A Different Day Page 13

  As in the past, some white people used violence to try to force African Americans back into their traditional roles. In 1933 and 1934 a number of beatings and murders occurred in Union Parish to discourage black men from signing up for relief. A letter reporting the incidents to the Department of Justice listed two men who had been killed and four others who had been whipped (along with the names of twenty-one white men who were responsible for the terror) and added, “9 men run away from home all had to leave their homes wives and children to keep white people from killing them.” Two near-riots occurred in St. Landry Parish when a black CCC camp was established there in June 1933. An investigator attributed the trouble to “intense racial feeling” in the community. A more specific motive was implied in a similar case reported to the U.S. attorney general by the secretary of the National Negro Congress in 1940. The Ku Klux Klan harassed and intimidated residents of a job-training camp for African Americans, posting signs that read, “Niggers your place is in the cotton patch.”21

  Plantation owners complained incessantly that federal programs encouraged black people to refuse to work and created intolerable labor shortages in rural areas. N. Watts Maddux of St. Bernard Parish claimed that he knew of hundreds of former farmworkers whose talents were being wasted on useless WPA projects that seemed “purposely long-drawn-out and needlessly so.” In October 1942 a sugar grower in Avoyelles Parish who was unable to match the wages paid by relief agencies politely requested the closing of WPA camps in the region until the cane-cutting season was over. The same year, the Caddo Parish police jury passed a resolution calling for the suspension of welfare programs, stating that an “extreme shortage of labor” had been caused by “giving public funds to undeserving persons, who wish to be supported by the government in idleness.”22

  Most complaints about labor shortages were exaggerated if not completely fabricated. In one case, an investigator found that employers were able to provide the names of only two workers believed to be on WPA projects instead of laboring in the fields. His report concluded that “complaints made about pickers not being available were generally made without facts to substantiate the claims and were of such a general nature that they were of no help to the W.P.A. in relieving the situation; that W.P.A. did release all workers with the proper background and that the needs of the growers were satisfied.”23 Referring to the Caddo Parish resolution, a state department of labor official informed Governor Sam Jones that “it was not a question of lack of labor but the low wage scale which controlled that situation.” Plantation owners in the region had offered workers only $1.25 per hundred pounds of cotton picked when their competitors on the state's eastern borders were paying from $1.50 to $2.00. As the harvest season progressed and more labor became available, the Caddo Parish planters reduced their rates to $1.00, indicating that no real crisis existed.24

  In fact, as these investigators’ comments suggest, administrators worked hard to ensure that New Deal programs did not interfere with rural labor markets. State WPA director J. H. Crutcher warned his staff in 1936 that the agency would “under no circumstances be a party to creating a labor shortage, and District Directors will be held personally responsible for seeing that no such condition exists in localities where persons are employed on W.P.A. projects and undertakings.” He told them not to wait for private employers to complain, but to ensure that labor was available by releasing workers from projects whenever necessary. The WPA's newsletters and public announcements stated repeatedly that its aim was to provide employment for farmworkers only during the off-season. Relief programs were routinely shut down during agricultural harvest times so that welfare recipients could work in the fields, thus protecting the interests of employers who were unwilling to compete with the wage scales offered by public works projects.25

  At the same time that they demanded a ready supply of cheap labor at certain times of the year, plantation owners were becoming less willing to support surplus workers when they were no longer needed. One of the most significant consequences of the New Deal for rural black people was the displacement of thousands of sharecroppers and tenants as a result of the federal government's farm policies. With the reduction in crop acreages brought about by the AAA, plantation owners’ need for labor decreased. In addition, many growers invested their subsidy payments in machinery that further reduced their need for workers. Farm implement companies had been experimenting with labor-saving agricultural technologies since the nineteenth century, and by the late 1920s mass-produced all-purpose tractors like International Harvester's McCormick-Deering Farmall were widely available. Tractors could be used instead of mules for plowing and planting cotton, and with special attachments they could also perform a range of functions in sugar cultivation. Large landowners in the Mississippi River delta regions were the first to begin using the new machines in the South, and sales to southern planters increased rapidly after 1935. Between 1930 and 1940 the number of tractors in Louisiana almost doubled, increasing from 5,016 to 9,476. The state's plantation parishes showed the highest increase (386 percent) in the number of tractors per thousand acres of crops harvested of any southern region in the same period.26

  With fewer acres in cultivation and the use of tractors spreading, the number of black tenant families in Louisiana dropped by nearly fifteen thousand in the 1930s. The Department of Agriculture attempted to ensure that employers retained tenants on their plantations and shared AAA payments with them, but loopholes in the agency's regulations allowed unscrupulous planters to avoid these obligations. Welfare officials in Louisiana noticed the prevalence of “old plantation negroes who are no longer able to work for a living” on their rolls and concluded that many landlords were taking advantage of the New Deal to rid themselves of unproductive laborers.27

