letter to Gardner Jackson, H.L. Mitchell commented that “The Pulaski Theatre in Little Rock refused to show the March of Time Picture after receiving a letter from a planter near

Wynne Ark.”21 It seems that this type of intimidation extended beyond Little Rock to the entire region. Sidney Hertzberg, in a letter to H.L. Mitchell, commented that “I spoke to

A.K. Mills, publicity director of the March of Time, and he has told me that they were

19 Gardner Jackson to J.R. Butler, August 11, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

20 Willie Sue Blagden to H.L. Mitchell, August 28, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

21 H.L. Mitchell to Gardner Jackson, August 12, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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having some trouble with it in Arkansas and Tennessee.”22 Despite these attempts to prevent the showing of the film in the Arkansas Delta region the film was still having an impact elsewhere. The planters misunderstood layout of the terrain they were fighting on; the plight of the landless farmers was no longer just a local or regional issue.

Accustomed to being left to their devices when dealing with poor white and, especially, poor black tenant farmers and sharecroppers they could not imagine northerners or the federal government taking an interest in the situation. The relatively uncontested reign of Jim Crow had convinced them that few Americans outside the South cared about the lot of poor southerners—this was no longer the case, however. Socialist and early union supporter Dr. William R. Amberson, wrote to H.L. Mitchell on August 23, 1936 and commented on how “The March of Time picture has apparently got the [federal] administration rather excited.” 23 Folks outside the South were indeed beginning to take notice of the goings on in the land of cotton.

The remainder of this chapter will highlight various incidents that provided opportunities for the union to publicize the plight of the landless farmers in the Old

Southwest, as well as organizing trips to the North in search of support, and tactics which the union utilized in trying to grab the national spotlight. In terms of chronology this chapter primarily focuses on a period of six to twelve months in 1936 when the

STFU was under increasing pressure from large landowners, pressure which provided unparalleled grist for the union’s supporters in the North such as Norman Thomas and

22 Sidney Hertzberg to H.L. Mitchell, August 11, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

23 William R. Amberson to H.L. Mitchell, August 23, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Gardner Jackson. In many ways this period of time was the highwater mark in the union’s growth and its attempts to garner public support for the plight of its members.

The final portion of this chapter deals with National Sharecropper’s Week which took place annually for the remainder of the 1930s and into the early 1940s.

Perhaps the most notable incident in terms of publicity for the Southern Tenant

Farmers’ Union was the flogging of the reverend Claude C. Williams and Willie Sue

Blagden in mid-June of 1936. According to Grubbs, “the furor that erupted the next day was unparalled in the STFU’s history…more than any other single event, the beating made the nation demand action on behalf of sharecroppers.”24 Ironically, it appears that the mission of Williams and Blagden was something of a publicity stunt in the first place.

During the recent cotton choppers’ strike a black sharecropper by the name of Frank

Weems had gone missing after being brutally beaten. It was presumed that his body was subsequently disposed of by his white attackers.25 Recalling how Howard Kester had recently preached a funeral for a mine worker that attracted national attention to the plight of striking mine workers, H.L. Mitchell requested that Kester’s classmate from

Vanderbilt Seminary, Claude Williams, do something similar. Surely the spectacle of a white preacher conducting a funeral for a black sharecropper who had been brutally murdered would attract attention at the national level. Mitchell recalls that Clay East

“thought that the idea…was just plain crazy and was probably one of Mitchell’s weird ideas.”26

24 Grubbs, 111-113.

25 Grubbs, 109, 110.

26 Grubbs, 110-111; H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 94-95.

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Willie Sue Blagden just happened to be in the Memphis office at the time and requested to go along with Williams. Bladgen had grown up in Memphis in a middle class family and as an adult joined the Socialist Party after working for Associated

Charities in Memphis in 1928.27 This job opened her eyes to the suffering of the downtrodden or as she described them “people born to poverty without any change or opportunity to educate themselves in order to understand conditions or improve their environment.”28 Initially, she came to know Mitchell thought the Socialist Party. She was chosen as a delegate to the Continental Congress of Farmers and Workers and had ridden with Mitchell partway to Washington, D.C. After that she had a rather peripatetic existence staying on in Washington D.C. for some time after the congress ended and then living in Boston and New York City before returning to Memphis in time for

Weems’s funeral.29 After volunteering to go with Claude Williams H.L. Mitchell later claimed that Blagden had called parents to let them know of her whereabouts and from there word had spread to the large landlords of the Arkansas Delta who were lying in wait for the unsuspecting union supporters. It is just as likely, however, that Williams and Blagden were spotted by these landlords or their allies while filling up at Clay East’s gas station on their way to Earle to preach at Weems’s funeral. As Ritterhouse notes,

“the fact is that the anti-union planters were already on the lookout for any ‘outside

27 Jennifer Ritterhouse, “Woman Flogged: Willie Sue Blagden, The Southern Tenant Farmers Union, and how an impulse for story led to a historiographic corrective,” Rethinking History Vol 18, No. 1 (2014), 97, 105-106.

28 Ada Gilkey, “Miss Blagden Pleads New Deal for Young America,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, May 24, 1933 in Ritterhouse, 105-106.

29 Ritterhouse, 106.

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agitators.”30 Regardless of how the area’s white rural elite found out about the mission there was a “welcoming committee” waiting for Williams and Blagden when they arrived in Earle.31

This “welcoming committee” demanded that Williams and Blagden go with them, forcing them to drive out of town to a more isolated area where Williams was brutally beaten fourteen times with a leather strap. Blagden did not escape unscathed either, although her treatment was much less severe—she was hit by the strap four times while standing since she refused to lie down; her beating left her bruised nonetheless, although she remained defiant throughout the ordeal. According to her after it was over,

“I looked at them all separately and individually and I said they were mighty brave.”32

Even though the intention perhaps was to never harm her so severely; the bruises made national headlines in papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post.33

So what ostensibly was intended as a not so serious warning smack turned into something that rendered Blagden unable to walk without difficulty.34 After the assault the pair were separated by the assailants with Williams being forced to drive to Little Rock with an escort that followed him to Brinkley and then turned around and went back.35

30 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 95; Ritterhouse, 108.

31 Ritterhouse, 97-98.

32 “Statement of Ms. Willie Sue Blagden made to honorable Same E. Whitaker, special assistant to the attorney general, at Memphis, Tennessee, on June 19, 1936,” Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers, OF File 407B, Folder Arkansas Tenant Farmers Strike, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York.

33 “Woman Flogged in Cotton Strike,” “New York Times, June 17, 1936, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, Accessed February 15, 2019; “Woman Beaten In Cotton Belt Will Go Back,” The Washington Post, July 14, 1936. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Accessed February 15, 2019.

34 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 95.

35 “Statement of Reverend Claude C. Williams made to made to honorable Same E. Whitaker, special assistant to the attorney general, at Memphis, Tennessee, on June 19, 1936,” Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Blagden, on the other hand, was sent by train to Memphis It was while she was at the station waiting for the train that Blagden became aware of the full extent of her injuries.

According to Blagden “I asked to go to the ladies’ room and when I went in there, I looked at the bruises on my body and they were getting more painful and considerably sorer.”36

In terms of publicity, the union could not have asked for a more scandalous occurrence. Ritterhouse quotes from the June 27, 1936 edition of Literary Digest, about how “news of the Blagden-Williams flogging ‘caused a flare-up in the press and drew the official attention of President Roosevelt’ and other powerful people.”37 This is in line with what Mitchell recalled as well, writing in his memoir that, “The beating of a white woman and a white minister became a nationwide human interest story.”38 He further went on to discuss how race and class impacted the way victims of violence were received: “No attention was paid to Eliza Nolden, a black woman soon to die from the effects of a severe beating, nor to the serious condition of white sharecropper Jim

Reese, injured for life, or to the fact that Frank Weems, a black sharecropper had presumably been beaten to death.”39 These other atrocities had done very little to elicit national outrage, but now the cries of consternation and disbelief were widespread.

Writing to President Roosevelt on June 18, 1936, Elizabeth Gilman observed that even

Papers, OF File 407B, Folder Arkansas Tenant Farmers Strike, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York.

36 “Statement of Ms. Willie Sue Blagden.”

37 RItterhouse, 98.

38 Mitchell, Mean Things, 95.

39 Mitchell, Mean Things, 95.

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a “capitalist paper” such as the Baltimore Sun was highlighting the “terrorism in

Arkansas” in a recent editorial.40 Unfortunately, Roosevelt, as he would do time and time again when it came to the South (and Arkansas in particular), punted. A draft of a letter addressed to Norman Thomas ends with the following: “The facts as found indicate that both persons were assaulted and restrained of their liberty for a short period of time, but not in contravention of any statute of the United States.”41

Southerners were especially outraged by what had taken place on in their own backyard.42 Vigilante violence in the name of protecting white womanhood was the norm across the South during this period of time. Hundreds if not thousands of black men since Reconstruction had been summarily lynched without a trial for the crime of assaulting white women. Never mind that many of these alleged crimes involved consensual encounters or were often simply fabricated in their entirety.43 This incident exposed southern hypocrisy and undermined any notions of a genteel South. The violence was against the very type of individual deserving protection—Blagden was a southern white woman, an archetype that held a powerful position in southern culture.

Historian Grace Elizabeth Hale describes this “crucial New South fiction, the southern

40 Elizabeth Gilman to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, June 18, 1936, Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers, OF File 407B, Folder Arkansas Tenant Farmers Strike, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York.

41 Draft of undated [June 1936] and unsigned letter to Norman Thomas, Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers, OF File 407B, Folder Arkansas Tenant Farmers Strike, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York.

42 Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, 113.

43Joshua Youngblood, “’Haven’t Quite Shaken the Horror’: Howard Kester, the Lynching of Claude Neal, and Social Activism in the South during the 1930s,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 86, No. 1 (Summer 2007): 10; David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2001), 108-112; Grace Elizabeth Hale, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940 (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 199-209.

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lady—an image of white purity and gendered passivity.”44 And yet she had been physically assaulted by members of the white southern elite, the very same men who supposedly entrusted with protecting her from violence. As Ritterhouse astutely observes “”it was not, in fact womanhood, that southern white men were protecting; rather, it was a social order that guaranteed elite white male privilege and economic power.” 45 This incident demonstrated that racial violence and vigilantism was never about protecting white women, it was about controlling black men.

The union and its allies did their best to publicize the incident and use it to further the cause of the STFU. In late summer, and then in the middle of the fall season,

Blagden went on two separate organizing trips to the Northeast making stops in

Baltimore, Washington D.C. and New York as well as smaller towns such as Hartford,

Connecticut and Cotuit, Massachusetts.46 The effects of her talks seem to have been salubrious—one student wrote in saying how he and his classmates were inspired to donate clothing and money: “You will be interested to know that our present interest in the sharecroppers is the result of a talk Miss Willie Sue Blagden made in our chapel

44 Hale, 105.

45 Ritterhouse, 107-108.

46 Gardner Jackson to J.R. Butler & H.L. Mitchell, July 28, 1936, Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Records, Library West, University of Florida, Reel 2; Eleanor Fowler to H.L. Mitchell, August 6, 1936, Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Records, Library West, University of Florida, Reel 2; Gardner Jackson to J.R. Butler, August 11, 1936, Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Records, Library West, University of Florida, Reel 2; Willie Sue Bladgen to H.L. Mitchell, August 29, 1936, Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Records, Library West, University of Florida, Reel 2; Willie Sue Bladgen to H.L. Mitchell, August 28, 1936, Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Records, Library West, University of Florida, Reel 2; John H. Hatt to Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, December 19, 1936, Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Records, Library West, University of Florida, Reel 3; Virginia Pratt to Willie Sue Bladgen, November 25,1936, Reel 3, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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about a month ago.”47 Virginia Pratt wrote directly to Blagden to after hearing her speak in Harlem, noting how she was “interested in the needs especially of children will you kindly let me hear from you, as Christmas seems to be coming nearer every day.”48 The

Washington Committee to Aid Agricultural Workers even sent her to organize a new committee in Baltimore.49

Meanwhile Mitchell was in constant communication with Norman Thomas,

Gardner Jackson, and William R. Amberson about how best to use Blagden to play up not only her assault but the reason for her visit to Earle in the first place—the disappearance of Frank Weems during the strike. Gardner Jackson was keen that

Weems play a central role in all publicity: “The Weems matter, it seems to me, has not been played at all fully. Every method of getting that back into the press should be used.”50 Norman Thomas similarly argued that the central question of the publicity campaign should be the unknown location of Frank Weems: “I personally am going to keep driving away about the question, where is Frank Weems.”51

Examining this publicity campaign with Bladgen at its center provides a useful way for understanding the difficulties of magnifying the plight of tenant farmers and

47 John H. Hatt to Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, December 19, 1936, Reel 3, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

48 Virginia Pratt to Willie Sue Blagden, November 25, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

49 Willie Sue Blagden to H.L. Mitchell August 28, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

50 Gardner Jackson to J.R. Butler & H.L. Mitchell, August 11, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

51 Norman Thomas to Gardner Jackson, August 27, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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sharecroppers at the national level. Bladgen herself illustrates one of these difficulties in particular—finding reliable allies who understood the situation on the ground in the

South. Amberson and Mitchell thought Blagden to be unreliable. In one letter Mitchell despaired that “I do fear that she would throw a monkey wrench into our plans and would wreck us, if given a free hand.”52 Yet Blagden herself seems to have realized that she was a novice and would be of only limited use to union. In a letter dated August 28,

1936 she states, “I obviously am not a sharecropper or an experienced union person. I do get along with the liberals etc. and have been successful in the past in organization work of that kind.”53

It seems clear that even if Amberson or Mitchell had not told her directly their concerns she was quite aware of them and sought to allay them. And yet she still undertook one action in particular which merely confirmed their worst suspicions. While it is unclear whether the idea originated with her or with Eleanor Fowler or someone else involved in the Washington Committee to Aid Agricultural Workers, a plan was devised whereby Blagden would been assigned to set up similar committees across the

South to support the union.54 H.L. Mitchell, seemingly annoyed with this idea, wrote to

52 H.L Mitchell to Gardner Jackson, August 21, 1936. William R. Amberson to H.L. Mitchell, August 23, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Countless historians have accepted this characterization of Blagden as a somewhat impetuous and irresponsible young woman. And this is the main critique of Ritter’s article, “Woman Flogged”—that historians of the union have entirely mischaracterized her, exhibiting a “dismissive attitude” based on what H.L. Mitchell thought about her. Ritterhouse, 105, As she also observes “Historians have had little reason to want to know more about someone whom Mitchell, the union’s most important chronicler, and other contemporaries so completely disdained.” Ritterhouse, 113.

