A Different Day Page 30

  31. F. M. Tatum to FDR, 9 September 1903, frames 0224–0025, reel 2, PFUS; H. M. A. [Henry M. Stewart] to Annie [L. Allain], 15 December 1905, 5, file 17, box 8, TAFP. For more reports of peonage in Louisiana, see Walter L. Jones to Department of Justice, 1 June 1903, frame 0045, reel 2, PFUS; Fred R. Jones to Attorney General, 23 January 1909, frames 0542–44, reel 13, PFUS; B. F. Wilmer to Attorney General, 24 October 1929, frames 0689–91, reel 11, PFUS; and J. A. Persons to Richard Leche, 4 August 1938, file “Labor Miscellaneous,” box 39, RWLP. At least sixty-seven cases of peonage in Louisiana were reported to the U.S. Department of Justice between 1901 and 1945, providing another indication of the extent of this practice. See Schipper, Guide to the Microfilm Edition, 1–59.

  32. Act 50 of 1892, which prevented workers who were indebted to their employers from leaving, was modified slightly in 1906 and declared unconstitutional in 1918. See Act 54 of 1906 in Louisiana Department of Labor, Compilation of General Labor Laws, 188–89, and State v. Oliva 144 La. 51 (1918). The federal government's efforts to eradicate peonage are discussed in Daniel, Shadow of Slavery.

  33. Clark M. Votaw to S. T. Early, 23 November 1937, file “[080] V,” box 10, General Correspondence, 1937–42, Records of the Farm Ownership Division, Records of the Central Office, Records of the FaHA, RG 96, NA.

  34. Galarza, Louisiana Sugar Cane Plantation Workers, 27.

  35. “The Bill against Illiterate Immigrants,” New Orleans Daily Picayune, 7 February 1914, 6 (first quotation); Unidentified school superintendent quoted in Johnson, Louisiana Educational Survey, 14 (second quotation).

  36. Martin Williams, interview by author, THWC—LSU; Johnnie Jones Sr., interview by Mary Hebert, 6, 19, THWC—LSU; Rovan W. Stanley Sr., interview by Janie Wilkins, 1, CRS—SLU; “Official Proceedings of the School Board,” St. Francisville Democrat, 11 July 1936, 2; “Farmers’ Union Asks Federal Aid for Rural Schools,” Louisiana Farmers’ Union News, 1 June 1938, 1. Even when schools were open for longer periods of time, poverty forced some black parents to send children to the fields instead of to class for much of the year. As late as 1967, the NAACP field director for Louisiana expressed concern that a campaign to enforce the state's compulsory school attendance laws might create “severe economic hardships” for families who relied on the labor of younger members to survive. “Field Director Newsletter, Louisiana N.A.A.C.P.,” March 1967, 1, file 3, box 2, NAACP Louisiana Field Director Papers, ARC.

  37. Louisiana Education Association Department of Retired Teachers, We Walked Tall, 38–40; “Want Adequate Schools, Equal Salaries; State Parent-Teachers Association Is Planning Action,” Louisiana Weekly, 4 January 1941, 1; Anderson, Education of Blacks in the South, 190; “Public High Schools (Negro),” n.d. [ca 1940], file 4, box 227, CSJP; State Department of Education of Louisiana, Ninety-Second Annual Report, 109.

  38. H. H. Long, “Washington Parish,” n.d. [ca. 1940], 8–20, 22–23, file 8, box 225, CSJP; Johnson, Louisiana Educational Survey, 14–15, 38–39, 69; Leo M. Favrot to Francis W. Shepardson, 27 May 1923, file 5, box 339, RFP; T. H. Harris to Parish Superintendents and Parish School Board Members, Circular No. 1017, 2 April 1938, file “Cases Supported—Teachers Salary Cases—Louisiana 1938–1940,” box 88, ser. D, pt. 1, PNAACP—LC.

