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  43. Gordon McIntire to Miss La Budde, 12 October 1937, 3, file 3, reel 13, CLJP.

  44. “S.C.U. Locals Transferring to Farmers’ Union,” Southern Farm Leader, February 1937, 2; “Organization Information,” Union News, 30 April 1937, 2, file 2, reel 13, CLJP; Rosen, “Alabama Share Croppers Union,” 91; Whayne, New Plantation South, 194. Women and girls typically spent less time working in the fields than men and boys, so they could attend school for a greater part of the year. Stephanie J. Shaw provides additional insight into rural black people's determination to educate their daughters, particularly, in What a Woman Ought to Be and to Do, 13–16.

  45. “Women Delegates Discuss Schools, Adopt Program,” Southern Farm Leader, August 1936, 1; “Women Are Entitled to Free Medical Aid,” ibid., 4.

  46. The literature on this topic is extensive. White and black southerners were certainly capable of overcoming mutual suspicion and mistrust to form strong interracial alliances, but these organizations always remained vulnerable. If the racism of individual members did not weaken or destroy them, racist and sometimes violent attacks by members of the larger community often did. See, e.g., Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights, 93–173; Griffith, Crisis of American Labor, 62–105; Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans, 74–118; Letwin, “Interracial Unionism”; and Norwood, “Bogalusa Burning.”

  47. Rosen, “Alabama Share Croppers Union,” 90, 92 (quotation).

  48. In the same article McIntire asserted: “The Farmers’ Union is proud of its large colored membership. But just as America has more white farmers than colored so has the Union.” It is (perhaps intentionally) unclear whether “Farmers’ Union” meant the LFU or the NFU, but it is likely that he was referring to the predominantly white national membership, not the state union. Gordon McIntire, “Between the Plow Handles,” Southern Farm Leader, December 1936, 4.

  49. “Simmesport Hoodlums Drive Organizer Moore out of Town,” Southern Farm Leader, August 1936, 2; Rosen, “Alabama Share Croppers Union,” 90, 139–40; “Resolutions of Sharecroppers’ Convention—A Call to Action,” Southern Farm Leader, August 1936, 3–4.

  50. “First Louisiana Union Label Farm Produce for Maritime Strikers” (p. 1) and “St. Landry Farmers Need Corn Relief” (p. 2), Southern Farm Leader, November 1936.

  51. Gordon McIntire and Clyde Johnson, “Statement on the St. Landry Farm Case,” n.d., 1–2, file 3, reel 13, CLJP (quotation, p. 2).

  52. Ibid.; “Editorial Notes,” Southern Farm Leader, December 1936, 4; McIntire and Johnson, “Statement on the St. Landry Farm Case,” 2–3; Mercer G. Evans to Clyde Johnson, 24 December 1936, and Johnson to Louis Fontenot, 4 January 1937, file 3, reel 13, CLJP; “St. Landry Farm Tenants Getting Teams and Tools,” Southern Farm Leader, January 1937, 1.

  53. LFU news release, 29 November 1939, 1, file “Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Jan 23–Dec 20,” box 406, ser. A, pt. 1, PNAACP—LC (quotation); “Cotton Tenants Win Rent Victory,” Louisiana Farmers’ Union News, March 1939, 1–2.

  54. Sugar Act of 1937, in Lynsky, Sugar Economics, 215–16.

  55. Although it is likely that some of the planters did have genuine financial difficulties, most were not as poverty-stricken as they claimed. Between 1930 and 1936 gross income from the Louisiana sugar crop more than doubled (increasing from $15 million to $33 million), while wages remained relatively static. Godchaux Sugars, a company that owned a dozen plantations in seven parishes, reported a net income of $858,000 in 1936. At the 1937 hearings, when the owner of Burgaires Sugar stated, “It is not a question of how we are going to divide the profits but how we will share the losses,” a small grower from his parish pointed out that the company had made $500,000 in profits the previous winter. In any case, plantation owners derived great benefits from the government's subsidy program, and it was not unreasonable to require them to share part of their increased earnings with their workers. Lynsky, Sugar Economics, 23, 93; Gordon McIntire to Miss La Budde, 12 October 1937, 1, file 3, reel 13, CLJP.

