Black Worker in the Deep South A Personal Record by HOSEA HUDSON INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS New York Dedication CONTENTS I want to dedicate this book to my little lat6 wife Vaganina Larue, who longed to see this book printed m her lifetime. She would always remind her INTRODUCTION friends that I had written a book to be printed and by REV. RALPH DAVID ABERNATHY vii that it would be printed someday. 1. PLOWHAND IN THE GEORGIA COTTON FIELDS 1 2. SHARECROPPERS ARE ALWAYS MOVING 13 3. PLOWHAND INTO INDUSTRIAL WORKER 19 mar 1 6 1973 4. LEGAL LYNCHINGS 30 5. THE MAKING OF A UNION MAN AND A COMMUNIST 36 6. BOSSES AND STOOLPIGEONS 43 7. UNEMPLOYMENT STRUGGLES 54 8. VICTORIES AND SETBACKS 60 9. SOUTHERN WORKERS ORGANIZE 7^ Copyright © 1972, by INTERNATIONAL PXJBLISHEES CO. INC< ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 10. TARGET OF BOSSES AND THE KLAN 84 First Edition, 1972 11. CAMPAIGN TO REGISTER AND VOTE 92 12. MY EDUCATION CONTINUES 101 ISBN: 0-7178-0362-7 (cloth); 0-7178-0362-7 (paperback) 13. OBSERVATIONS AND TRIBUTES 111 Library Of Congress Catalog Card Number: 72-82078 Printed in the United States of America 14. THEN AND NOW 122 INTRODUCTION by Ralph David Abernathy Hosea Hudson's story, as remarkable as it is, is one that could be told many times by determined Southern Blacks who have fought for freedom and justice through­ out the historic southland. Black Worker in the Deep South brings memories of "our movement"—"Martin Luther King Jr.'s movement." In order to be able to understand the revolution which is presently taking place, we need to be reminded of struggles such as Hosea Hudson's, or other such struggles. Black Worker in the Deep South is the autobiography of an unsung Black leader who, as with so many of our leaders, had been blotted out from history. It tells of the odyssey of Hosea Hudson from a poor Klan-infested country town in Georgia, before the turn of the century, to his triumph as one of the South's greatest Black union presidents and civil rights leaders in Birmingham, Ala­ bama. In his early life as a sharecropper he describes the conditions that Blacks had to endure—the lynchings and intimidations of the white overlords; the migrations fronf plantation to plantation; the cottonffelds; the church life of the people. He then proceeds to show the process of his displace­ ment from the land in the mid 1920's and his trans­ formation into an industrial worker. The most significant section of the book details his development as a worker to a union man and subse­ quently a Communist. He tells of the struggles of the workers for more pay and better working conditions'; the vii viii • J T INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION ix ftght against discrimination and racism in the South; the There is violence in the land. The violence that is publiJ XI rights-the rights to vote, hold present, and of which I speak, takes various forms. It is thp 9m 'iescribed the activities of inflicted mainly upon the poor and black people. There is the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC)—a prede the violence of an unjust war perpetuated upon a tiny DefeL InUatiLl Labt nation of brown people 10,000 miles away from the Defense and the unionists who organized the CIO. He United States mainland. There is also the violence of ad worked m all of these causes long before the con- racism, which manifests itself in various forms. The sciousness of the masses had completely matured. violence of racism is seen in the practices of denying himLrind «n in the 40's and 50's, of decent human survial to the masses, only to give large sums of unnessary resources to the upper classes. The violence of racism is seen in police brutality; exploitation „v.P?'®^eremarkable story of a man who was decades of the ghetto, the plantation, the colony, or whatever you teie fact ffiatTn a choose to call that area where poor and black people period^,; fh» I, ™ ™°®' "Wral struggle to live or exist. Violence is evident in an unjust periods in the history of our nation, and I would venture educational system, which pollutes the mind because it is to include even the world. This position is held brmanv not honest and truthful; in unemployment, underem­ S htstot'"aid S* "wW historians, students ployment, poor housing, inadequate medical and dental of the w^r care, and the many forms of repression and oppression imposed by the power structure upon the black and poor Men and women of all nations are demanding their