  39. Leo M. Favrot to Francis W. Shepardson, 27 May 1923, file 5, box 339, RFP.

  40. Statement on Sugar Cane Wages by Gordon McIntire, Federal Hearing, 16 June 1939, 4, file 3, reel 13, CLJP.

  41. “Ecological Description of Concordia Parish, Louisiana,” n.d. [ca. 1940], 17, file 5, box 225, CSJP.

  42. Johnson, Louisiana Educational Survey, 35; T. H. Harris to Parish Superintendents and Parish School Board Members, Circular No. 1017, 2 April 1938, 2, file “Cases Supported—Teachers Salary Cases—Louisiana 1938–1940,” box 88, ser. D, pt. 1, PNAACP—LC.

  43. Jones interview, 65; Palmer, “Evolution of Education,” 116.

  44. Brundage, Lynching in the New South, 103–60; Finnegan, “ ‘At the Hands of Parties Unknown’”; Moses Williams interview; “Elstner Reviews Joel Johnson Case,” clipping, Shreveport Journal, n.d. [ca. 1909], frames 0038–39, reel 17, PFUS; Report of George R. Faller, FBI, 13 August 1942, frame 0525, reel 20, PFUS.

  45. See, e.g., Moses Williams, Martin Williams, and Lewis interviews.

  46. Malcolm E. Lafargue to Attorney General, 21 July 1944, 2, file “144-33-17,” box 17589, Classified Subject Files—Correspondence, Central Files and Related Records, 1904–67, General Records, Records of the Department of Justice, RG 60, NA (first quotation); Martin Williams interview.

  47. Report of George R. Faller, FBI, 13 August 1942, frame 0551, reel 20, PFUS.

  48. Report of T. F. Wilson, FBI, 1 August 1939, 16, file “144–32–2,” box 17587, CSF, RG 60. Sheriff Andrew Sevier of Madison Parish, e.g., began his career as a bookkeeper and manager of several plantations and, according to one account, “soon his personality and ability at leadership caused him to be offered the position of sheriff.” He served the parish for thirty-seven years, from 1904 until his death in 1941. “He Was Her Sheriff,” Madison Journal, 12 September 1941, 2; “Madison Loses Dean of Peace Officers,” Madison Journal, 29 August 1941, 1, 6.

  49. “Woman Witness Tells of Burning of Aged Negro,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 23 December 1914, 9; “Ignores Charges in Lynching Cases,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 9 April 1915, 9.

  50. J. Leo Hardy to [John] Shillady, 5 April 1918, file “Shreveport, La.,” box 357, ser. C, pt. 1, PNAACP—LC.

  51. Benjamin J. Stanley to Walter White, 7 March 1935, frame 0322, reel 12, ser. A, pt. 7, PNAACP—Micro.

  52. A. C. Rutzen to Director, FBI, 6 September 1940, 1–2, file “144–32–5,” box 17588, CSF, RG 60; “A. P. LeBlanc,” St. Francisville Democrat, 7 May 1954, 2. For more evidence of elite white people's complicity in violence, see “Coroner Names Four Men in Caddo Lynching Probe,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 31 December 1914, 1; John R. Shillady to R. G. Pleasant, 15 February 1919, frame 0031, reel 12, ser. A, pt. 7, PNAACP—Micro; C. S. Hebert to Joseph E. Ransdall, 7 January 1923, file “198589 Sec 4,” box 3033, SNF, RG 60; “Sol Dacus Loses Heavy Damage Case in United States Court; Foremost Whites Joined Mob,” newspaper clipping, source unknown, 9 March 1925, frame 0307, reel 14, ser. A, pt. 12, PNAACP—Micro; “Kill Innocent Colored Men in Louisiana,” clipping, Philadelphia Tribune, 16 June 1928, frame 1152, reel 11, ser. A, pt. 7, PNAACP—Micro; Report of T. F. Wilson, FBI, 1 August 1939, 26, 28, file “144–32–2,” box 17587, CSF, RG 60; Report of P. M. Breed, FBI, 9 December 1932, frames 0447–48, reel 22, PFUS; George A. Dreyfous and M. Swearingen, “Report to the Executive Committee of the L.P.C.R. on Investigations in West Feliciana Parish,” n.d. [1937], 7, file 19, box 2, HNLP.