  56. Gordon McIntire to Miss La Budde, 12 October 1937, 3–7, file 3, reel 13, CLJP (quotation, p. 5); Godfrey G. Beck and Gordon McIntire to Sugar Cane Cutters and Friends of Field Labor in the Sugar Industry, n.d. [October 1937], ibid.

  57. U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Determination of Fair and Reasonable Wage Rates for Harvesting the 1937 Sugar Crop of Louisiana Sugarcane, Pursuant to the Sugar Act of 1937,” 12 November 1937, in Lynsky, Sugar Economics, 233. This did not mean that all planters had to provide such benefits, only that those who had always done so could not withdraw these privileges in an effort to reduce wages. In a setback for the LFU, the Sugar Section later determined that growers could deduct pay for board if this was agreed to in advance with their laborers. Gordon McIntire called the new ruling “simply a loophole” that allowed planters to pay less than the minimum wage. “The Check-up on Cane Cutting Wages,” Louisiana Farmers’ Union News, 1 March 1938, 5; Tex [Gordon McIntire] to Clyde Johnson, 14 September 1939, 1, file 3, reel 13, CLJP.

  58. “Farmers’ Union Asks Wage Increases for Sugar Workers,” Louisiana Farmers’ Union News, 1 March 1938, 1–3; “Increased Wages for Sugar Cane Workers Specified in Rules,” Opelousas Clarion-News, 28 July 1938, 3; Bern-hardt, Sugar Industry and the Federal Government, 208.

  59. LFU organizers and members attended additional hearings in August 1938 (to establish rates for the 1938 harvest season) and June 1939 (to establish rates for the 1939 planting and cultivation seasons, and the 1940 harvest season), but the union was unable to gain further wage increases. With the start of World War II, however, wages rose to almost $3.00 per day and continued to climb after the war, reaching up to $3.70 per day or $1.74 per ton during the 1949 sugar harvest. “Cane Grower Denies Labor Intimidated,” clipping, New Orleans Item, n.d. [6 August 1938], and Tex [Gordon McIntire] to Clyde [Johnson], 20 June 1939, file 3, reel 13, CLJP; Bernhardt, Sugar Industry and the Federal Government, 224–25, 242, 251–52, 266, 272, 275–76; Sitterson, Sugar Country, 393–94.

  60. “The Check-up on Cane Cutting Wages,” Louisiana Farmers’ Union News, 1 March 1938, 5; “Action on Cane Wages,” ibid., August 1939, 3; “The Sugar Battle Still Rages,” ibid., September 1939, 3; B. E. Sackett to Director, FBI, 7 September 1939, file “144–32–2,” box 17587, CSF, RG 60; “Sharecroppers and Tenants Hold Convention,” LFU news release, 4 November 1939, 2, file 3, reel 13, CLJP.

  61. [Clyde Johnson] to G. S. Gravlee, 23 September 1936, file 2, reel 13, CLJP; FBI, “Louisiana Farmers’ Union (Farmers’ Educational and Cooperative Union of America, Louisiana Division),” 27 September 1941, 6–7, LFU—FBI. There were 206,719 farm operators and laborers (excluding unpaid family labor) in Louisiana in 1940. Bureau of the Census, Census of Agriculture: 1945, Volume 1, Part 24, 4, 10.

  62. “Sharecroppers and Tenants Hold Convention,” LFU news release, 4 November 1939, 1, file 3, reel 13, CLJP; “Negro Conference in Baton Rouge,” Louisiana Union Farmer, November 1939, 1; Tex [Gordon McIntire] to Clyde [Johnson], 11 November 1939, 1, file 3, reel 13, CLJP.

  63. FBI, “Louisiana Farmers’ Union (Farmers’ Educational and Cooperative Union of America, Louisiana Division),” 27 September 1941, 18, LFU—FBI; “Communism and the Negro Tenant Farmer,” Opportunity, August 1931, 234.

  64. A New Member, “Slavery,” Southern Farm Leader, October 1936, 3; “Sharecroppers and Tenants Hold Convention,” LFU news release, 4 November 1939, 1, file 3, reel 13, CLJP (second quotation).