53 Willie Sue Blagden to H.L. Mitchell August 28, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

54 Eleanor Fowler to H.L. Mitchell, August 26, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Fowler, “it is my opinion that it will simply be a waste of time and effort to organize groups in the South…the liberal element would not dare to show its head on issues such as this.”55 Undoubtedly in Mitchell’s mind this plan confirmed his worst suspicions about Blagden.

The other point of concern was Blagden’s political leanings. Even though she was a member of the Socialist Party there were had been whispers that her sympathies lay even further left. In a letter to H.L. Mitchell, William R. Amberson reported “The

Johnsons say she has the reputation of operating under Communist influences…this does not necessarily damn her but stresses the need for caution.”56

Here again, Blagden forms a perfect prism through which to understand the union’s difficulty in securing allies. During this period of time the communists had adopted a

Popular Front approach wherein they were willing to work with other radical and progressive organizations. Historian Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore rightly observes that the

“Communist Left, redefined the debate over white supremacy and hastened its end.”57

And those affiliated with the STFU, while quite sympathetic with goals of the communists, were quite cautious, however, in allying themselves directly with them. An alleged takeover attempt of the union by one communist had the effect of poisoning relations between the union and anyone else associated with the communist

55 H.L. Mitchell to Eleanor Fowler, August 29, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

56 William R. Amberson to H.L. Mitchell, August 23, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

57 Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008), 6-7, 202-214.

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movement.58 Evelyn Smith Munro in an interview with Mary Frederickson recalled being recruited by communists. She decided to maintain her distance: “I suppose I never believed that the ends justified the means…you just don’t get what you want by using whatever means are available to get it.”59 Ritterhouse argues that by 1938 Blagden “had come to prefer the Communist Party and its Popular Front approach to mass organization for social change.”60 Blagden no longer viewed the STFU as the most effective vehicle to advocate for the poor in the rural South.

From early 1936 onward Gardner Jackson was often in the center of things when it came to publicizing the trials and tribulations of the STFU’s members. Grubbs characterizes Jackson as “one of the chief assets of the Southern Tenant Farmers’

Union.”61 Gardner Jackson, based in Washington D.C., played a crucial role in getting publicity for the Blagden-Williams incident. Jackson gave union leadership advice about how to play up what had happened, arguing that Blagden was “one of the key instruments in the cause from this point on and must be used to the limit.”62

Undoubtedly some of his knack for knowing how to publicize what was going on in the

58 Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, 174-175.

59 Evelyn Smith Munro, interview by Mary Frederickson, Laguna Beach, CA, April 17, 1976, G-0043, in the Southern Historical Collection, Southern Oral History Program Collection, #4007, Louis Round Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. Howard Kester in a 1974 interview with Jacquelyn Hall expressed similar feelings recalling, “I didn’t want to be associated with the Communists…They just didn’t strike me as the kind of people that would push along the basic ideals and ideas of the Christian faith.” Howard Kester, interview by Jacquelyn Hall and William Finger, July 22, 1974, B-0007, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

60 Ritterhouse, 109-110.

61 Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, 31.

62 Gardner Jackson to J.R. Butler and H.L. Mitchell, August 11, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Delta at the national level was a result of his experiences as a journalist for the Denver

Times where he started out as a cub reporter and later as an editorial writer for the

Boston Globe. By the time Jackson got involved with the STFU he had been in the newspaper business for some fifteen years.63 It is safe to assume that Jackson used his newspaper contacts to get the story as much coverage as possible. He also played a central role in getting the March of Time people interested in what was going on in the distant Arkansas Delta.64

As a journalist, Jackson was never really all that concerned about the news of the day. His concerns and motivations went much deeper. In a lengthy and introspective interview in 1955, Jackson said, “my preoccupation as a newspaperman was always with purposes rather than for the news for its own sake…I always tried to make causes out of every set of circumstances I was set to cover.”65 And the situation in the Old

Southwest was apparently a situation too desperate and precarious for him to ignore.

That the plight of these forgotten men, women, and children would attract his attention is not entirely unsurprising; Gardner Jackson had become a central player in the defense of two radical Italian immigrant, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Venzetti, who had been sentenced to death in 1921 for a murder during a robbery gone wrong with spurious evidence—in reality they were tried for their political beliefs and immigrant origins. Historian Robert K. Murray notes that his case was “directly expressive of

63 Gardner Jackson, interview by Dean Albertson, April 19, 1952, Oral History Archives at Columbia, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York.

64 David Eugene Conrad, The Forgotten Farmers: The Story of the Sharecroppers in the New Deal (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965), 113.

65 Jackson, interview.

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continued anti-alien feeling” during a period increasing immigration from southern and eastern Europe.66 Jackson in a way that would foreshadow his later involvement with the STFU had helped raise funds for their legal defense. He also assisted in raising public awareness about the injustice of their incarceration, conviction, and sentencing.67

Jackson was a man of conviction with a strong social conscience who had a long history of supporting what might be considered “lost causes.” In fact, he could be considered the patron saint of embattled social or political causes during the 1920 and

1930s. It was not just Sacco and Vanzetti or the STFU, Jackson supported the

Republican forces in Spain and various other causes as well. Historian David Eugene

Conrad characterized him as “a curious combination of charm, idealism, persistence, and brass.”68 Gardner Jackson was able to provide so much help to so many disparate causes around the country and world because he came from a prominent family; his father, William Sharpless Jackson, had made a fortune in banking and railroads.69

According to Jackson’s own account, he contributed somewhere in the neighborhood of

$50,000 dollars to the defense, “It is true that I gave some of my personal fortune to it.

However, that was very minor.”70 As his father’s son Jackson had a substantial inheritance upon which to draw, although at one point his father had partially disinherited him because he was spending too much money on causes. Because of this

66 Conrad, 113; Robert K. Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920 (repr., 1955, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 266-267.

67 Conrad, 113.

68 Conrad, 113.

69 Grubbs, 31-32.

70 Jackson, interview.

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when Gardner Jackson sought employment it was to fund his families’ basic expenditures and needs so that he could keep contributing his inherited wealth for the betterment of society at large.71

The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union had first come to Jackson’s attention while he was working as Assistant Consumers’ Counsel in the Agricultural Adjustment

Administration.72 He had been given the full court press to join the New Dealers, and told by Jerome Frank, the general counsel of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, that he “ought to get in to the show to help remake the world.”73 Consequently, Jackson joined with other progressives and radicals in the Department of Agriculture like Jerome

Frank, Rexford Tugwell, and Lee Presssman who were trying to assist the tenant farmers and sharecroppers in the South. It had come to their attention that these landless farmers were being cheated out of their fair share of the federal subsidy payments under the Agriculture Adjustment Act. Jackson recalls that after attorney Mary

Conner Myers was sent down to the Delta to investigate: “It confirmed what we had been hearing from the pitiful little leadership of the sharecroppers…the tenants were getting virtually nothing.”74 The subsidies for not planting cotton and other agricultural commodities were supposed to be shared between large landowners and those in their employ, but it soon became clear to many in the Department of Agriculture (those who

71 Mitchell, Mean Things, 90-91; Grubbs, 79.

72 Conrad, 112-113.

73 Jackson, interview.

74 Jackson, interview.

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were willing to consider all the facts) these subsidies were going directly into the pockets of landlords without being properly dispersed.75

When Myers travelled down to the Arkansas Delta, she found out that the reports alleging abuse and exploitation were absolutely true. She took dozens of affidavits after speaking with hundreds of sharecroppers and tenant farmers. She then sent a confidential telegram back to Washington claiming to “have heard one long story [of] human greed.”76 Her subsequent report was so damning that it was never released to the public. It was considered so controversial that Myers was reprimanded for taking it home and told to keep it locked up at work. The ultimate irony is that despite the careful safeguarding of the report, no extant copies exist despite multiple searches over the years by staff in the National Archives.77 The manner in which the AAA bureaucracy handled the Myers report demonstrates how resistant its leadership was to the notion that their grand plan for stabilizing the agricultural sector of the economy was deeply flawed. Yet fundamentally, all Henry Wallace, Cully Cobb, and Chester Davis cared about was raising commodity prices and if this led to mass displacement or impoverishment that was simply an unfortunate, but necessary part of the process.78

According to Wallace, “Neither the AAA program nor any other relief program can really come to grips with the fundamentals of these conditions. At best, anything we might do…would be temporary palliatives.”79 Meanwhile Jackson and other liberals in the AAA

75 Grubbs, 19-26.

76 Conrad, 140-141; Grubbs, 48-49.

77 Grubbs, 51-52.

78 Conrad, 58; Grubbs, 24-26, 32-40.

79 Grubbs, 58.

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like Jerome Frank and Lee Pressman, men who had advocated on behalf of the embattled tenant farmers and sharecroppers, were purged.80

This purge, however, gave Gardner Jackson the opportunity to work for the

Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union more or less full-time until he found another line of employment.81 He became the union’s official representative in Washington, D.C. A credentials letter dated January 8, 1936 requested “that he [Gardner Jackson] be given a hearing and a voice in determining future policies of agriculture, which so vitally affect our membership.”82 Jackson organized the Washington Committee to Aid Agricultural

Workers as well as the National Committee on Rural Social Planning (which for all intents and purposes was a one-man operation).83 He used his connections in

Washington D.C., particularly those in the Roosevelt Administration and those among his social class, to push for federal intervention in the Delta.84 He knew Franklin D.

Roosevelt personally as well as other politicians such as Representatives Caroline O’

Day and Vito Marcantonio New York and Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin and

80 Grubbs, 55-56.

81 Conrad, 172-174; Grubbs 93.

82 J.R. Butler & H.L. Mitchell to whom it may concern, January 8, 1936, Reel 1, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

83 Grubbs, 79, 93. This seems to have fairly common during this period of time. Apparently, organizations like the NCRSP had a lot of important individuals on the board and certainly many supporters but in terms of the day-to-day operations only Jackson was really involved. In his 1955 Columbia interview Jackson described a similar situation with regards to the People’s Lobby: “The People’s Lobby was in effect a one- man operation in the person of Ben Marsh…. Marsh lived in complete asceticism. He had one stenographer to help him. It was the force of this crusading guy that made his lobby really a surprising influence.” Jackson, interview.

84 Grubbs, 93-97.

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was not shy about asking that something be done.85 When Roosevelt finally put the tenancy issue on the national agenda a Washington columnist claimed Jackson

“probably more than any other man ….[was] the indefatigable and belligerent instigator of the President’s message.”86 It was hard to ignore the kind of man who would organize a picket of Arkansas sharecroppers in front of the Department of Agriculture building where he had been formerly employed. An action, that that according to Secretary of

Agriculture Henry Wallace, left the head of the Cotton Section of the AAA Cully Cobb,

“frothing at the mouth.”87

And Gardner Jackson did not just help publicize the plight of the sharecroppers or help raise money for them, he contributed vast sums of his own wealth to them.88 In fact, J.R. Butler remembered that Jackson would actually give money to H.L. Mitchell directly to live on during this period of time since Mitchell did not have a salary as union secretary. According to Butler, “Gardner Jackson would put up a hundred or two or three hundred dollars for him to go out and have a good time on.”89 Jackson was donating so much of his own money to the union that H.L. Mitchell was worried he was depriving his family of needed support: “Pat, we don’t expect you to deny your own

85 Grubbs, 96- 97; Mitchell, Mean Things, 90-91.

86 Drew Pearson, “Washington Merry-Go-Round,” Florida Times Union, March 17, 1936 in Conrad, 172- 175.

87 Conrad, 172; Grubbs 51.

88 Conrad, 174; Grubbs, 93.

89J.R. Butler, interview by Sue Thrasher, September 21, 1973, transcript, Southern Historical Collection, #3472, Box 83, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. It seems unlikely that such significant sums of money were just for Mitchell to “go out and have a big time on,” particularly after the birth of Michell’s first child. That being said Jackson was a notoriously heavy drinker and it does not stretch incredulity to believe that some of the money sent to Mitchell was used earmarked to for the purchase of alcohol.

