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  At the same time, extension agents worked with parish advisory committees to devise local solutions to farm labor problems. Often these efforts involved encouraging or coercing black people to return to the plantations at harvest time to help gather the crops. Louisiana's state supervisor of extension work explained how the system worked in one rural community: county agents enlisted African American ministers to canvass

  every colored section of Monroe and West Monroe for six days. . . . The patriotic duty of every American to assist in the war effort was explained to each person visited, together with the need of getting this year's vitally important cotton crop out of the fields as quickly as possible. At first, many of the persons visited were reluctant to give their names as volunteer cotton pickers; others said they were willing to pick, although not physically able. Under the persuasive influence of their fellow-race members, however, reluctance was short-lived. Those who said they were not physically able to go to the fields, changed their minds.

  One thousand cotton pickers, mostly women and children, eventually “volunteered” to help with the harvest.44

  Although it is possible that the “persuasive influence” of extension agents and civic leaders inspired black workers to perform their patriotic duty, a more likely explanation was that they feared retaliation by white people if they did not comply. Local authorities who seemed unconcerned when white women declined to enter the workforce became incensed at the idea of black women doing the same. In April 1943 Alexandria mayor W. George Bowden invited employers to provide him with the names and addresses of black women who had quit their jobs “for no legitimate reason” and announced that he would force them back to work “or run them out of town personally.” The same year, a report prepared by the Social Science Institute at Fisk University noted an increasing number of incidents of intimidation in the South, mostly involving agricultural and domestic workers. Its authors concluded that threats, violence, and the restrictive legislation embodied in the Farm Labor Program and local work-or-fight ordinances were aimed at forcing black people to continue working for “unwarrantedly low wages.”45

  In addition to seeking tighter control over the existing workforce, plantation owners initiated a campaign to import extra laborers into the state. In June 1943 Louisiana's Extension Service administrators reported that they had received “numerous requests as to the possibility of using war prisoners in the harvesting of crops,” mostly from sugar growers. Local farm labor committees succeeded in gaining permission to set up prisoner-of-war camps in Calcasieu, Ouachita, Iberia, Ascension, Jefferson Davis, St. Charles, St. Mary, West Baton Rouge, and Madison Parishes, accommodating nearly four thousand workers. War prisoners were later brought into Pointe Coupee and St. Landry Parishes after extension agents concluded that labor shortages were likely. By 1944, twenty-six prisoner-of-war camps were operating throughout the state. Proponents of the camps insisted that the use of prisoners would not “impair wages, working conditions and employment opportunities or displace employed workers,” but these claims were unrealistic. Planters’ manipulation of the labor supply prevented farmworkers from increasing their bargaining power as much as they might have. As the county agent in Madison Parish reported, the prisoner-of-war camps “stabilized local labor considerably because the local labor knew that the p.ws. were available for farmers to use and if they did not do the job, farmers would get p.ws. to help them out.”46

  Though these actions went some way toward alleviating labor problems, agricultural employers remained dissatisfied. Ultimately, many planters adopted the more effective strategies of mechanization and crop diversification, enabling them to operate their plantations with fewer workers. Max McDonald reported from Madison Parish in 1945 that farmers were “becoming mechanical minded since there has been such a severe labor shortage.” Farmers in the parish had not previously shown much interest in new machinery because of an abundance of cheap labor, McDonald explained, but with workers now in shorter supply they had “changed over rapidly from necessity.” Newspapers and extension agents in other parishes noted that the use of tractors for plowing and planting cotton crops was spreading, and that many growers were experimenting with grain and livestock production, two enterprises that required less labor than cotton and were more easily mechanized. By 1950 cotton accounted for only 29 percent of the crop-land harvested in the state, compared with 48 percent in 1930. In the following decade, the proportion fell to 20 percent, while hay crops, small grains, and legumes all increased their share.47

  In the sugar parishes, planters began using weedkillers for cultivating and mechanical cane cutters for harvesting, greatly reducing their labor requirements. Sugar grower Arthur Lemann of Ascension Parish remembered the sweeping changes that occurred on his family's plantation during the war. Machines eliminated the need for one hundred workers who were normally hired during the harvest season, and the fifty people who had formerly been employed to weed grass from the cane gave way to chemical herbicides and aerial spraying. During the 1944 harvest season, Louisiana growers used 356 mechanical harvesters that did the work of 21,000 people. Department of Agriculture officials reported that the harvesters helped to ease the labor situation and eliminated the necessity of paying wages that were higher than the minimum required to receive federal subsidies. The next year, Iberville Parish extension agent R. J. Badeaux confirmed the trend toward mechanization, citing it as the “natural road” for plantation owners concerned with efficiency and economy.48

  These developments accelerated the displacement of farm families from the land that had begun during the New Deal era. As in the decade from 1930 to 1940, the number of tractors in Louisiana almost doubled again between 1940 and 1945, increasing from 9,476 to 17,630. Correspondingly, the number of farm operators declined from 150,007 to 129,295, a decrease of 14 percent. The number of black farmers dropped by a slightly higher rate, from 59,584 to 49,131 (18 percent). As long as the armed forces and war industries stood ready to absorb these workers, the consequences were not catastrophic for African Americans (although they caused severe problems for many communities in later decades). Those who moved from farm to factory increased their incomes and achieved levels of independence from white people that most plantation workers could not hope to enjoy. Meanwhile, larger crop acreages and better prices for farm products meant that conditions for tenant families who remained on the land also improved. Between 1940 and 1945 black farm operators in the state increased the average value of their lands and buildings by 38 percent, from $1,123 to $1,545. While tenancy declined, black farm ownership increased in the 1940s, reflecting the higher levels of prosperity that all farmers enjoyed during the war.49 (See Table 6.2.)