  Workers who remained on the plantations were easily cheated out of their AAA payments. Government officials decided that federal policy should not interfere with traditional labor contract arrangements in the South, allowing planters to continue manipulating accounts and limiting their employees’ incomes. In its first two years of operation, the AAA distributed subsidy checks to landlords and entrusted them with the task of disbursing the appropriate portions of these funds to sharecroppers and tenants. Many agricultural workers failed to receive their share, so in 1936 the administration began mailing plantation owners multiple checks made out in the names of individual employees. It remained an easy matter for landlords to coerce workers into signing the checks over to themselves. Illiterate sharecroppers were forced to mark these mysterious slips of paper with an X without fully understanding what that meant. Another ploy was to make sure that the money could only be spent at plantation stores. Harrison Brown remembered “when the government had ordered you'd get a check or something after you settled . . . they took that check. . . . And the way they took it you couldn't cash it in town nowhere, you had to go by your merchant and let him sign it to cash it in—that was so he could get his hands on it, but you'd have to go by them.”28

  Planter abuses of New Deal programs did not go unchallenged. The massive social upheaval caused by the depression gave rise to radical workers’ and farmers’ movements that struggled to influence national policy and enhance equality, opportunity, and security for all Americans. In 1931 members of the Communist Party began working among rural black people in Alabama, encouraging them to form the SCU in an effort to increase the bargaining power of agricultural workers and help them gain fair treatment from landlords. Socialists in Arkansas organized the interracial STFU in 1934 to fight the mass eviction of tenant families caused by the AAA. The STFU spread into Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, and parts of Mississippi, attracting thousands of members. At the same time, liberals in the Farmers’ Educational and Cooperative Union of America (more commonly called the National Farmers’ Union or NFU) began to increase their influence over that union's leadership, advocating federal legislation that was more responsive to the needs of small farmers. The activities of these rural unions and the
publicity generated by plantation owners’ violent opposition were instrumental in drawing nationwide attention to the plight of southern tenants and sharecroppers. The modification of some AAA policies in the later half of the 1930s and the expansion of programs to help displaced and low-income farmers buy land of their own resulted in part from union pressure.29

  The LFU was formed in the mid-1930s, originating as an offshoot of the SCU. In Alabama, lynchings, beatings, and evictions had driven the SCU underground, forcing its members to meet secretly and limiting its effectiveness. After a strike by cotton pickers in Lowndes County was violently crushed in 1935, union leaders began searching for ways to strengthen the organization. Strong interest shown by black farmers in Louisiana encouraged the SCU to focus some of its attention on that state, and initially it seemed that the union would meet less resistance there than in Alabama. In January 1936 SCU secretary Clyde Johnson reported from Louisiana, “We have locals of 20 to 175 members that meet in churches and school houses and when some little terror did start against one member one of our leaders went to see the Sheriff in the name of the Union and the Sheriff didn't say a word about him being a Union member.” Communist organizers worked with local people to make contact with black farmers and encourage them to attend meetings to discuss the union. Those who were interested in forming a local then elected officers and recruited more members by approaching family, friends, and neighbors. The social networks that existed within churches and other community institutions provided useful structures for disseminating information about the union. By May 1936 the SCU had approximately one thousand members in Louisiana, and the union had moved its headquarters to New Orleans.30

  The SCU's New Orleans office was staffed by a small group of activists that included (at various times) Clyde Johnson, Gordon McIntire, Clinton Clark, Peggy Dallet, and Reuben Cole. Most were white southerners in their early twenties who shared a commitment to progressive causes and viewed their work as part of the fight for social justice. Clyde Johnson was the only northerner in the group and Clinton Clark the only African American. Originally from Minnesota, Johnson had attended City College in New York and worked as an organizer for the National Student League before joining the Communist Party and being assigned to Alabama in 1934. Though he eventually left the party, he remained committed to workers’ struggles throughout his life.31 Texan Gordon McIntire had attended Commonwealth College in Arkansas (a school that was closed down by the state in 1941 for “teaching anarchy”) before arriving in Alabama to work with Johnson and the SCU in 1935. Clinton Clark was a native of Louisiana who helped establish union locals in St. Landry, Avoyelles, and Pointe Coupee Parishes in 1936. Peggy Dallet had been involved in organizing local chapters of various left-wing organizations in New Orleans, including the American League for Peace and Democracy, the League for Young Southerners, and the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy. She became the union's office secretary in 1937 and later married Gordon McIntire. Reuben Cole came from a sharecropping family in Georgia. Like McIntire, he had attended Commonwealth College and joined the other activists in Louisiana in May 1937.32

  Members of the New Orleans staff acted as effective grassroots organizers, offering advice and aid to union members but encouraging local people to make key decisions about issues affecting them. The first issue of the union newspaper, the Southern Farm Leader, invited members to send in letters expressing their concerns and ideas for action, describing conditions in their communities, and reporting on the activities of their locals. Clyde Johnson recalled that whenever a new policy or position needed to be formulated, “everyone available met to talk it over. If it involved a basic union position we discussed it all over the union and tried to have a state meeting approve a position. . . . We believed the members had to understand and approve an action to have it be successful. Rubber stamps can't cooperate.”33