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family to help us, go get money out of people who will give bit but don’t give us your own, to your own disadvantage.”90 Of course, it was not just Gardner Jackson contributing, the union also had significant help from the Garland Fund for general expenses as well as the American Civil Liberties Union to help in posting bonds for union members who had been arrested and then paying attorney’s fees for their subsequent trials.91 It really was Jackson, however, through his own personal funds and the money he was able to wrangle from Washington elites that kept the union going through its darkest hours.92

Gardner Jackson really was the guardian angel of the STFU in Washington D.C.

This began even before he was the official representative of the STFU, back when he worked in the Consumer Counsel’s office of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and arranged a meeting with agricultural labor leaders for an STFU delegation visiting

Henry Wallace in January 1935. This began his intimate involvement with the union until he and STFU leadership temporarily parted ways over the union’s proper place as part of the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America in March of

1939.93 During this period of time Gardner Jackson gave advice, helped raise money

(as well as supplying his own), and helped publicize the plight of the tenant farmers and

90 H.L. Mitchell to Gardner Jackson, August 26, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

91 Grubbs, 78-79.

92 Howard Kester to Gardner Jackson, January 18, 1936, Box 69, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York; H.L. Mitchell to Ward Rodgers, June 20, 1936, Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Records, Library West, University of Florida, Reel 2; J.R. Butler to Gardner Jackson, unknown month, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

93 Grubbs, 47, 180-186. Writing decades later Mitchell wrote: “He [Jackson] was my advisor and guide, and aid to the nation’s farm workers from 1935 through 1960.” See H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 89.

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sharecroppers.94 One example that highlights this process particularly well was a fundraising dinner which was held in the exclusive Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C.95

The centerpiece of this dinner was Howard Kester accompanied by two individuals who had experienced the fury of the Arkansas landlords firsthand. According to Gardner,

“The show that he put on with these two fellows was extremely moving. They told their own story, under his guidance, in very moving terms.”96 While the dinner fell short of its immediate aim of spurring a federal investigation into the violence in the Arkansas Delta it still accomplished something quite significant. A direct result of the dinner was the

LaFollette Civil Liberties Committee.97

This civil liberties committee was never able to launch an investigation in the

South, however due to opposition from the powerful congressional southern bloc.98

Undoubtedly this frustrated H.L. Mitchell, J.R. Butler and others in the union leadership to no end. In an article in the union newspaper, the Sharecropper’s Voice, the writer

(probably Mitchell) resorted to calling Senator Joe Robinson, “Greasy Joe.” Here again

Jackson showed his value to the union not just as a fundraiser, but as an astute advisor;

94 Donald H. Grubbs, “Gardner Jackson, That ‘Socialist Tenant Farmers’ Union, and the New Deal,” Agricultural History 42, No. 2 (April 1968): 129-133. Grubbs notes how during the cotton choppers’ strike of 1936, when Mitchell was temporarily bereft of his usual support, “There was only Pat Jackson to furnish any significant amount of help, encouragement, and money.” See Grubbs, “Gardner Jackson, That ‘Socialist Tenant Farmers’ Union, and the New Deal,” 133.

95 Grubbs, 96-97.

96 Jackson, interview. Interestingly, Grubbs notes how “Jackson had arranged the program with care,” whereas Jackson, however, tells a different story that highlights the perils of moving about in high society:” I violate all the protocol of hierarchical position and called on a group of Congressman to speak before I had the Senators talk. My memory is that two of the Senators walked out in ego offense at this before the time came for them to be called on.” See Grubbs, 97; Jackson, interview.

97 Grubbs, 97-98.

98 Anthony P. Dunbar, Against the Grain: Southern Radicals and Prophets, 1929-1959 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1981), 95, 115-116.

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he chided Mitchell for the name calling: “No campaign which I’ve ever heard has been aided by calling people names….it does nothing but relieve your own feelings to label him as you do. And it might well alienate support from some sources.”99 Even though he mostly likely shared Mitchell’s sentiments, Jackson understood the importance of kowtowing to powerful people as long as it served a greater purpose. Jackson knew that it was pointless to engage in name-calling, but he was not afraid to make noise in other ways. He argued forcefully for the union to rethink their decision to not send a delegation to try to meet with Roosevelt during his trip to Arkansas during the election of

1936. Gardner wrote, “A news story of the kind implicit in a delegation holding a public hearing at Little Rock is one that your hostile press association fellows down there wouldn’t dare gloss over. I strongly urge you to reconsider your decision.”100 Jackson knew the difference between simply embarrassing a politician out of spite and finding a way to pressure a politician so that he would take some kind of positive action (which

Roosevelt ultimately did when he set up a national tenancy committee in the fall of

1936).101

Despite his efforts on behalf of the STFU, Jackson, just like Willie Sue Blagden, was a problematic emissary in some ways. Similar to Blagden, Jackson came from a background far removed from that of those whose interests he represented in

Washington, D.C. Jackson was an outsider—he was not a native southerner, he was

99 Gardner Jackson to J.R. Butler & H.L. Mitchell, July 28, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

100 Gardner Jackson to J.R. Butler & H.L. Mitchell, August 11, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

101 Grubbs, 139-143.

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not a farmer, and he was most definitely not poor. Jackson had grown up in the town of

Colorado Springs, Colorado as part of a wealthy, upper-class family. As a young man he attended a string of elite colleges and universities such as the University of

Massachusetts-Amherst, Columbia University, and Harvard University.102 Even though

Gardner Jackson understood national politics and travelled in high society, he did not necessarily understand sharecroppers or the rural American South. The first time that he and his spouse ever traveled to the South was a trip to North Carolina in 1936.

According to Jackson, “My wife and I had never actually been down South looking at the circumstances of these people before.”103 This seems to have been a common issue in the New Deal administration generally and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration more specifically—well-meaning world-changers who knew very little about the world they hoped to change. A perfect illustration of this is a story told about the liberal Lee

Pressman who, while working on a code for macaroni, asked: “Is this code fair to the macaroni growers?”104 That being said, the “agricultural experts” in the AAA were either from the landlord class and or from the Midwest so their perspective were also very different from those of the southern dirt farmers who were being impacted by the policies they were developing and implementing in the rural South.105

102 Jackson, interview.

103 One particularly educational experience as part of this trip took place when Jackson spoke with a county agent about putting sharecroppers on county committees. To this the agent responded: “Oh, Mr. Jackson, that’s just out of the question. You certainly don’t put chickens on a poultry board.” See Jackson, interview. H.L. Mitchell also recounts the use of this colloquialism in his memoir, Mean Things, 108.

104 Conrad, 106.

105 Conrad, 38, 45-53; Grubbs, 32-33, 42-43.

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But Gardner Jackson was about as far from the farmers you could be and his understanding the sharecropping system was pretty rudimentary. This can be demonstrated by his interview in which he said that “These sharecroppers had no land.

There was an organization set up called the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union. I argued about the name of the organization because there weren’t any tenants in our terms of the Middle west or the West.”106 From a purely academic standpoint he was right— perhaps the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union should have been called the Southern

Sharecroppers’ Union, but what he probably missed was that even though there were not that many tenant farmers within the ranks many sharecroppers had once been tenant farmers and had been pushed down the agricultural ladder. And sharecroppers who had never been anything other than sharecroppers aspired to be tenant farmers.

So even if the name of the union was not strictly accurate in its description of the union’s membership, it was certainly accurate in terms of its symbolism. Jackson did not necessarily understand the perspective of landless farmers, particularly their independent mindset.107 Union president J.R. Butler recalled how he had a very serious conversation with Jackson at the 1937 Muskogee annual convention where he “told him we appreciate his contributions…but that we would not stand, or that I would not stand for him to dictate, him or anybody else, to dictate the policy of the union.”108 So there seems to have been some definite tension about the role Jackson played in union strategy and tactics.

106 Jackson, interview.

107 Gibert C. Fite, Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture, 1865-1980 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1984), 49-59.

108 Butler, interview.

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This became particularly apparent when the STFU disastrously joined organized labor as part of the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of

America under the auspices of the Congress for Industrial Organizations.109 It is not entirely surprising that Jackson, in particular, would agree with the idea to create one big agricultural union under the auspices of the CIO. He had been pushing for just such a thing for some time. In a letter to Howard Kester dated December 20, 1935 Jackson wrote, “Darn sorry you or Mitch were not here for the session with Brophy of the Lewis industrial union crowd and the A.F. of L. birds. No tangible promises from either group but a much better reception from the Lewis group.”110 After all, his Washington

Committee to Aid Agricultural Workers was not just raising funds solely for the STFU, but also for the communist-led Alabama Sharecroppers’ Union as well. H.L. Mitchell was keen to bring this to the attention of the union’s socialist supporters, “By the way have seen the bulletin for the Washington Committee to Aid Agricultural workers, dividing money 30% to STFU, 30% to SCU of Ala, and 30% to South Jersey Ag

Workers Union and $15 per month to support Rural Worker.”111 Undoubtedly from the perspective of STFU leadership their union was getting the most publicity for the cause

109 Grubbs, 166-173, 184-189.

110 Gardner Jackson to Howard Kester, December 20, 1935, Box 69, Gardner Jackson Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York. That being said it must be noted that STFU leadership was not unequivocally opposed to affiliating with a large national union such as the AFL or CIO. In fact, this was a goal of theirs for obvious reasons. At issue were the terms of the relationship and Jackson largely acceded, despite his own reservations which are recorded in his oral history interview at Columbia University, to the demands of the Lewis and company much to the hurt of the STFU. See Jackson, interview.

111 H.L. Mitchell to Sidney Hertzberg & Aaron S. Gilmartin August 30, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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of landless farmers, yet other organizations were disproportionately benefitting from their work.

But Gardner Jackson was firmly in support of this idea that the STFU should join one big agricultural union and did not realize the danger ahead, not only because the

STFU was composed of very independent-minded individuals who did not like being dictated to from afar, but also because the only reason that John L. Lewis agreed to allow the union into the CIO brotherhood was because he wanted more dues. The

STFU had been attempting to woo organized labor for some time, but it was only once

Lewis realized that West coast agricultural union could bring in thousands of dollars a month in dues that he become interested in agricultural workers.112 According to

Grubbs, “John L. Lewis, more interested in building power than subsidizing the poor, was squeezing UCAPAWA financially and thus forcing it, in turn, to tighten the screws on the STFU.”113 This created immediate problems for the STFU which had many members who simply could not afford to pay dues on a monthly basis. In fact, STFU leadership kept half of their union locals officially off the books because they were unable to meet the per capita dues requirements.114 Furthermore, as the union leadership understood it, they had been promised a certain degree of autonomy within

UCAPAWA.115 Yet according to H.L. Mitchell, “Every commitment made by the

112 Grubbs, 165-169.

113 Ibid.

114 Ibid.

115 Dunbar, 164-165.

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International (UCAPAWA) to the STFU was broken by Henderson.”116 The end result was a disastrous drawn out fight between the STFU and UCAPAWA from which the union never recovered.117

As mentioned before, Howard Kester played a crucial role in the fundraising dinner that Gardner Jackson had organized at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C.118

Even though Kester, in an interview years later, claimed self-effacingly that “for reasons completely unknown to me, I was the chief speaker” his speech (as well as the condition of two victims of landlord violence he had brought with him) apparently had an impact.

The creation of the LaFollette Civil Liberties Committee followed shortly thereafter.119

Kester was also heavily involved in another publicity and fundraising campaign event—

National Sharecroppers Week (NSW). National sharecroppers’ week, much like it sounded, was a week devoted to publicizing the plight of the landless farmers across the South. According to the black activist Pauli Murray, its one-time executive secretary, the purpose of the week “was to focus national attention on the plight of black and white sharecroppers in the South and to raise funds.”120 Kester can largely be credited with its

116 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 180. Henderson was one of the chief organizers of UCAPAWA and its first president. See Dunbar, 157.

117 Dunbar, 164-185.

118 Grubbs, 97.

119 Grubbs, 97-98. Kester interview 56. It must be noted that Kester was not the only one who spoke during the fundraising dinner. Furthermore, as Gardner recalled, “We had as the prize exhibit at that time at the dinner two fellows under the care or guidance of Howard Kester…. we had a colored follow who had been badly beaten and whose head was still bandaged. At that dinner we had a white fellow whose name I forget who had gone down there from New England and had joined in in trying to help the effort and had been taken out and tarred and feathered and had been driven out of the community.” See Jackson, interview.

120 Pauli Murray, The Autobiography of a Black Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest, and Poet (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1987), Murray, 135.