  Table 6.2 African American Farm Operators in Louisiana, 1940–1960

  1940 1950 1960

  Tenure Number Percentage Number Percentage Number Percentage

  Owners 11,187 19 12,965 32 8,666 49

  Managers 17 (-)a 22 (-) 13 (-)

  Tenants 48,380 81 27,669 68 9,064 51

  Total 59,584 100 40,656 100 17,743 100

  SOURCE: Bureau of the Census, United States Census of Agriculture: 1959, Volume 1: Counties, Part 35: Louisiana (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1961), 6.

  a(-) indicates less than 0.5 percent.

  As African Americans continued to gain economically, white Louisianans became increasingly alarmed. The sentiments expressed by many people revealed that their concerns stemmed from a much more complicated set of beliefs than the simple idea that black people were inferior. Some of the real fears underlying the commitment to white supremacy were voiced by a woman who complained about recent efforts to improve educational opportunities for African Americans, then stated, “I think they like to study; they're more ambitious than we are. . . . The government is giving ‘em too much education. Builds ‘em schools, colleges, and universities. They're supposed to be lower class than we are, aren't they? But they keep on educating them.”50 Government researchers investigating racial tensions in def
ense industries found white workers fearful that the war was “permanently destroying barriers against Negro competition” and likely to view the movement of African Americans into new occupations as a threat to their economic security.51 Southern business owners who relied on racism to keep wages low for both white and black labor were among those who were most concerned about threats to the social order. Out of the various groups that made up the OWI's nationwide pool of correspondents, business leaders were the least supportive of equality. Their proposed solution to the problem of racial animosity was invariably to “Keep the Negro in his place, and, as a corollary, see that segregation is rigidly enforced.”52 These reports suggest that at least some people who sought to deny African Americans access to education, skilled jobs, and political participation did so not because they believed that black people lacked the requisite abilities, but because they knew the opposite to be true.

  White insecurity frequently manifested itself in violence. In February 1943 white guards and workers at the Delta Shipbuilding Company in New Orleans dragged a black truck driver from his vehicle and beat him severely after he blew his horn at a group of white people who were obstructing his path. A year later the sheriff and deputies of New Iberia accorded similar treatment to a group of NAACP leaders who had helped to establish a black welding school in the town. Some of the worst attacks were directed against black people in the armed forces. In January 1942 twelve African Americans were shot during a riot that occurred near Camp Claiborne, and in August 1944 a soldier reported that local white people seemed determined to spark a repeat performance of that event. He had heard rumors that three black servicemen had recently been found dead in the area and stated, “Now right at this moment the woods surrounding the camp are swarming with Louisiana hoogies armed with rifles and shot guns even the little kids have 22 cal. rifles and B & B guns filled with anxiety to shoot a Negro soldier.”53 In 1943 a mob seized a soldier from his hospital bed in Camp Polk and hanged him for allegedly insulting a white woman. A few months later, in Beauregard Parish, four white men stopped to offer a black soldier a ride to the bus station, and when he got into their car they branded him on the face with a hot iron. One particularly disturbing incident occurred in March 1944, when Private Edward Green boarded a bus in Alexandria and sat down in the section reserved for white people. The bus driver told him to move to the back, and when Green refused, the white man pointed a gun at him and ordered him to get off the bus. Although Green complied with this request, the driver shot and killed him anyway. Members of the local branch of the NAACP reported to the national office that Green was the fourth or fifth black soldier killed by white people in the area since the beginning of the war.54

  In some parishes, white civilians and officials openly prepared for a “race war.” When Louisiana legislators authorized the formation of a state guard, the first places its chief officer decided to organize were areas “where there're lots of Negroes.” G. P. Bullis, who represented Concordia Parish in the state legislature, wrote to the commander in January 1943 to request urgent action in establishing a company of the guard in Ferriday. “We feel that we especially need this guard, because we live in a section which has some sparcely settled areas; also four-fifths of our population are negroes,” he explained. “This entire area is delta land, heavily populated with negroes, and a guard unit seems especially desirable here.” A few months later, the mayor of Ferriday wrote to express similar sentiments, saying, “The state as a whole is going to need [the Home Guard] very badly, and especially will the sections having large negro populations, of which this community is one, need it.” White people in several other parts of the state also believed violent uprisings by African Americans were imminent. “I think we're going to have race riots that are going to back everything else we've known off the board,” and “I think our next war will be coming with the colored folks” were two of the comments noted by Edgar Schuler in his “Weekly Tensions Report” during March and April 1943.55