  53. “Sheriff Holds Off Lynchers,” clipping, Savannah Tribune, 11 February 1926, frame 1150, reel 11, ser. A, pt. 7, PNAAC—Micro. Similar incidents are reported in “Scott Is Convicted Johnson Acquitted in Assault Case,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 3 July 1915, 16; “Sheriff Saves Negro Threatened by Mob,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 26 September 1915, 12; and “Negro Taken to Pen via Eunice,” St. Landry Clarion-Progress, 20 February 1926, 11; Jones interview, 62. See also Brundage, Lynching in the New South, 26–28.

  54. Fred R. Jones to Attorney General, 23 January 1909 and 6 July [1909], frames 0542–44 and 0525–27, reel 13, PFUS (quotation, frame 0543).

  55. Martin Williams interview. See also unsigned letter to Charles Houston, 15 October 1938, frames 0191–92, reel 21, part 10, PNAACP—Micro.

  56. Brown interview. See also Jones interview; Report of T. F. Wilson, FBI, 1 August 1939, 25, file “144–32–2,” box 17587, CSF, RG 60; Louisiana Education Association Department of Retired Teachers, We Walked Tall, 39; Ezekiel C. Smith to A. H. Rosenfeld, memorandum, 23 May 1960, 4, file “General—Louisiana—BBS,” box 2, SS, RG 453.

  57. Lumber camps were often located in isolated areas and existed only as long as it took to clear all of the surrounding timber. Peonage and other abuses
were usually discovered too late, if at all, making it difficult to deter operators from using such practices. Russell, Report on Peonage, 17–18; Cobb, Industrialization and Southern Society, 69; Dinwiddie, “International Woodworkers of America,” 7.

  58. Quoted in Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 346.

  59. See, e.g., Stephen Norwood's (“Bogalusa Burning”) account of union organizing efforts in Bogalusa after World War I.

  60. Notes on NAACP Training Conference, 6 October 1945, 6, file “Leadership Training Conference, Louisiana-Texas (Conference) Correspondence 1945,” box 375, ser. C, pt. 2, PNAACP—LC; J. E. Clayton to H. L. Mitchell, 23 September 1941, reel 19, STFUP; Edgar A. Schuler, Weekly Tensions Report, 20 March 1943, 7, file “Edgar Schuler—Field Reports,” box 1824, FRSD, RG 44; H. A. Douresseau to A. P. Tureaud, 8 September 1949, file 28, box 9, APTP. Black lawyer and civil rights activist J. L. Chestnut Jr. outlines a similar phenomenon in another Deep South state in Black in Selma, 22–23, 114, 154. See also Zora Neale Hurston, “The Pet Negro System,” Folklore, 914–21.

  61. See, e.g., the portrait of the black landowning community in Washington Parish given in Bond and Bond, Star Creek Papers, esp. 11, 23. Mark R. Schultz (“The Dream Realized?,” 305) makes a similar observation about black landowners in Georgia.

  62. Jones interview, 11–12.

  63. J. H. Scott to Walter White, 9 December 1940, frames 0340–41, reel 1, ser. A, pt. 13, PNAACP—Micro.

  64. Carr, Federal Protection of Civil Rights, 77–84, 122–46; Daniel, Shadow of Slavery, 19–64. During the peonage trial of Joel Johnson in 1909, a U.S. attorney outlined the difficulties involved in prosecuting at the local level. A conviction in the case was unlikely, he reported, given the power and influence of the plantation owner. “Joel F. Johnson is . . . a man totally without respect for any consideration except his individual will,” he stated, “and . . . will not hesitate to resort to any methods to circumvent the ends of justice. Johnson is a man of means and will employ the very best of counsel to aid him in his defense. . . . Besides, I am sure, he will try and enlist the services of some persons selected by him for that purpose to tamper with witnesses and jurors. . . . During the investigation of the cases before the Grand Jury it became necessary for me to have Joel F. Johnson arrested to prevent his interference with the Government witnesses.” M. C. Elstner to Attorney General, 24 September 1909, frames 0042–0043, reel 17, PFUS.