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creation. In midsummer 1936, he wrote to STFU president J.R. Butler, “Again may I remind you about the possibilities of furthering the interests of the Union by putting on a

National STFU Day by selling cotton bolls throughout the nation this fall…I worked the plans out in some detail a year ago.”121 This plan eventually metamorphasized into

National Sharecroppers Week sans cotton bolls, but the idea of raising awareness and focusing national attention on sharecroppers during one particular part of the year was

Kester’s.122

Howard Kester had been a radical long before he associated with the Southern

Tenant Farmers’ Union. Author Anthony P. Dunbar notes how Kester’s father, William,

“expelled Howard from the family home” because he could not accept Howard Kester’s

“new racial attitudes.”123 Born to a lower middle-class, traditional southern family, early on Kester was interested in Christian ministry work hoping to become a missionary to

Africa.124 His life, however, took a dramatic turn when in 1923 he ventured overseas with his college classmates from Lynchburg University on a YMCA Pilgrimage of

Friendship trip to Europe. While there Kester went on tours of Jewish ghettoes in

Warsaw and Krakow. After seeing that Jews were locked in the ghettoes at night,

Kester said, “something turned over inside of me and I came to feel that—Well, by golly, this is what we do to Negroes in the South. We put them in restrictive areas and exploit

121 Howard Kester to J.R Butler, July 22, 1936, Reel 2, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

122 Dunbar, 151-152.

123 Dunbar, 18-39.

124 Dunbar, 19-21.

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them in every way that we can think of.”125 Three years later Kester enrolled in the

Vanderbilt University School of Religion. While there he participated in a demonstration against the intervention of the Western Powers in China and subsequently lost his job as assistant secretary of the YMCA’s Vanderbilt University branch. Without this source of income Kester was no longer able to continue his studies. After spending some time working as the youth secretary of the New York-based Fellowship of Reconciliation,

Kester returned to Vanderbilt in 1929 where he studied under Alva Taylor a social gospel proponent who believed Christians should take an active role in reforming society.126 By the fall of 1934, Kester found himself investigating the lynching of Claude

Neal in Greenwood, Florida under the auspices of the NAACP, an experience which according to Youngblood, “confirmed Kester’s commitment to radical organization and action in order to combat the South‘s ills and bring social justice to the nation.”127

One year prior to his investigation into the Claude Neale lynching Kester had first met H.L. Mitchell when Mitchell spent the night at his apartment in Nashville on the way to the 1933 Continental Congress for Economic Reconstruction in Washington, D.C.128

Kester traveled to Arkansas in early 1935 to aid the fledgling STFU. According to

Grubbs, “Kester began helping with everything from executive decisions to organizing locals, often at great personal hazard.”129 He became one of the union’s chief advisers and strategists and, according to Dunbar, “the STFU’s ambassador to what later came

125 Kester interview.

126 Dunbar, 26-36.

127 Youngblood, 3-4.

128 Dunbar, 84-85.

129 Grubbs, 76.

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to be called the ‘eastern liberal establishment.’”130 In fact, Kester was key in getting support from liberal churches and organizations in the North.131 Consequently Kester had the contacts and means to support himself while engaging in STFU work.132

Mitchell and Kester ended up formulating much of the union policy since Butler was prone to absences due to the need to support himself financially.133 Kester, with the help of union secretary Evelyn Smith, was the principal author of the “Ceremony of the

Land,” which was used at the closing of the union’s national conventions, ending with the rousing words, “to the disinherited belong the future.”134 The “Ceremony of the

Land” eloquently spelled out the ideology of the STFU’s landless southern farmers.135

Howard Kester influenced the development of the STFU in countless ways from imagining a National Sharecropper’s Day which later became a successful National

Sharecropper’s Week to developing a ceremony which encapsulated the heart and soul of the union’s ideology.

Even though Howard Kester got the ball rolling initially on National

Sharecroppers Week it was actually the STFU’s allies who developed a comprehensive

130 Dunbar, 91.

131 Grubbs, 76; Dunbar 40-41.

132 Dunbar, 91, 100; Grubbs, 75, 76.

133 At one time during his presidency J.R. Butler relocated to Commonwealth College to accept a position there. H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 137-148. In his interview he also talks about the first two years of his presidency when “I never drew one penny of salary…I would go over to Memphis, first over to Tyronza and do whatever I could, you know, and then go back to my sawmill job.” Butler interview.

134 Howard Kester & Evelyn Smith, "Ceremony of the Land,” Second Annual Convention Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, undated, Reel 1, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

135 Howard Kester & Evelyn Smith, "Ceremony of the Land,” Second Annual Convention Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, undated, Reel 1, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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plan for the rollout of the week. During the month of December socialists Aaron

Levenstein and Sidney Hertzberg corresponded back and forth developing a plan.136

The most concrete plan was outlined in a letter from Aaron Levenstein to Sidney

Hertzberg dated December 15, 1936. National Sharecroppers Week was to include speakers, particularly sharecropper delegates, events such affairs and dances, and publicity in the form of newspaper ads, radio spots etc. Levenstein hoped to hold the event during the “week of Lincoln’s Birthday, February 12th, with some such slogan- idea as: ‘Complete emancipation in the Southlands.’”137 This weeklong event was to be only part of a bigger campaign to raise awareness of the plight of landless farmers in the South. In the same letter Levestein goes on to state that “Following the National

Sharecroppers Week, we should proceed on our campaign for getting at particular groups.”138 These groups included college students, churches, labor organizations and the Socialist Party as well.139 National Sharecroppers Week was to be organized under the auspices of both the Workers Defense League and the Southern Tenant Farmers

Union so that the funds received could go for more than just legal defense, but also to

136 Sidney Hertzberg to Aaron Levenstein, December 9, 1936, Reel 3, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Aaron Levenstein to Sidney Hertzberg, December 15, 1936, Reel 3, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Sidney Hertzberg to Aaron Levenstein, December 21, 1936, Reel 3, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Sidney Hertzberg to Aaron Levenstein, December 24, 1936, Reel 3, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

137 Aaron Levenstein to Sidney Hertzberg, December 15, 1936, Reel 3, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

138 Ibid.

139 Ibid.

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support the general needs of the STFU.140 Ultimately the date for the week ended up being in the early spring.141 This makes sense from a tactical point of view since this is when sharecroppers were often out of the public eye. These dates did not fall within cotton chopping season or picking season, but rather in that in-between time when there was a bit of a lull in the growing season. This would have allowed STFU leadership more time to dedicate to the developing and publicizing the week.

Herzberg and Levenstein were joined by a number of New York volunteers, most notable among them was Harriet Young who go on to become the executive secretary of National Sharecroppers Week from 1938-1939 (and for time was H.L. Mitchell’s paramour).142 Harriet Young had also for a time been a secretary for the Workers

Defense League. She was also independently wealthy, according to Mitchell had a comfortable income of around $10,000 year.143 Young seems to been a capable executive secretary and quite conscientious as demonstrated by a letter that she sent

Evelyn Smith in the fall of 1939 in regards to a young woman who was working on a series of articles about sharecroppers in Missouri. The issue, of course, was that this journalist was cooperating with UCAPAWA and this was after the STFU-UCAPAWA split. Young wrote “the net result of all this may be that her campaign will be so good it

140 Sidney Hertzberg to Aaron Levenstein, December 24, 1936, Reel 3, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

141 Evelyn Smith to Frank McCallister, November 11, 1939, Frank McCallister Papers, Box 5, Folder 58, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago.

142 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 153-157.

143 Butler interview; Mitchell, Mean Things, 156.

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will take the sharecropper thing right out of our hands in New York.”144 In point of fact the split between the STFU and UCAPAWA did create difficulties, particularly for

National Sharecroppers Week. According to Grubbs after the split, “Leading contributors to National Sharecroppers’ Week fell away.” 145 A perfect example of this was when the

National Sharecroppers’ Week rented Carnegie Hall for a fundraiser. The CIO pressured its member and allies to not attend which made the event an unmitigated disaster. As it turns out Young made up the losses out of her own pocket to the tune of upwards of $2000.146 Amberson was of the opinion that this was an attempt by Young exert undue influence over the union, however it seems more likely that she did this out of genuine concern for the STFU generally, and more specifically for H.L. Mitchell.147

Even though National Sharecroppers’ Week would have less success during and immediately after the split between the STFU and UCAPAWA, it still continued to be a major source of income for the union.148 Writing to Frank McCalister in March of 1940, union president J.R. Butler asserted that “1940 NSW was the best ever, thanks to you and a host of other friends.”149 Some of this success was undoubtedly due to the leadership of Pauli Murray, who followed Harriet Young as the next executive secretary

144 Harriet Young to Evelyn Smith, November 9, 1939, Frank McCallister Papers, Box 5, Folder 58, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago.

145 Grubbs, 186.

146 William R. Amberson to Frank McCallister, July 16, 1939, Frank McCallister Papers, Box 5, Folder 58, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago; Mitchell, Mean Things, 153. Dunbar claims the amount was $5,000. See Dunbar, 168.

147 William R. Amberson to Frank McCallister, July 16, 1939, Frank McCallister Papers, Box 5, Folder 58, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago.

148 Grubbs, 186; Mitchell, Mean Things, 159-163.

149 J.R. Butler to Frank McCalister, March 27, 1940, Frank McCallister Papers, Box 5, Folder 58, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago.

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of NSW. Murray had and would continue to overcome a myriad of obstacles in her life’s journey, but prior to joining NSW she was at a low point in her life after the dissolution of the Negro People’s Committee and her job as acting executive secretary of the organization.150 As Murray recalls in her autobiography, “To sit on the hard benches in the barren reception room of the Home Relief Bureau, one’s identity reduced to a number on a yellow sheet, stripped one of all personal dignity.”151 Yet shortly thereafter she was hired by the NSW.152 Under Murray’s direction Gilmore notes that “the National

Sharecropper’s Week dinner and forum in February 1940 turned out to be a smashing success.”153 Of particular importance was the involvement of Eleanor Roosevelt whom

Murray had approached to participate in the event: “She…agreed to be the guest speaker at our dinner for National Sharecroppers Week and to award the prize for the essay contest.”154 Shortly thereafter it was decided to turn National Sharecroppers’

Week into more permanent operation as a foundation.155 The National Sharecroppers’

Fund far outlasted the it parent organization, the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, lasting until 1979 when it became the Rural Advancement Fund.156

In conclusion, what can we make of the attempts by the Southern Tenant

Farmers’ Union to garner support from individuals outside the cotton fields in the

150 Murray, 133-134.

151 Murray, 134.

152 Murray, 134-135.

153 Gilmore, 315.

154 Murray, 135.

155 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 159-161.

156 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 161-163.

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Arkansas Delta and the surrounding region encompassing Oklahoma, Texas, and

Missouri? Arguably these outside supporters such as Gardner Jackson provided a lifeline to the union in terms of funds and material aid such as clothing since the rank- and-file members were too poor to help one another by forming an independent, self- sustaining union organization. For his part, Jackson had been an advocate for the oppressed and exploited his entire adult life and so had the connections and knowledge to effectively publicize the plight of landless farmers. It certainly did not hurt that he was also independently wealthy and could support the union from his own pocket as could

Harriet Young. Undoubtedly Gardner’s and Young’s connection to other members of their class was also pivotal in garnering contributions for the union as well. Meanwhile southern outsiders like Willie Sue Blagden and Howard Kester were able to effectively bridge the gap between the rural South and the urban North by virtue of their middle- class status. Certainly, Blagden and Kester were definite outsiders in the sense of their political orientation but coming from a southern background they understood the local terrain (although Kester perhaps more than Blagden). Nevertheless, they were also vital emissaries to radicals and progressives in the North in places like Washington DC, New

York, and Baltimore. Without these outside allies and supporters, the STFU would have languished in obscurity and most likely would have collapsed under the weight of repression and violence that would have continued unchecked without the spotlight folks like Jackson, Kester, and Bladgen directed towards the cotton fields in the rural

Southwest.

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CHAPTER 6 LOOKING BACKWARD AND FORWARD: THE CHANGING NATURE OF COMMERICAL AGRICULTURE IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH

In conclusion, by the 1930s the situation in the Arkansas Delta and the surrounding region for landless farmers—tenant farmers and sharecroppers, was quite dire. Conditions had been difficult during the agricultural depression of the 1920s, conditions which were only made worse by the nationwide depression affecting all industries and all regions of the country following the stock market crash of 1929.

Attempts by the Roosevelt Administration to improve conditions in the agricultural sector, while well-meaning, failed miserably to improve the conditions and material circumstances of landless farmers. The Agricultural Adjustment Act and the Agricultural

Adjustment Administration it birthed had one overriding goal that overrode all other considerations—to stabilize cotton prices. The received wisdom of the day said that if prices were stabilized everyone would benefit from top to bottom, however, the method used to stabilize agricultural commodity prices resulted in the eviction and further impoverishment of an already exploited group, black and white tenant farmers and sharecroppers.

This was a huge missed opportunity to entirely remake southern agriculture (and even agriculture at the national level as well). After all, previous thinkers from Thomas

Paine to Thomas Jefferson to Henry George to A.M. Simons had proposed various kinds of land programs and reforms that would ensure access to farms to the thrifty and industrious, but poorer members of American society, programs designed to fulfill

America’s highest notions of egalitarianism and equality. Historically there have been no shortages of plans and proposals with regards to doing this. And, previous movements had, at times, made small inroads in their attempts to reorganize agriculture along more

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egalitarian, cooperative lines from Revolutionary-era Regulators to early-twentieth- century agrarian socialists. All of these movements, however, had largely failed, foundering upon the rocks of tradition and elite control of the machinery of government specifically and society more generally.