  Relationships between organizers and local activists were characterized by mutual respect. At their first convention in 1936, union members passed a resolution thanking Clyde Johnson for his efforts on their behalf, calling him “one of the outstanding champions of the Southern day laborers, sharecroppers, tenants and small farmers.” Three years later Gordon McIntire noted the rapid growth of the union in Louisiana, saying, “Much of the credit must go to the Local leaders of the Union, whose courageous desire to improve the economic conditions and protect the democratic rights of brother farmers throughout the agricultural fields has been repaid by the success of the Union.”34

  After establishing itself in Louisiana, the SCU attempted to further strengthen its position by joining forces with other farmers’ and laborers’ unions. In May 1936 Johnson wrote an editorial in the Southern Farm Leader suggesting that all of the 60,000 southern sharecroppers, tenants, and small farm owners who currently belonged to the SCU, the STFU, or the NFU unite in the largest of the three organizations, the NFU. Johnson had maintained friendly relations with STFU leader H. L. Mitchell since 1934, and the two unions sometimes cooperated on issues affecting them both. However, Mitchell and others in the STFU were wary of the SCU's communist affiliations, and they rejected the idea of a merger.35 The SCU's overtures toward the NFU were more successful. Hard-pressed small farmers and tenants among the NFU's all-white membership were beginning to see the value of uniting with black farmers to fight government agricultural policies that mostly benefited large growers. The union's more progressive elements saw an opportunity to strengthen their position by encouraging the transfer of SCU members to their organization.36 In return, NFU charters offered the former SCU locals the protection they so badly needed.37 Clyde Johnson hoped that the charters would enable union members to “meet openly without interference,” and that uniting with an established organization that had more than 100,000 members in thirty-eight states would “give the Black Belt farmers a much greater backing” in their struggles against plantation owners.38

  In 1937 the SCU's locals in Alabama and Louisiana began transferring into the NFU, and the LFU was chartered as a state division of the national union.39 At the annual convention of the NFU in November, delegates from the southern states played an important part in electing new executive officers and replacing the union's traditional emphasis on banking and money reform with a program more in line with the needs of poor farmers. Resolutions called for legislation to help tenants achieve farm ownership, mortgage relief, crop loans, and price control, as well as cooperation between farmers’ organizations and industrial workers’ unions.40

  Since the problems confronting agricultural day laborers were different from those of farm operators, SCU leaders urged that they be organized into a separate union affiliated with the AFL.41 In 1937 farm wageworkers in Alabama gained an AFL charter to form a union, but shortly afterward they joined the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA), a new organization of farm and food processing workers sponsored by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Clyde Johnson then left the South to work with UCAPAWA lobbyists in Washington, leaving Gordon McIntire to head organizing efforts in Louisiana. McIntire encouraged wage laborers to join UCAPAWA and small farmers, tenants, and sharecroppers to join the LFU. The LFU maintained a stronger presence in the state than the CIO union, however, especially when financial difficulties forced UCAPAWA to abandon most of its rural labor organizing activities after 1938.42 To complicate matters, many LFU members worked as seasonal wage laborers at sugarcane-cutting time in addition to raising cotton or other crops during the year. For these reasons the LFU did not limit its activities to issues affecting tenants and sharecroppers, and its locals consisted of all types of agricultural workers.43

  The union's “family membership” structure mirrored the tradition of earlier black community institutions in encouraging participation by women and young people as well as men. Dues were $1.50 per year for adult males; women and young men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one could join for free. Non-dues-paying members were called honora
ry members but they had the same rights and privileges in local, county, and state unions as dues-paying members. Women took an active part in the union at both the local and state levels. Often more literate than men, they performed valuable services like writing letters, passing on information from printed sources, keeping records, and teaching other members how to read and write.44 Women delegates at the union's 1936 convention confidently expressed their opinions and ideas for action. Among the resolutions passed were several calls for measures to improve conditions for farm women, including equal pay for equal work, higher wages for domestic workers, free medical attention for pregnant women, and a maternity insurance system.45

  The LFU welcomed white as well as black people, and strong local leadership was provided by members of both groups. As with all interracial unions in the South, the LFU's mixed membership presented problems.46 In keeping with the Communist Party's antiracism, organizers at first did not allow segregated locals, though they avoided challenging southern racial practices too openly. According to Johnson, “To be for equal rights, for freedom and for self-defense was enough. It covered all our problems. We never advocated ‘social equality’ in those words because in the white mind it was synonymous with demanding that a black marry his daughter. The racist propaganda hung so heavy on this that it was futile to argue.”47 In later years the policy on interracialism was not rigidly enforced, especially after opponents charged that the LFU was a “nigger union” in an attempt to discourage white people from joining. Gordon McIntire refuted the claim in the December 1936 issue of the Southern Farm Leader, explaining that the perception arose after a mass meeting in Opelousas where the black farmers appeared to overwhelm the white members in attendance. “They later realized that their enthusiasm had worked against them,” he wrote. “Both white and colored generally prefer to have their own locals and meet separately.”48