  White Louisianans’ fears were exaggerated but not completely unfounded. Between June 1942 and July 1943 their state was home to the “eighteen thousand bitter, frustrated, armed black men” who made up the U.S. Army's Ninety-third Division, the largest concentration of African American soldiers in the country. These troops were acutely aware of the lynchings, riots, and violent attacks on black people that were occurring throughout the nation, and they had experienced similar treatment themselves. During their stay in Louisiana Nelson Peery and a small group of other soldiers secretly obtained and stockpiled ammunition, intending to fight back against white violence. The men contemplated going to the assistance of African Americans in nearby Beaumont, Texas, when rioting broke out there in June 1943 but decided it was too risky. After intelligence agents in the War Department learned of the conspiracy, military commanders quickly decided to transfer the division out of the South. A few weeks after the Texas riots, the men of the Ninety-third left Louisiana bound for the isolated Mojave Desert in California.56

  Based on reports that reached them from Louisiana and elsewhere, government researchers discerned the existence of a “growing and militant minority of Negroes” who were “increasingly talking of a resort to violent action to maintain their rights.” The federal government had done nothing to prevent violence against African Americans, leaving many to conclude that their only recourse was to defend themselves.57 The Baltimore Afro-American editorialized in 1944, “If the Army can't or won't protect soldiers in the Southern camps, has anybody objections to soldiers protecting themselves? . . . They practice with jiujitsu, knives, revolvers, machine guns, tanks and cannons, and then sit on a bus seat while a driver fills them full of lead.”58

  In the minds of most black people, fighting back against white violence had never entailed much moral anguish or required justification. In the 1940s, the fact that Americans had taken up arms to fight a racist regime in Germany that closely resembled the racist regime in Louisiana provided an even more powerful rationale for using armed self-defense. John Henry Scott of East Carroll Parish explained, “I do not consider violence protecting yourself, no more than the soldiers out there where they fighting war. . . . Christ say put your sword down if you're fighting for his cause but when you going to fight for democracy why you pick your gun up. So if I could pick my gun up to go across the ocean to fight for democracy naturally I could pick my gun up to protect my democracy at home. And I wouldn't call that violence.”59

  Other black Louisianans seem to have shared Scott's views. A young man who was attacked by a white soldier after refusing to give up his seat while waiting at a first-aid station shot his assailant in self-defense. In a letter to his mother, he declared: “I am not going to stand for any misstreatment. After all I didn't ask to come into the Army. And after I have been put here, I won't be treated like a dog.” He had told officers who suggested he ought to show white people more respect, “If we were good enough to fight their war for them we were entitled to a littel respect too.” In a similar incident, Private Oliver W. Harris Jr. of Tallulah was arrested for aggravated assault against a hardware store owner while on leave from the army shortly after the end of the war. An account given to the NAACP by his wife explained that Harris had ordered a piece of tubing from the store that he intended to use to wire their home so they could have electric lights installed. When he went to pick up the tubing, he found that it had been cut too long. The manager of the store, R. L. Betz, told him that he would have to pay for all of the tubing, and Harris argued with the man, saying that he did not think he should have to pay for all of it because the store had made the mistake. “Mr. Betz then became very angry and struck my husband,” Cora Mae Harris stated. “My husband then picked up a shovel and proceeded to go to work on Mr. Betz, in the meantime, V. R. Dace, white clerk rushed up and struck my husband with a pipe. My husband managed to take the pipe away from Mr. Dace and work on him.” The white men both received severe cuts in the head.60

  Taking note of such in
cidents, government analysts, civil rights activists, and other observers warned that unless the federal government showed some willingness to eliminate racial discrimination and safeguard black people's citizenship rights, disaster could result. Early in the war a leader of the MOWM predicted, “We are slowly moving into one of the most bloody national race riots in history. If the administration doesn't give Negroes equal rights we are going to run into it sure as hell.”61 Throughout the conflict liberals in the Roosevelt administration repeatedly urged the president to take decisive action on civil rights, including better enforcement of Executive Order 8802, equal treatment in the armed forces, and the inclusion of African Americans in defense programs. Roosevelt heeded this advice to whatever extent seemed possible without unduly angering powerful southern Democrats in Congress. The result was a series of limited concessions designed to reassure black Americans while attempting to avoid interference with the South's cherished racial traditions.62

  Roosevelt refused requests by civil rights groups to fully integrate the armed forces, but in March 1943 the army ended its practice of constructing separate facilities for white and black soldiers and issued directives prohibiting the designation of camp amenities by race. The following year, the president issued an executive order mandating the desegregation of all officers’ clubs, service clubs, and other social facilities at army posts, although he modified it with a clause allowing individual commanders to disregard the order if they believed that its peaceful implementation was not possible. None of these measures succeeded in eliminating discrimination against African Americans in the camps. In addition, neither the federal government nor the army exercised much control over white civilians in the South, and violent attacks on black servicemen and women continued through the end of the war. As a “disgusted Negro Trooper” noted when African Americans at Camp Claiborne were threatened by white mobs in 1944, “This camp isn't run by government regulations its controlled by the state of Louisiana and white civilians.”63