During the Great Depression there was a brief window of opportunity in which the entire agricultural industry in the South could have been dramatically democratized, but for a host of reasons it was not. As many historians have noted, while many of FDR’s policies, Social Security for example, were quite progressive at heart Franklin Delano

Roosevelt was not a radical. He came from the American aristocratic class with its penchant for limited social tinkering. Yet FDR, just like other like-minded American aristocrats was not interested in tearing down the American capitalist edifice to its foundation, but rather was interested in stabilizing an increasingly shaky system that seemed ready to topple given under the right circumstances. The long-lived Roosevelt

Administration proved to be a force for stability, tempering the worst excesses and abuses of the American capitalist system and ensuring a greater shared prosperity that nevertheless often failed to reach those at the very bottom of American society.

Beyond this tendency towards a moderate progressivism, agriculture was not something that FDR or many of the technocrats that he brought with him into the federal government were particularly familiar with. Quite simply, most of them had very little knowledge or interest in agriculture; it was not on their radar, at least not until the STFU and other farmers’ organizations like the Farm Holiday Association or the Alabama

Sharecroppers Union put it there. That being said, even if FDR had been inclined towards a radical reorganization southern agriculture, even if FDR had had an interest

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in southern agriculture and was inclined towards a really radical reorganization of southern agriculture, he simply did not have the power to do so. It was, after all, southern senators who held the reins of power in the United States Senate and certainly were not interested in seeing those kinds of reforms instituted in the agricultural sector.

Furthermore, if New Deal progressives pushed too hard for changes to southern agriculture southern senators could block industrial New Deal legislation.

Thus, while the rest of the country seemed to move forward, however incrementally, during the New Deal era as programs were put into place to aid and assist the forgotten men and women of society and give greater leverage to labor in its perennial conflict with capital, in southern agriculture things seemed to move backwards. More and more small farmers found themselves forced out of an agricultural sector increasingly dominated by larger and larger farms, meanwhile landless farmers found any hope of becoming farm owners themselves completely destroyed. Their new wages would never provide them with the opportunity to purchase land of their own and the structure of this new agricultural system based on federal subsidies ensured that even if they were able to purchase a farm, they would never be able to compete with larger landowners. More and more of these landless farmers, tenant farmers and sharecroppers, were reduced to the status of transient peasants as technology reduced their role in the agricultural process, ultimately reducing it to only harvesting the cotton crop. In the past, landless farmers had been needed for plowing, chopping and weeding, and finally for picking cotton across the South. Now they were only needed for the final step in the cotton production process and eventually with the advent of an efficient cotton-picking machine they were no longer needed even for that.

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Under the Agricultural Adjusment Act farmers received federal subsidies to not plant cotton. The subsidies were supposed to be shared with their tenant farmers and sharecroppers; often they were not and furthermore, the distribution of the subsidies left these landless farmers with less income than they had received before the program was instituted. Appeals the federal government to change the way the cotton reduction program was administered fell on deaf ears; the cotton section of the AAA was administered by the very individuals (or their allies) who profited the most from the unfairly distributed agricultural subsidies. The investigation of abuses under the program similarly fell to those who were committing the abuses (or their allies). As one historian pithily observed when it came time to investigate the abuses in the Arkansas Delta the landlords were investigating themselves.

The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union sprang into existence as a result of this homegrown humanitarian crisis. Started by two socialists in the small hamlet of

Tyronza, Arkansas, the union quickly grew from an initial group of eighteen members in

July of 1934 to a total membership of around 35,000 at its height in 1937. The STFU advocated for an end to evictions, fair distribution of federal farm subsidies, and ultimately for government sponsored farming cooperatives for the many unemployed, landless tenant farmers and sharecroppers. The interracial union had a profound impact on the discussion of agricultural policy acting as a catalyst for commissions on farm tenancy in Arkansas and Oklahoma as well as a national commission on farm tenancy.

Without the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, it is likely that the Farm Security

Administration would never have been created, not to mention the Resettlement

Administration. Both of these organizations provided aid to farmers across the nation.

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Furthermore, the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union paved the way for later cooperation between black and white Americans during the civil rights movement of the

1950 and 1960s. A number of its members such as Carrie Dilworth and the children of members such as J.E. Clayton played active roles in later civil rights organizations, but more than that it showed in a powerful way that black and white southerners could cross the artificial boundary of race and join together in common cause to purse economic justice during the heyday of Jim Crow. In short, the STFU was an impactful organization that had an outsized influence well beyond its relatively small size.

All of this is quite well-known. This dissertation seeks to move beyond early discussions about why the union came into existence or its relationship to the New Deal and its impact on agricultural policy and rural poverty. Some of the earliest works on the union approached it from a very Washington-centric perspective, or in some subsequent treatments, from the perspective of the top leaders in the union, key members of the executive council—folks like J.R. Butler and H.L. Mitchell who were guiding the union’s efforts and shaping its program of action. More recent studies on the union have focused on the perspective of rank-and-file union membership, shining a spotlight on the perspective from the grassroots and how those individuals understood the purpose and significance of the union.

While these different studies of the STFU have expanded our understanding of this phenomenon in some ways they have still fallen short in others. I have sought to expand our understanding of the union chronologically and regionally, but more than that to answer the question of how such a relatively small, obscure social movement materialized in such a relatively short period of time and had such an outsized impact

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on the discussions and implementation of national farm policy and rural poverty? How did this happen? How was the social movement that became the STFU birthed? How did it grow? These are questions that have far-reaching ramifications beyond simply the

STFU; in reality, these are questions about all social movements and not simply why they happen, but how they happen. My approach to these questions explores them broadly within the particularities of the situation that emerged in the Arkansas Delta and surrounding region during the 1930s. In the case of the STFU there were three crucial processes that contributed to its formation and early successes in organizing among poor black and white tenant farmers and sharecroppers.

The first of these processes was drawing upon pre-existing radical traditions within both the black and white communities and then synthesizing those traditions and communities into one unified whole. There is a long tradition of African American resistance to racial oppression that dates back to Reconstruction and beyond. This resistance started in the Antebellum Era at both the individual, and at times, collective levels. Work slowdowns, breaking tools, feigning illness—all of these were methods by which enslaved individuals fought back against their oppressors. And in the process, they formed communities of resistance and relationships built on solidarity which became an integral part of African American culture.

After the brief window of opportunity for equal citizenship during Reconstruction closed, African Americans in the South again found themselves largely at the whims of white supremacist oppressors, however as they were no longer enslaved, they were able to develop and add new weapons to their arsenal as they continued to fight back.

One of these new weapons was spatial mobility; blacks moved from plantation to

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plantation looking for better employers and higher wages and from state to state trying to find less restrictive environments where they could pursue economic advancement and political participation. Just as today, mobility in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was central to bettering one’s circumstances (although the stakes were much higher). One could abscond from a large landlord’s property in the middle of the night or wait for settling up time to leave, but mobility was one small way to exert agency over one’s circumstances and the circumstances of one’s family.

More overt acts of resistance, particularly group acts of resistance such as strikes, also took place during this period as well, however this kind of activity was almost immediately challenged and met with violence that often spiraled out of control.

Overt resistance was thus exponentially riskier than engaging in more subversive, secretive activity. Consequently, much of this resistance took place offstage and and never entered the public transcript. Some scholars misunderstood this, assuming that during Jim Crow blacks simply acquiesced to the new racial order knowing well the dangers of fighting back. Beneath the surface, however, there existed a roiling, bustling combative spirit just waiting for an opportunity to break free and small acts of resistance took place every day. African Americans in the South were always waiting patiently for a change in the economic and political landscape to push for change.

This is why African Americans in Southeast Arkansas took formed the

Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America in the aftermath of World War I.

High cotton prices and the relative dirth of labor provided African Americans with leverage to demand more. They did demand more; they demanded their fair share of the proceeds of the cotton harvest. In turn, they were met with overwhelming violence—

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while union members gathered in a small country church to consider hiring a lawyer to aid them white assailants fired indiscriminately into the building which was filled with men, women, and children. The next day a larger group of white assailants gathered at the church and burned it to the ground. Next, these mauraders went on a rampage in the nearby small town of Elaine killing union and non-union African Americans alike indiscriminately under the false claim that area blacks were planning an insurrection against whites. This example of black resistance became a painful memory for African

Americans in Arkansas and across the South; they came to understand that if they pushed too hard for their rights by themselves the results would always be the same— death and destruction.

There is also strong tradition of agrarian radicalism among landless and small white farmers in the Old Southwest which dates back to the Populist Movement and beyond. Many poor whites immigrated to the Old Southwest from all over the country, but particularly from the Old South with its worn-out soil and static social hierarchy.

They found opportunities to homestead in places like Oklahoma, where land runs on former Native American land provided many whites with the opportunity to scale the agricultural ladder and become economically self-sufficient small farmowners, or so it seemed at first. These small farmers came into possession of their land at a time when agriculture was beginning to undergo a massive transformation. And just as industrialization in the North had doomed the independent craftsman, so farming on a small scale was also on its way out due to a number of external factors.

Small farmers largely blamed railroads, banks, and middlemen for their increasingly desparate economic straights—what they often collectively described as

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the eastern establishment or Wall Street. And they attempted to combat these forces by taking collective action, forming buying and selling cooperatives and ultimately attempting to elect politicians who would use the federal government to benefit small farmers rather than corporate interests. The Populist revolt fizzled out and collapsed after the failed presidential candidacy of William Jennings Bryan. Many of its adherents rejoined their respective political parties and narrowed their scope of vision about what was economically and politically feasible.

Others were not so quick to discount the power of collective action as they were drawn to radical visions of economic independence. Consequently, many former populists continued in their radicalism by becoming newly minted socialists in the early twentieth century. This nascent socialist movement was particularly strong in Oklahoma, which had more dues paying party members than any other state (it is no a coindence that next to Arkansas, the STFU was strongest in the state of Oklahoma). The Socialist

Party in the Old Southwest was very concerned with increasing tenancy rates and high rates of bankruptcy and foreclosure among small farmers. Consequently, it developed a program whereby small farmers could not lose their land—continued use and occupancy guaranteed ownership. The party, however, never developed sufficient strength to implement this plan. Furthermore, the Socialist Party in Oklahoma was decimated following the Green Corn Rebellion of 1917 in South Central Oklahoma. This insurrection, launched by the Working Class Union, a radical, interracial union, opposed to the draft. The rebels planned to march on Washington, D.C. and demand an end to the draft. The rebellion was quickly crushed and used as an excuse to round up all radicals, including peaceful socialists, thus destroying the Oklahoma socialist movement

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ahead of the first Red Scare which had the same effect at the national level. This event demonstrated to radical whites the dangers of fragmented resistance to the power structure in the Old Southwest.

Ike Shaw was an eyewitness to the Elaine Massacre and later was one of the founding members of the STFU. Based on his experience in Elaine he advocated for an interracial union because he knew that if poor landless blacks and whites were not united in one group, they could be played off one another. He had already experienced the disastrous consequences of one group standing alone against the white supremacist oligarchy that held the reins of power in rural Arkansas. Socialists Oscar and Freda Ameringer similarly had experienced the destruction of a movement they had worked so hard to create among small and landless farmers in rural Oklahoma. Oscar

Ameringer understood the need for cooperation between the races. He strongly opposed a grandfather clause in Oklahoma designed to disenfranchise and thus disempower African Americans in Oklahoma. He saw the pitfall of resorting to violent resistance with the Green Corn Rebellion in which he took no part. The Ameringers later became advisors and supporters of the STFU from afar. Oscar Ameringer frequently took up the cause of landless farmers in his weekly newspaper, The American

Guardian. Charlie McCoy was also a member of that earlier socialist movement that gained so much support prior to its collapse during World War I. He was an Arkansas socialist and became an early leader in the STFU, bringing with him connections to radical leaders across the region and nation as well as tactical knowledge and organizing experience. It was invididuals such as these—Ike Shaw, Oscar and Freda

Ameringer, and Charlie McCoy who helped insure continuity as well as the fusion of

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different radical traditions making possible the rapid expansion of the Southern Tenant

Farmers’ Union in the Old Southwest.

While the union relied on male elders from earlier social movements to propel and guide its early growth, many of the newer leaders in the union were African

American women. With the exception of a few individuals such as Eliza Nolden,

Henrietta McGhee, and Marie Pierce the names of these women and the important role these women played have gone largely unnoticed and unrecorded. Most of the evidence we have regarding the inner workings of the STFU exist in the copious files kept by H.L. Mitchell which were donated to University of North Carolina. Much of the correspondence is between the various members of the upper leadership of the union, especially the executive council, and outside allies and supporters. Of course, there is also a fair amount of correspondence between the leadership and rank-and-file members, but this is a smaller subsection of the collection (and much harder to decipher as well). These letters from the grassroots are often short and to the point, requesting relief or aid or land to farm (or own). And these letters were written necessarily by those who were most literate and had the time to sit down and write, so generally the better off among the tenant farmers and sharecroppers.

There is a smattering of correspondence from African American women members of the union. It was these literate black women who often took a prominent role in the union at the ground level in individual union locals. One historian describes this as a “farmer’s daughter affect,” meaning that black women (and white women as well) were oftentimes more educated than their male counterparts because their responsibilities differed. Young boys had to start working in the cotton fields earlier than

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young girls and these young girls oftentimes had responsibilities in the house as well which allowed for greater flexibility in learning rudimentary reading and writing skills.