  65. Key, Southern Politics, 9; Zangrando, NAACP Crusade against Lynching, 15–19.

  66. Milburn Calhoun, Louisiana Almanac, 385; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 31, 168; H. L. Mitchell, Statement on Senator Allen J. Ellender prepared for International Free Trade Union News, n.d., 2, filed at n.d. [1955], reel 39, STFUP.

  67. Brown interview; Moses Williams interview.

  Chapter Three

  1. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, xiii.

  2. Saxon, Dreyer, and Tallant, Gumbo Ya-Ya, 450.

  3. Hurston, Folklore, 77; Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, 239–70.

  4. Oliver, Story of the Blues, 11–25, 85–91, and Conversation with the Blues, 125 (J. D. Miller).

  5. “Lafourche Parish Ecology,” n.d., 5–6, box 225, file 6, CSJP; Oliver, Conversation with the Blues, 180 (Willie Thomas).

  6. For more on the ways African Americans have used entertainment and culture to assert their independence from white control, see Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom, 168–86, and Kelley, Yo’ Mama's Disfunktional!, 43–77. The role that religion played in the lives of rural black people is discussed in more detail later in this chapter.

  7. Thomas quoted in Oliver, Conversation with the Blues, 22.

  8. Saxon, Dreyer, and Tallant, Gumbo Ya-Ya, 374.

  9. Black Ace (B. K. Turner) quoted in Oliver, Conversation with the Blues, 53.

  10. Government researchers found that in the spring of 1935, more than one-third of all sharecroppers and tenants in the nation had been on their present farms for less than one year. Report of the President's Committee on Farm Tenancy: Findings and Recommendations, February 1937, 19, file “Tenancy (Jan 1–Feb 1),” box 2661, GCOS, RG 16.

  11. Entries for Affy Gilstan and Henry Haldman, 1915, Share Croppers’ Record Book, 1904–8, 1914–18, box 16, LSFP; Report of William H. Pokorny, FBI, 1 December 1942, frames 0869–70, 0872 (quotation), reel 23, PFUS; “The Negro,” Madison Journal, 28 April 1928, 2.

  12. Statement of John Pickering, 8 April 1926, frame 0633, reel 12, PFUS.

  13. Harrison and Earnestine Brown, interview by author, THWC—LSU; W. C. Brown to NAACP, n.d. [ca. 1920s], frame 0683, reel 14, ser. A, pt. 12, PNAACP—Micro; James Willis, interviewer unknown, transcript, 20 July 1939, 176, file 20–16, reel PP2.9, RTC.

  14. “Runaway Negroes Again,” New York Sun, 2 February 1912, item 295, frames 27–28, Hampton University Peabody Newspaper Clipping File, micro-fiche. The story was written by the Sun's Louisiana correspondent, based on local newspaper accounts. According to these reports, plantation owners in Louisiana had customarily allowed indebted sharecroppers and tenants to leave if another employer agreed to pay their debts. A growing tendency among planters not to allow families to move under any circumstances precipitated the migration of thousands of black people to Arkansas.

  15. Peter [Henry M. Stewart] to Annie [L. Allain], 31 March 1907, 6–7, file 20, box 8, TAFP.

  16. Robert H. Stirling to Sarah, 22 August 1910, 2, file 28, box 3, LSFP; “Trespass Notices,” every issue of St. Francisville Democrat, 1929–70.

  17. Vandal, “Property Offenses,” 129–30; Peter [Henry M. Stewart] to Old Girl [Annie L. Allain], 17 June 1906, 7, file 19, box 8, TAFP; Sarah T. Bowman to Nina Bowman, n.d. [1907], 7, file 7, box 2, Turnbull-Bowman-Lyons Family Papers, HML (owner of Hazelwood); [J. S. McGehee] to G. A. Marsh, 22 August 1916, 1, file M, letter file box 1, John Burrus McGehee Papers, HML.