people. This violence is seen so clearly in our country, the human rights. Young people are rising up! Sserting United States of America—the wealthiest and most their power m many and varied forms, calling for an end prosperous of all nations—a nation that preaches one to the mjustices and Inequalities imposed by the wealthv thing and practices another. This is the most destructive identifying with the struggling and form of violence. underdeveloped societies of the world. No one fruth fan It is violent for any nation to exist under the creed that fully and honestly deny the fact that we are in the midst is "a government of the people, by the people, and for the of a revolution. For an accurate definition of ^h^vX people" and after almost two centuries not even have 9 SriL'r modicum of representative government. The violence of "Billions for the Moon and Pennies for the Poor" is more First I wish to make it crystal clear that the revolution cruel than physical violence. This has been experienced do^ not necessarily have to be violent. And yet I must by poor and black people of America. We are witnesses, admit, even as a nonviolent leader, that fears and living and dying witnesses. As a result, there is a frustrations have been so deeply entrenched in millions revolution in the land. of my poor brothers and sisters, that they believe the However, I must hasten to add that it would be tragic uponUDortlf the oppressors. oppressed must be likewise inflictedluiiccea indeed for poor people to imitate the worst of "The American System "—that is violence. I am confident that * INTRODUCTION poor and black people, as well as all people of goodwill, must find new creative and constructive ways of dealing with the forces of evil which resort to the various forms 1 of violence. I submit that the violent forces must be met with "soul PLOWHAND IN THE force." The oppressed do not now have the weapons, tools, or positions to carry on a violent revolution. But we must GEORGIA COTTON FIELDS not be cowards, nor must we passively permit "the system to continue to heap violence upon us and our My early years were spent on farms in the cotton fields children and our families. of Wilkes and Oglethorpe Counties in the Black Belt of Again, we view in the American Society that which is Geoigia. My father and mpther were separated when I most cynical, crippling the right of people to develop and was a small child and my brother Eddie was a babe in to grow and to organize for those freedoms that ought be arms. At that time my grandmother, Julia Smith, came apparent. Again, we view another individual's refusal to to our house with my young Aunt Georgia May to help buckle to the knee of oppression. We view a courageous my mother. And when I was around five, my grand­ and gallant Black Southern worker with a devout com­ parents' marriage broke up too, partly because grand­ mitment to justice, with his basic theme of unity of mother wanted to take us back home with her and my struggle of young blacks and working people in the grandfather didn't want to be responsible for the whole rapidly developing melodic chord of today's movement. family. So the rest of us lived together until Aunt Georgia May married, at the age of nineteen. Georgia May had been my grandmother's plowhand since she was fifteen, and when I was not much more than ten I became her assistant. My little brother and I, lying on the pinewood floor of a lonesome plantation shack in the dark Georgia nights, used to shiver at the thought of many imaginary dan­ gers, but none of these could be worse than some of tlje terrifying experiences of our actual life. Like the time when 17 men came to get my Uncle Ned at my grand­ mother's house, all set to lynch him. We were living at the time in a two-room log cabin with chimneys at the north and south ends and an open hall in the middle. That night we were all in the north room because a big storm was building up and we felt more sheltered there. Just before the wind and rain hit the house, a mob of 1 ^ BLACK WORKER IN THE DEEP SOUTH PLOWHAND IN THE GEORGIA COTTON FIELDS 3 white men on horses came galloping into the yard. was out. Bold Bunch was framing him so as to keep from Someone in the crowd hollered, "Let's go round the paying grandmother for the work Ned, who was 17 at the house!" Minutes later the mob crowded up in the hall time, had done. outside. Meanwhile Uncle Ned was nursing an old shotgun, Put out the lamp," my mother whispered. But my waiting for the mob to break down the door.