Being able to read and write at an elementary level was enough of a qualification for a leadership position since often the only way to stay in touch with the larger organization was by corresponding through the mail.

In addition to literacy as a reason for the high level of involvement of black women in the union their unique role in the family also contributed to their assuming roles as leaders as well. There was a relatively high proportion of rural black women who were widows or single heads of a household. This meant that they were often the de facto heads of family groups and more accustomed to making decisions and engaging with the outside world than their white female counterparts. Additionally, many of these black women had already assumed leadership roles in the community in churches, fraternal organizations, or in the public health field as midwives. In particular as midwives’ black women occupied a really crucial liminal space in rural communities which allowed them to move between the separate black and white worlds because poor white sharecropper women often could not afford the services of a white doctor.

Consequently, a black midwife might take care of a white woman when she was ill or in labor with a child.

On the whole this constellation of factors coupled with a hunger and a desire for land of their own (which at this time was equated with dignity and economic independence) provided black women with the motivation and ability to assume crucial leadership roles in individual locals within the union. Initially women were relegated to position of secondary importance in the organization, however after what H.L. Mitchell

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described as a “women’s revolt” at the second annual convention in 1936 where women attendees demanded greater influence additional leadership positions were made available for them on the executive council and they were allowed to take a more active more at the grassroots level. The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union was not just forward looking in terms of its approach to interracial organization and cooperation, it was also forward looking when it came to gender relations as well. That being said, it is important to note that the union was stretching accepted paradigms regarding race and gender relations, it was not breaking them. In particular, the relationship between race and power in the union continued to be a thorny issue throughout its existence with some black leaders arguing that they were treated as second-class members. Still, taking into consideration the milieu from which the union developed, the STFU was still an innovative organization in terms of undermining the control of a principally male, white supremacist oligarchy, and for its time, was surprisingly egalitarian in its outlook.

Finally, it was outside allies that made the explosive growth of the union in its early years possible. The Socialist Party led by Norman Thomas was one of the earliest outside organizations to support the union. Two of the union’s principal founding members, Clay East and H.L. Mitchell, were Socialist Party members. And Norman

Thomas did make frequent mention of the union in print and in speeches and radio addresses. He also visited the Arkansas Delta on more than one occasion. In fact, H.L.

Mitchell in his memoir credits Norman Thomas with coming up with the idea for the union in the first place as well as funding an early survey of conditions in the Arkansas

Delta. That being said the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union was never the “Socialist

Tenant Farmers’ Union” as some scholars have suggested. It was never a subsidiary of

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the national Socialist Party, though party members were savvy enough to recognize the propaganda value of supporting the union. The grassroots membership of the union by and large was not socialist, and the union’s program did not simply mirror the Socialist

Party’s national platform, but rather addressed conditions on the ground in northeastern

Arkansas and the surrounding region.

There were many other organizations that the union reached out to that, in turn, supported the union. Radical clergy such as Howard Kester and Claude Williams allowed the union access to a network of progressive Christian churches across the country. The union received support from leading liberal theologians like Reinheld

Niebuhr. The STFU naturally also tried to find allies among organized labor, particularly the AFL and later CIO. The national organizations, however, seemed to have little understanding of the needs of tenant farmers and sharecroppers and seemed primarily interested in the union as a source of publicity and union dues. The STFU was endorsed by the AFL, but never became an affiliate of the organization. The union briefly became part of UCAPAWA, which was part of the CIO, but this affiliation proved to be disastrous in the long run. Beyond unions the STFU reached out to African

American civil rights and advocacy organizations, receiving moral, if not financial support from the NAACP and the Urban League. It also corresponded frequently with the midwestern Farmer’s Holiday Association.

Part of the difficulty in finding outside supporters and allies was in simply deciding which relationships were the most fruitful to pursue—there was certainly no shortage of potential allies in the ranks of progressive or radical political organizations, civil rights organizations, farmers’ organizations, labor organizations, religious

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organizations etc. The open question was always which organizations could materially help the STFU pursue it agenda for the improvement of the lives of landless farmers.

And many of the organizations the union approached for assistance and collaboration also desperately needed funds for their own programs. During the Great Depression many philanthropic and advocacy organizations were cash-strapped. It was the same for the many individuals who wrote to the union offering one or two dollars of support.

For example, college students held clothing drives and supported the union when they could with their meager funds. The pot was simply too small, and the need was simply too great. The union did receive quite a bit of support from the Garland Fund, an organization which provided money to left-wing and radical organizations, but this support was limited (and predicated to some degree on the union becoming self- sustaining). It also received legal support and funding from the ACLU. Finally,

Washington Committee for Agricultural Workers, led by the philanthropist and one-time

New Deal bureaucrat Gardner Jackson, was key in providing financial support to the union.

The union was also able to tap into a small group of southern progressives and

“refugees” like Howard Kester and Pauli Murray. Both Kester and Murray understood how the South functioned (or did not) and were able to act as emissaries and ambassdors to between tenant farmers and sharecroppers in the Old Southwest and

Northerners in places like New York and Washington, D.C. They formed an effective and vital bridge between the disparate cultures of the rural South and the urban North.

Without such go-betweens it would have been much more difficult for the union to articulate its plight in present and its vision for the future to their fellow Americans in

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distant locales who had never seen a cotton boll and had no firsthand experience of the fraught nature of race relations in the South or the absolute poverty of rural southerners.

Kester and Murray were among a small cadre of southerners who were able to effectively engage the interest of Northerners in a region of the country that, for all intents and purposes, was a completely different world—a region that seemed more like a foreign country and than a part of the United States that they knew so well.

The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union faced an uphill battle from its incipience.

Labor unions in the South have a rather dismal track record, often being annihilated before they could gain sufficient strength to impact the communities around them.

Certainly, there are some exceptions to this such as dockworker’s union in New Orleans or the Brotherhood of Timber Workers in the piney woods of Texas and Louisiana, but overall attempts at unionization were put down with extreme violence and repression.

The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union changed this—not only did it successfully unite tenant farmers and sharecroppers of different races it drew national attention to their plight and had a lasting, if muted impact on race relations and rural poverty in the South.

It paved the way for later agricultural unions like the United Farm Workers (UFW) and civil rights organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

(SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The STFU pioneered the kind of interracial cooperation which later came to define the most well-known moments of the civil rights struggle in the 1950s and 1960s—freedom rides and sit-ins. It demonstrated the feasibility of black and white workers standing together and demanding social and economic justice. One way to understand the STFU is as one link in a larger chain of the black freedom struggle. It is also part of a larger interracial struggle for economic

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justice by poor people of all races, a fact that bears repeating as the United States faces a new rural crisis and resurgence of white nationalism in the second decade of the tweny-first century.

Other historians of the union have aptly demonstrated why the union formed as well as the basic narrative journey of the union. The question of how these embattled, landless farmers went about organizing is one that has been relatively unexplored. In this dissertation I have argued that the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union was able to grow quickly and relatively effectively because it built on pre-existing radical traditions of both blacks and whites, synthesizing them, developed grassroots leadership among black women, and successfully partnered with powerful allies outside the South in the

Midwest and Northeast, organizations such as the Socialist Party and liberal philanthropists such as Gardner Jackson. These ingredients account for the meteoric rise of this interracial movement for economic justice by landless farmers in the dark days of the 1930s Jim Crow Old Southwest.

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CHAPTER 7 ESSAY ON SOURCES

Some of the earliest historians of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union focused initially on the relationship between the STFU and the Socialist Party of the 1930s, neglecting to dig much farther beneath the surface to understand how the movement organized and it relationship to prior radical movements.1 M.S. Venkataramani went into great detail describing how the leader of the Socialist Party, Norman Thomas tried to aid the nascent union, despite the fact that “the [Socialist] party he headed had no significant following in rural areas of the South.”2 Jerold S. Auerbach similarly placed the STFU within the confines of 1930s socialism, noting how “Norman Thomas’s suggestion was the seed from which the union sprouted.”3 Even though he goes on to mention a prominent newspaper editor (Oscar Ameringer) in Oklahoma who “sent the union the model for its constitution” and how an “Arkansas Socialist (Charlie McCoy) proposed the

1 For some of the earliest discussions of the relationship between Norman Thomas and the Socialist Party and the STFU see M.S. Venkataramani,“ Norman Thomas, Arkansas Sharecroppers, and the Roosevelt Agricultural Policies, 1933-1937,“ The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47, No 2 (September 1960): 225-246, Jerold S. Auerbach, “Southern Tenant Farmers: Socialist Critics of the New Deal,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 27, No. 2 (Summer 1968): 113-131, and Lowell K. Dyson, “The Southern Tenant Farmers Union and Depression Politics,” Political Science Quarterly 88, No. 2 (June 1873): 230- 252. For an alternative take on the relationship between the Socialist Party and the Southern Tenant Farmers Union see James R. Green’s, Grassroots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest 1895- 1943 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978). Green noted how the relationship between the union and the party went back much farther than the 1930s. According to Green, “The organizers of the STFU brought together many of the agrarian Socialist strands that had originated in the prewar movement.” See Green, 420. That being said the portion of the book covering the STFU is small, running just under twenty pages. For a relatively more recent discussion on this topic, see “James Thomas Gay, “Norman Thomas: ‘Tribune of the Disenfranchised,’” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 48, No. 4 (Winter 1989): 329-348.

2 M.S. Venkataramani, “Norman Thomas, Arkansas Sharecroppers, and the Roosevelt Agricultural Policies, 1933-1937,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47, No. 2 (September 1960): 228, 232- 236.

3 Jerold S. Auerbach, “Southern Tenant Farmers: Socialist Critics of the New Deal,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 27, No. 2. (Summer 1968): 122.

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union’s name.”4 Yet, he fails to note these men by name or the fact that both of them had been involved in the Socialist Party since the early 1900s—they were not new socialist recruits like H.L. Mitchell or Clay East, but rather experienced organizers.5

The radical traditions that the STFU built on is not the only theme neglected by early scholars of the union. Many historians also neglected to explore the themes that are the core of this dissertation such as the development of power relations in the

Arkansas Delta, the role of black women as leaders in the union, and the role of outside supporters in ensuring that the union had the financial and public support necessary to grow. There are undoubtedly valid reasons for some of these absences. Much of this has to do with the archival evidence available at the time these scholars were writing.

Black women were (and still are) largely absent from the historical record. There is a smattering of correspondence from African American women in the Southern Tenant

Farmers’ Union papers; however, the limited amount of material makes it hard to draw firm conclusions. And there is also the question of identifying the racial identity of the women who were writing in to the central office. Sometimes it is apparent that it was a black woman, but unless she self-identified in some way it is almost impossible to definitively state her race one way or the other.6

4 Ibid. Auerbach does not explicitly state the names of these two individuals but based on other sources it is clear who they were. See H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 38, 49.

5 H.L. Mitchell, Mean Things, 14, 27-28; Green, 36-48, 414.

6 Census records were undoubtedly one hurdle early researchers faced. Census records are subject to the “72 Year Rule” which means that scholars must wait 72 years to see individual census records. This means that the 1920 and 1930 censuses have been available since 1992 and 2002, respectively and makes it possible for more recent scholars to attempt to identify the demographic characteristics of union members. Nevertheless, it can still be difficult to identify individuals by census records, particularly if they moved around frequently (as tenant farmers and sharecroppers often did), if a name was quite common (Mary Moore, for example), or if census takers misspelled names (such as Extricia Glen incorrectly written as Extraca Glen by a census enumerator). https://www.census.gov/history/www/genealogy/decennial_census_records/the_72_year_rule_1.html.

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The earliest monograph dealing with the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union is The

Forgotten Farmers written by David Eugene Conrad. While Conrad does provide context for the formation of the union and goes into great detail describing the development of the sharecropping system, he largely leaves undiscussed the development of power relations in the Arkansas Delta during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While he briefly mentions Reconstruction, for him the story really starts in 1900 with the increasing tenancy rates in the Cotton Belt.7 That being said he does briefly discuss the development of cotton plantations in the Arkansas Delta in the early 1900s, noting how “The area was formerly swampland, having been drained only a few decades earlier.”8 He also briefly touches on power relations in this new cotton region, observing how “plantation owners there were new and more inclined to be profit-minded and less paternalistic than planters in the Old South.”9

Conrad only hints at the radical traditions that infused the STFU. For example, he talks about a “relatively large and active group of socialists in northeastern Arkansas.”10

What he does not explicitly outline is that many of them had been part of a vibrant socialist movement that emerged in the first two decades of the twentieth century before being largely destroyed during and after World War I. Many of the socialists he describes were not new converts to the cause. These were not Norman Thomas

Accessed April 8, 2017. Nevertheless, new technologies and methodologies have made it possible in the intervening years to create a richer, more inclusive narrative of the union.

7 David Eugene Conrad, The Forgotten Farmers: The Story of Sharecroppers in the New Deal (Urbana: The University of Illinois, 1965), 2.

8 Conrad, 83.

9 Conrad, 83.

10 Conrad, 83.

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socialists, rather they were Eugene V. Debs socialists. Conrad does highlight Charlie

McCoy’s work for the union, noting that McCoy “was an old-time socialist,” but there were many other “old-time socialists” involved as well.11 Another missed opportunity to more explicitly discuss the impact of older radical movements on the union is when

Conrad talks about the Elaine Massacre and how one survivor—Ike Shaw—in particular argued for a biracial STFU.12 This would have been an excellent place to tease out the connection between the longer black freedom struggle and the STFU.