  18. Jones, Labor of Love, 129 (quotation), 132; Aunt Ollie to Hattye, 3 March 1942, 3, file 2, box 1, John Hamilton and Harriet Boyd Ellis Papers, HML (white Louisianan); Saxon, Dreyer, and Tallant, Gumbo Ya-Ya, 501–3 (domestic worker); Kelley, Race Rebels, 18–20; Hunter, To –Joy My Freedom, 132–34.

  19. S. M. Kilgore to [Henry] Wallace, 18 September 1933, file “Negro,” box 90, Subject Correspondence Files, 1933–38, General Records of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, Records of the Predecessor Agencies, Records of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, RG 145, NA. For the antebellum origins of black people's notions of economic justice and their belief in the right to take from white employers what they needed to survive, see also Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 599–612.

  20. Elizabeth Ross Hite, interview by Robert McKinney, n.d. [ca. 1930s], in Clayton, Mother Wit, 110; Martin Williams, interview by author, THWC—LSU; Joseph Carter, interview by Miriam Feingold, MFP.

  21. George E. Lewis to Miss Ovington, n.d. [ca. 1918], 3, file “Shreveport, La. 1918–1919,” box 83, ser. G, pt. 1, PNAACP—LC; “Notes on NAACP Regional Training Conference,” 6 October 1945, 6, file “Leadership Training Conference, Louisiana-Texas (Conference) Correspondence 1945,” box 375, ser. C, pt. 2, ibid.

  22. Clifton and Eual Hall, Lorin Hall, interviews by author, THWC—LSU; Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage, 40 (Willa Suddeth).

  23. Andrews, To Tell A Free Story, 13; Gates, introduction to Classic Slave Narratives, ix; Cornelius, “When I Can Read My Title Clear,” 1–4, 59–84, 142–50; Wilkie, Ethnicity, Community and Power, 317; Robert and Essie Mae Lewis, interview by author, Baton Rouge; Brown interview. This belief in the importance of education was universal among the participants in the freedom struggle who were interviewed for this book. Many of the older people had sent some or all of their children to college, and this was among their proudest achievements. Asked whether other black people in his community shared his emphasis on education, Martin Williams of Madison Parish stated, “There's any number of them, and more of them would do it if they had the support.”

  24. William Ada
ms, Anthony Rachel, and Frank Wilderson, interview by Linda Jules Adams, Friends of the Cabildo Collection, New Orleans Public Library; Palmer, “Evolution of Education,” 230, 35, 232, 412; Wilkie, Ethnicity, Community,and Power, 83; Johnnie Jones Sr., interview by Mary Hebert, 10, Baton Rouge; State Department of Education of Louisiana, Organizational Study, 2.

  25. Leo M. Favrot to Julius Rosenwald, 17 May 19[31], file 5, box 339, RFP; Embree, Julius Rosenwald Fund, 23.

  26. Palmer, “Evolution of Education,” 240–43; “Negro Education in Louisiana,” n.d. [ca. 1940s], 2, file 5, box 4, SHJP. See also Kevin K. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 32–34, and Anderson, Education of Blacks in the South, 33–147.

  27. Collins, “Community Activities of Rural Elementary Teachers,” 6 (President of Grambling College); State Department of Education of Louisiana, State Course of Study, 64; Lewis interview.

  28. Lewis and Martin Williams interviews; Bond and Bond, Star Creek Papers, 43 (Willie Crain). The accommodationist approach had its drawbacks and has been rightly criticized, but many black people who were labeled “Uncle Toms” by more militant activists were not the obliging accomplices in white supremacy that they appeared to be. While preaching self-help and acceptance of inequality to black people in the late nineteenth century, Booker T. Washington covertly lent financial assistance to lawsuits that challenged segregation and disfranchisement, fought the exclusion of African Americans from the southern Republican Party, and supported efforts to end peonage. Similarly, Adam Fairclough's study of southern black teachers in the Jim Crow era (for whom some accommodation to the social order was necessary for survival) suggests that these educators made subtle but valuable contributions to the freedom struggle in the long term. See Meier, “Toward a Reinterpretation”; Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 288–303; and Fairclough, “ ‘Being in the Field of Education,’” 73–75.