Conrad discusses race in a rather perfunctory manner noting how “Race relations played an important role in the plantation system” and that “White supremacy was the gospel of Southern life.”13 His narrative focuses to a large degree on debates in Washington, D.C. over agricultural policy including an extensive discussion of the creation and implementation of the Agricultural Adjustment Act.14 Rank-and-file members (particularly black women) of the union get short shrift in this narrative which perhaps focuses overly much on Washington personalities like Henry A. Wallace,

George N. Peek, Chester C. Davis, Cully Cobb, and Rexford Tugwell.15 Conrad does mention some African American men within the STFU leadership such as C.H. Smith,

11 Conrad, 86.

12 Conrad, 86.

13 Conrad, 11.

14 In fact, the union does not make an appearance until halfway through the book. To be fair the union is not the entire focus of this book—this book is just as much about farm policy during the 1930s as it is about the STFU; much of the action takes place within the Washington beltway. Only two out of ten chapters are exclusively devoted to the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union. See Conrad, The Forgotten Farmers.

15 Conrad, 37-45.

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E.B. McKinney, A.B. Brookins, and T.A. Allen.16 Women of any color are conspicuously and almost entirely absent.17

Conrad was also rather selective when it came to his discussion of the outside supporters of the union, particularly those who were not part of the New Deal. To some degree this makes sense as Conrad largely focused his narrative on events in

Washington, D.C., paying particular attention to the purge of the liberals in the AAA as they attempted to aid tenant farmers and sharecroppers in the fight over the meaning of section 7A of the cotton contract. According to Conrad these men “looked upon AAA as an opportunity for social reform.”18 Their role in the story of landless farmers ends abruptly (with the exception of Gardner Jackson) with the AAA purge in early 1935. Still, others like Norman Thomas do feature prominently throughout the work.

Another of the earliest works on the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union is Donald H.

Grubbs Cry from the Cotton. Even though this is one of the earliest book-length treatments of the union Grubbs spends a relatively short time providing an account of the decades leading up to the union’s creation in 1934, particularly the changing nature of power relations and the direction of agricultural development in the Arkansas Delta over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For Grubbs, the story really starts in the “prosperous 1920s” when “the whites came down from the hills and the

16 Conrad, 88-92. The only African Americans mentioned are all male and were either organizers, executive council members or otherwise prominent members of the union. Even so, the number of black men he discusses can be safely counted on one hand.

17 Conrad does identify a number of white women from outside the union who came to the Delta as observers/supporters such as New Yorker Mary Hillyer as well as Jennie Lee and Naomi Mitchison—both from the United Kingdom. See Conrad, 160, 164.

18 Conrad, 106-112.

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Negroes crossed the river from Mississippi to make a better living on the huge Delta plantations or in the humming sawmills.”19 By the 1930s things had soured for those folks who came in search of opportunity; Grubbs observes that “the vast majority of people…were incomparably more impoverished than other Americans.”20

Grubbs does not spend much time tying the STFU to earlier radical movements.

There are hints of these ties in the book, however. Grubbs mentions veteran socialist

Oscar Ameringer and the influence his paper, The American Guardian, had on one of the STFU’s founders, Clay East. He also mentions the socialist Charlie McCoy, who was instrumental to the early growth of the STFU, as well as STFU president J.R.

Butler’s ideology, which he calls a “Mish-mash of ideas drawn from Populist, Wobbly, and other Midwestern radical sources.”21 Yet Grubbs does not dig any deeper than this to draw explicit connections between the STFU and earlier radical agrarian social movements.

Grubbs does talk more extensively about race than prior scholars of the union.

He argues that, “The union’s history furnishes a lesson in interracial understanding that represents one of its greatest legacies.”22 He also begins his book pointedly noting how,

19 Donald H. Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union and the New Deal (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 27, 63. 4.

20 Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, 3-4.

21 Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, 27, 63.

22 Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, 66. Frictionless interracial cooperation was often much more an ideal than a reality. Grubbs acknowledges this noting how “carrying this ambitious doctrine [of interracialism] into practice was quite another matter, and East and Mitchell were prepared to tread carefully.” See Grubbs, 66-68. Other historians have been a bit more sanguine about the extent of the union’s commitment to interracial cooperation. Woodruff notes how “The commitment of the founders to interracial unity proved difficult and was not always honored when locals were organized.” See See Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, American Congo: the African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta (Chapel Hill: The University Of North Carolina Press, 2003), 163. Similarly, Naison notes how “historians have often underestimated the tenuousness of Black membership’s commitment to the kind of interracialism which

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“Particularly for black people in this country, the cry from the cotton was a shriek against white ignorance or callousness.”23 Yet in a manner reminiscent of Conrad he focuses quite a bit on federal policymaking. At the same time, he more evenly divides his narrative between what is going on in Washington, D.C. and what is going on locally in

Northeastern Arkansas and the surrounding region. Consequently, he does a much better job of discussing the experiences of white and black rank-and-file members; still, black women are largely subsumed within the larger African American category. And while Grubbs discusses the union in terms of its racial make-up, he rarely further differentiates according to gender. An occasional African American leader in the union such as E.B. McKinney or A.B. Brookins or even John Handcox makes his way into the narrative, but black women are largely absent. One black woman, Eliza Nolden, does make an appearance, but as the victim of a vicious beating rather than as a prominent member who spurred on the union’s growth.24

the STFU represented.” See Mark D. Naison, “Black Agrarian Radicalism in the Great Depression: The Threads of a Lost Tradition,” The Journal of Ethnic Studies 1, No. 1 (Spring 1973), Naison, 61.

23 See Donald H. Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, xi. Grubbs goes even farther than simply historicizing the racism of the past, he links it to the future: “Yesterday, through ignorance or greed, the propertied drove the propertyless off the land; tomorrow, Harlem and Watts and the South Side will be burning. White America could not understand the cry from the cotton; can it understand the cry for black power.” See Grubbs, x.

24 These men largely enter the narrative through Grubb’s discussion of the relationship between religion and the union, particularly with regards to music. Grubbs argues that “Because enthusiastic hymn-singing seemed to bind fundamentalist congregations more closely than anything else, STFU organizers were quick to adapt favorite hymns to secular purposes…Two Negroes, old A.B. Brookins and young John Handox, and one white man, the radical Presbyterian Claude Williams , were most active in adapting and promoting such rousers as ‘We’re Gonna Roll the Union On,’ ‘It’s a Wonderful Union’—formerly ‘Give Me That Old Time Religion’—and ‘Raggedy, Raggedy Are We.’” See Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, 65-67. Eliza Nolden later died of her injuries in a Memphis hospital spurring the union to launch a lawsuit against her attackers. Grubbs does an excellent job of contrasting the lack of discussion surrounding the mistreatment of blacks occasioned in the press in contrast to that of whites such as Willie Sue Blagden: “Throughout the South, Negro men, women, and children had been bludgeoned for years; their liberty was fictitious whenever their labor was needed; thousands had been railroaded to prison and hundreds been lynched and legally murdered…But now the planters had made the mistake of beating a minster

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While Grubbs does discuss the important role that outsiders played in supporting the union’s survival and growth, like Conrad he focuses on a few outsiders such as

Norman Thomas and Gardner Jackson, who aided the union. According to Grubbs, it was “largely through the influence of Norman Thomas [that] Northern fund-raising organizations finally came to the rescue [of the STFU].”25 In a similar vein he notes how

Gardner Jackson “preferred to devote his entire attention and fortune to the task of organizing farm workers” after his dismissal from the AAA.26 Grubbs also makes an important contribution by debunking the claim made by other scholars that the STFU was an appendage of the Socialist Party.27 Nevertheless, Grubbs does acknowledge the impact on the union of Norman Thomas and other socialists such as William R.

Amberson, Howard Kester, and Sidney Hertzberg. Grubbs accepts that Norman

Thomas provided key advice to the besieged H.L. Mitchell in the early years of the union after which he was eclipsed by the more apolitical Gardner Jackson.”28

After this initial wave of scholarship on the STFU emerged additional work relating to southern agriculture more generally also appeared. One such work was

and smacking a white woman’s posterior. Suddenly the public was horrified.” See Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, 113-114.

25 Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, 78.

26 Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, 93.

27 Grubbs argues that this “half-truth of a ‘Socialist Tenant Farmers’ Union’ took shape” after Norman Thomas and the Socialist Party responded forcefully to the AAA purge and violent repression of the union in 1935.” See Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, 29, 75. I have largely elected to stay out of the debate over the influence of Norman Thomas and the Socialist Party because it is such well-trod ground and debates of this nature often devolve into hair splitting. Suffice it to say their impact was highly significant, but there were other individuals and organizations that also provided strategic advice and material assistance such Gardner Jackson and the Garland Fund. See Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, 78-79, 93-100.

28 Donald H. Grubbs, “Gardner Jackson, “That ‘Socialist’ Tenant Farmers’ Union, and the New Deal,” Agricultural History 42, No. 2 (April 1968), 128.

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Gilbert C. Fite’s Cotton Fields No More. Cotton Fields No More is a very broad book, particularly in terms of its geographic range and chronological scope. It covers the entire

South which Fite defines as “the eleven former Confederate States stretching from

Virginia to Texas” from 1865 until 1980.29 Fite is quite upfront about the purpose of the book to synthesize “the many pieces that make up commercial agricultural development in the South since the Civil War…into a meaningful whole.”30 At the same time Fite is quick to point out that “there is, of course, no single agricultural South…The South is a land of infinite geographical and agricultural variety.”31 Fite’s book is very much an economic look at southern agriculture over the long twentieth century. In particular, he focuses on the problem of “excess of rural population in relation to developed land resources” which resulted in an unfavorable “man-land ratio.”32 Consequently this book takes a very deterministic approach in its understanding of the evolution of southern agriculture. Surprisingly little is said about the development of the Arkansas Delta.33

Nevertheless, Fite is useful for talking about economic developments in the South, generally, if not Arkansas specifically. Since Fite relies so heavily on economics as a lens of analysis he does not spend significant time discussing the shifting contours of

29 Gilbert C. Fite, Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture, 1865-1980 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1984), xi.

30 Fite, xi.

31 Fite, xi.

32 Fite, xii. It is worth pointing out that Fite never seriously considers alternation notions of how to organize southern agriculture, either along more cooperative lines or through some sort of revitalized, economically efficient small farming system. Fite also explains this issue as one of “small, non-productive, and poverty-ridden farms.” Ibid.

33 Fite does say that during the 1920s, “There were especially large increases [of cotton cultivation] on newly drained and cleared land in the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta and in northeastern Arkansas.” See Fite, 107.

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power relations during this period of time between large landowners and tenant farmers and sharecroppers with the exception of a brief discussion of disenfranchisement and the limiting of African American power in the 1890s.34

Pete Daniel took a very similar approach to that of Fite, publishing Breaking the

Land just a year later. The chronology is again expansive, covering just over one hundred years; geographically he also covers the entire American South. Furthermore, this book is even more ambitious because it specifically explores the development of not only cotton culture in great detail, but also that of tobacco and rice.35 Much like Fite’s work, Daniel’s monograph is largely an economic history of southern agriculture and similarly fails to consider alternatives to what Daniel calls “a more rationalized and businesslike way of farming.”36 Again, in similar fashion to Fite, Daniel never seems to seriously entertain alternative paths that southern agricultural development could have taken. He does talk at length about the increasing role of the federal government in agriculture, especially the development of the extension service under the auspices of the UDSA with its county agents who were supposed to guide and direct farmers to pursue scientific farming. Later, he notes how agricultural interests “demanded that the federal government bring order to the chaos of roller-coaster prices” during the 1920s.37

34 Fite, 67. Fite also briefly touches on nightriding. See Fite, 66, 103.

35 Although he does note the similarities between cultivation of the various commodities: “Each culture utilized the common forms of southern tenure—owners, tenants, and sharecroppers.” See Daniel, xii.

36 Daniel, xiv. Daniel describes the South in a way very reminiscent of C. Vann Woodward as an “undeveloped colony that looked north for credit and ideas, and northern investors eagerly extracted southern resources.” See Daniel, xiii.

37 Daniel, xiii-xiv. Daniel does seem to acknowledge the deleterious effects federal intervention into the market has on cotton agriculture, noting how “the New Deal—by cutting acreage, ignoring tenure arrangements, and giving landlords most of the funds that came from the AAA—broke their [small farmers, tenants, and sharecroppers] tie to the land.” See Pete Daniel, Breaking the Land: The

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Daniel also focuses on the westward shift of cotton production, largely in response to the boll weevil, to states like Texas and Oklahoma which “doubled their acreage from

1910-1930.”38 There is never an in-depth discussion of the development of the

Arkansas Delta or the shifting power relations. 39

Whayne, writing a quarter century later, marks a return to a more explicit discussion of the union within the context of southern agriculture. She focuses very much on the local rather than the regional. She was writing in direct response to historians like Fite and Daniel, who according to Whayne, “magnified the roles played by the federal and state governments and the big planters” which can “obscure both the dynamic interaction of groups on the local level and the role they played in shaping events.”40 So while Fite and Daniel are largely telling a story of economic change and development which focuses on the large outside forces acting on planters, small farmers, tenants, and sharecroppers, Whayne looks at the struggle on the ground as these different groups fought to craft a response to these outside forces and direct their own destinies. Whayne does not simply narrow her focus to Arkansas or even the

Arkansas Delta, but drills down all the way to Poinsett County—the birthplace of the

Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Culture Since 1880 (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1985), 16.

38 Daniel, 15-16, 22.

39 Daniel does note the increasing paternalism of large landowners following the end of the Civil War as well as the “evolution” of a “new labor system” that was an “unpatterned blend of illiteracy law, contracts, and violence.” See Daniel, xii, 4.

40 Jeannie M. Whayne, A New Plantation South: Land, Labor, and Federal Favor in Twentieth-Century Arkansas (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996), 3-4. In fact, Whayne’s look at the role of the federal government in southern agriculture is much more critical than Fite’s and Daniel’s noting how “New Deal programs funneled cash to the planters, thus augmenting their power. In the face of this new challenge to their independence, tenants and sharecroppers asserted what they considered their rights and precipitated an embarrassing controversy which, ironically, forced an even close relationship between the planters and the federal government.” See Whayne, 7.

248

STFU, which Whayne describes as the “most significant agricultural protest movement in the twentieth century.”41 She does a great job of exploring those earlier decades of

Arkansas’s development after Reconstruction and before the agricultural depression the

1920s and gives readers a glimpse of how power relations in the Arkansas Delta developed and functioned.

Whayne also explores what she describes as “the fluid nature of race relations” in early-twentieth-century undeveloped northeastern Arkansas.42 Whayne argues that a

“complex constellation of factors” resulted in the creation of the Southern Tenant

Farmers’ Union, chief among them the general and utter impoverishment of African

Americans in Poinsett County.43 According to Whayne, it was their complete degradation and utter immiseration which allowed whites to no longer see them as competitors and instead as allies.44 Whayne also makes some interesting assertions regarding gender and how tenant/sharecropper women “glued their society together” and were not “simply ancillary agents” of the union.45 Ultimately, however she fails to combine her discussion of race with her discussion of gender in a way that contributes significantly to our knowledge about black women in the union. She does, however, make the astute observation that black women had more freedom to maneuver in

41 Whayne, 4-5.

42 Whayne, 2.

43 Whayne, 186. According to Whayne, “The nature of the economic decline among the poorest whites and blacks in Tyronza Township provides a clue to the founding of an interracial union. Both had been hard hit by the depression and the natural disasters of the twenties, but blacks had been essentially emasculated…Poinsett Country’s interracial union no longer perceived black farmers as competition, no longer saw them as an economic or political threat.” See Whayne, 202.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid., 195. She also notes how “Woman were important to the STFU, in part, because of their greater literacy” and that “Female literacy always had a revolutionary potential.” See Whayne, 194-195.

249

politico-social environment of Northeast Arkansas: “Black women especially could do what their men could not do: they could harangue the planter and get away with it.”46

Cultural historian Elizabeth Anne Payne’s article, “The Lady was a Sharecropper:

Myrtle Lawrence and the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union” does an interesting job of exploring the gendered aspects of the union. She notes the involvement of women generally while not often differentiating between the roles of white versus black women such as when she claims that “Women were more literate than men among STFU members.”47 Payne does make the interesting observation that “Black women, however, could occupy cultural spaces in reform circles forbidden to white women” who were limited to a haggard waif/proper lady binary.48 Payne points out how H.L. Mitchell even uses black Henrietta McGhee in his memoir to criticize white Myrtle Lawrence and some of the more socially unacceptable (among northern middle-class supporters) habits of poor whites such as dipping snuff. 49 Overall, however the focus of the article is on

Lawrence and how poor whites like her were shunned by proper society and even union leadership such as Evelyn Smith Munro who confessed years later while being interviewed: “she [Lawrence] was just not the kind of woman who interested me at the

46 Whayne, 194.

47 Elizabeth Anne Payne, “The Lady was a Sharecropper: Myrtle Lawrence and the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union,” Southern Cultures 4, No. 2 (1998): 13. When Payne does take a more nuanced look at women based on race, she focuses more so on white women like Myrtle Lawrence than black women.

48 Payne, 10.

49 Payne, 8. According to Payne, “Mitchell distanced his own criticism of Lawrence by attributing to Henrietta McGhee attitudes he had directly expressed in draft form.” See Payne, 8.

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time. Of course, now I would be completely fascinated by her, but then I was put off by her appearance and mannerisms.”50

Mark Fanin’s book, Labor’s Promised Land, looks at the relationship between race, gender, and religion within two different unions: The Brotherhood of Timber

Workers and the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union. Fanin is perhaps the most detailed of all the scholars discussed thus far in his treatment of black women in the union although they are often subsumed under the broader category of gender; he often fails to differentiate between white tenant/sharecropper women and black tenant/sharecropper women.51 He highlights the important role all women played in the union, noting how “Many women saw participation in the union as an opportunity to bring about change and move away from a doctrine that dominated their lives as women as much as it dominated the modes of production and economy of the South.”52

He also highlights the rebellion of women that took place at the second STFU convention where women demanded equal footing as members.53 Through union involvement these women “created a new space for themselves in the sphere of social

50 Payne notes that while “Many regarded the STFU as a rehearsal for the Civil Rights moment of the 1960s…With rare exceptions, the faces of poor whites like Myrtle Lawrence were missing from the throngs who joined the interracial protests across the South during the 1950s and 1960s.” See Payne, 24. One could argue that this lack of interest in poor southern whites by northern reformers and academics helped to create a dynamic which resulted in the resurgence of white supremacy (politely described as white nationalism) in the early part of the twenty-first century following the election of the first African American president, Barack Obama.

51 Fanin takes other scholars to task for ignoring the role women played in the STFU, arguing that “While many studies of the STFU have given a cursory glance to the role of women within the union, few have elaborated on the significance of the phenomenon…Others have either misinterpreted the participation of women or drawn on traditional notions of industrial unionism instead of the rural radicalism peculiar to the southern plantation. See Mark Fanin, Labor’s Promised Land: Radical Visions of Gender, Race, and Religion in the South (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2003), 156.

52 Fanin, 257.

53 Ibid., 162.

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affairs in the South.”54 And he does a much better job of discussing black women as individuals as opposed to a faceless mass compared to prior scholars, women such as

Marie Pierce, Henrietta McGhee, Elizabeth Pettigrue, and Hattie Walls.55 He attributes the high level of black women’s involvement in the union to a “structural burden,” noting that “while black and white farm women shared the same hardships coming from fieldwork, childbearing, and homemaking, black women were more frequently the head of the household as well.”56

American Congo, by Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, was published the same year as

Fanin’s Labor’s Promised Land. In it, she takes a similar tact to that of Whayne in that she also utilizes a grassroots frame of analysis. In particular, she focuses primarily on the struggles of African Americans in the Arkansas and Mississippi Deltas making connections between these local struggles in the American South and the global struggle of people of color everywhere as they encountered a new wave of imperialism.57 Woodruff makes an explicit connection between the abuses taking place in Belgian-occupied Congo and the Mississippi River Valley when she observes how

“freedom fighter William Pickens, a native Arkansan, described the Mississippi River

Valley as the ‘American Congo.’”58 In a way reminiscent of Fite and Daniel she also

54 Ibid., 176.

55 These last two helped form an all-black local in Wabbaseka, Arkansas. See Fanin, 171.

56 Ibid., 161.

57She firmly situates this book within the context of resurgent European imperialism as part of a “larger expansion of capitalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” See Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, American Congo: the African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta (Chapel Hill: The University Of North Carolina Press, 2003), 1-2.

58 Woodruff, 1-2.

252

discusses the notion of scientific agriculture and a corporatized agriculture, but within the context of the “scientific management” of a “routinized and disciplined labor force.”59

Instead of looking at this new plantation system from the top down she looks at it from the bottom up where it sheds even more of its supposedly progressive, scientific veneer.

Woodruff highlights the connections between southern progressivism, segregation, and disenfranchisement.60 Again, following in Whayne’s footsteps,

Woodruff argues that, “As horrible as this world seemed, black people found ways of fighting back. At times they did so as individuals; in other instances their struggle broke out into collective forms.”61 She argues for a fluid, changing balance of power rather than a static status quo or the gradual diminishment of black power.62 Woodward also notes the connection between earlier fraternal organizations (and radical social movements) such as the Universal Negro Improvement Association (led by Marcus

Garvey) and the later STFU, pointing out that “The union locals of the 1930s came from the counties and villages that had organized NAACP chapters and locals of the

Garveyite UNIA in the 1920s.”63

59 Woodruff, 2.

60 Woodruff, 2-3.

61 Woodruff, 3-4.

62 Whereas Fite and Daniel highlight how technology and mechanization made the lives of small farmers, tenants, and sharecroppers more difficult, Woodruff highlights how black tenants and sharecroppers used certain technologies, in particular newspapers and automobiles, to contest the power of white supremacy. See Woodruff, 42-46, 65-66.

63 Woodward, 165.

253

Other historians have also drawn connections between the STFU and earlier, individual radical social movements, particularly the radical organizing and oppositional traditions of African Americans in the Deep South. Writing a few years earlier than

Woodruff, M. Langley Biegart noted how the STFU “marked just one of the more successful moments in a long series of protests by black farm workers against landowners” or what he calls a “legacy of resistance” dating back to Reconstruction.64

Mark D. Naison was one of the earliest historians to observes that it was the union’s black members who “were experienced in underground activity” and how they

“organized in a remarkably effective manner in the midst of terror.”65 This was due to their prior involvement in collective resistance. They had been schooled in insurgency through their involvement in the long African American Freedom Struggle.

Jarod Roll, whose work is some of the most recent, also notes this phenomenon, detailing the involvement of former Garveyites and an earlier generation of black activists in the STFU in Missouri, observing that “the protest politics [of the STFU] traversed the kind of social divisions that had limited the reach of earlier groups. Poor sharecroppers, former Garveyites, and the supporters of the NAACP and NFCF worked together to organize locals.”66 Roll’s narrative arc encompasses two generations of

64 M. Langley Biegart, “Legacy of Resistance: Uncovering the History of Collective Action by Black Agricultural Workers in Central East Arkansas from the 1860s to the 1930s,” Journal of Social History 32, No. 1 (Autumn 1998): 73-74. Biegart asserts that it was this “legacy of resistance that Ike Shaw carried with him to the schoolhouse in 1934.” See Biegart, 74.

65 Mark D. Naison, “Black Agrarian Radicalism in the Great Depression: The Threads of a Lost Tradition,” The Journal of Ethnic Studies 1, No. 1 (Spring 1973): 57.

66 Roll argues that there was a religious basis for this new, unprecedented level of cooperation between rural blacks and whites: “the prophetic revivals of the early twentieth century empowered believers to fashion a new ‘moral community.’ It enabled the children of white supremacists and black nationalists to come together…and make demands of the New Deal state.” See See Jarod Roll, Spirit of Rebellion: Labor and Religion in the New Cotton South (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 9-10, 99.

254

agrarian insurgency. Black and white landless farmers in the region alike resisted land consolidation, although oftentimes on parallel, competing tracks.67 It was the Great

Depression that gave impetus to their collaborative efforts under the auspices of the

STFU. This collaboration was made easier in that both groups shared a producerist ethos and a pentecostal-holiness church tradition which according to Roll, “offered ordinary people a new source of power in their efforts to confront evil in the world.”68

Roll also spends some time discussing the role of black women in the union and the few details he provides about their involvement are quite tantalizing. Even though

Roll does not spend a lot of time commenting specifically on the role of African

American women in the union he does note their high level of involvement in the

Missouri locals, particularly during the refugee crisis following the devastating flood of

1937. According to Roll, “More and more black women took up leadership roles in the wake of the refugee crisis…By 1938, at least ten black women held union leadership positions in Missouri.”69 And he goes on to specifically name some of these women:

Queen Esther Nelson, Dorothy Enochs, Savannah Warr, Mary Pratt, Pauline Moore,

Estella Walker, and Ruth Sharp.70

67 Roll, 2-5. According to Roll, “This is the story of how two generations of farmers created grassroots rebellion against the rise of capital-intensive commodity agriculture and its political proponents in the first half of the twentieth century.” Roll, unlike most other union scholars (with the exception of Louis Cantor), focuses almost entirely on the union’s activity in Missouri. For more information on the STFU in Missouri see Louis Cantor’s A Prologue to the Protest Movement (Durham: Duke University Press, 1969).

68 See Roll, 4-5, 88. As Roll points out, “Cooperation among landless farmers was rooted in common ideological soil. Farming families made their rebellions out of shared faith in an agrarian cosmology that held sacred the right of small producers.” See Roll, 4.

69 Roll, 109.

70 Ibid.

255

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Matthew F. Simmons received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2005 and a Master of Arts in History from the University of Tulsa in 2013. In between degrees he volunteered with AmeriCorps and taught

English overseas with WorldTeach. He has been a guest blogger for the Oklahoma

Policy Institute and op-ed contributor for the Gainesville Sun. He has also published articles in Tampa Bay History and The Chronicles of Oklahoma.

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