  65. Clyde Johnson interview, 45 (first quotation); Gordon McIntire and Clyde Johnson, “Statement on Farm-Tenancy,” n.d. [ca. January 1937], 3, file “Extra Copies Briefs from Hearings on Farm Tenancy, Dallas, Texas, Jan. 4, 1937,” box 1, RCFT, RG 83; “The Sharecrop Contract,” Southern Farm Leader, April–May 1937, 3; Mertz, New Deal Policy, 202; “F.S.A. News,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 8 June 1939, 1 (second quotation); “FSA Insists on Written Farm Lease,” St. Francisville Democrat, 1 October 1938, 2 (last quotation); “FSA Farm News,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 2 Octobe
r 1941, 1.

  66. C. L. Johnson, “The Sharecroppers’ Union,” Louisiana Weekly, 16 May 1936, 6; “Local No. 2 Resolution,” Southern Farm Leader, December 1936, 3; “Mother's Club Gets Toilets for School,” Southern Farm Leader, January 1937, 1.

  67. “Want School Bus First,” Southern Farm Leader, April–May 1937, 3 (first quotation); “Farmers’ Union Asks Federal Aid for Rural Schools,” Louisiana Farmers’ Union News, 1 June 1938, 1; “Some Letters from the Field,” Louisiana Farmers’ Union News, 20 August 1938, 3 (last quotation).

  68. “Unions Ask Land for Landless at Texas Meeting,” Southern Farm Leader, January 1937, 1; “Your County Agent,” ibid., June 1936, 4 (quotation); “Resettlement,” ibid., May 1936, 4.

  69. Pete Daniel has shown that government farm policies continued to favor large, corporate landowners over small farmers while accommodation to southern traditions and prejudices allowed racism to become institutionalized within the Department of Agriculture. As late as 1992, only 417 African Americans served on county committees of the FaHA (successor to the FSA) out of a total of 6,611 potential members. Discrimination was so prevalent that black farmers filed a class-action lawsuit against the government, winning a settlement in January 1999 that promised hundreds of millions of dollars in back payments to African Americans who had wrongfully been denied credit, grants, and other benefits. See Daniel, “Legal Basis of Agrarian Capitalism” (statistic, p. 100), and Jenkins, “See No Evil,” 16.

  70. This was a much larger percentage than was typical for the South as a whole, where discrimination against black farmers kept the number of successful FSA applicants low. In 1939, e.g., only 722 loans were granted to African Americans in fourteen southern states, representing 23 percent of the loans that were available in those states. (Black people made up 35 percent of the tenant farmers in the same states.) African Americans constituted 70 percent of tenants in Pointe Coupee Parish in 1935. “Good Record for Pointe Coupee's FSA Farmers,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 20 January 1938, 1, 4; Report of the Administrator of the Farm Security Administration 1939 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1939), 15–16, file “183-04 Annual Report 1937,” box 27, General Correspondence, 1935–42, Records of the Resettlement Division, Records of the Central Office, Records of the FaHA, RG 96, NA; Bureau of the Census, Census of Agriculture: 1935, Volume 1, 703.

  71. Douglas Robinson to Steve Barbre, 18 March 1941, and E. C. McInnis to A. M. Rogers, 31 January 1942, both in file “Pointe Coupee Parish, La. AD-510,” box 193, GCCO, RG 96.

  72. See, e.g., L. I. Billingsley to Secretary of Agriculture, n.d. [ca. February 1934], 1, file “Bero to Bill,” box 3, Correspondence with the General Public to Which Individual Replies Were Made, 1933–35, Records of the Division of Subsistence Homesteads, Records of the Central Office, Records of the FaHA, RG 96, NA; Willie Bates to FDR, December 1934, folder “Bas to Beat,” box 2, ibid.

  73. Statement of Harry Jack Rose, 7 December 1936, file 3, reel 13, CLJP.

  74. “First Negro Farmer Pays Off FSA Farm Ownership Loan,” Louisiana Weekly, 27 February 1943, 12; Arthur Hatfield, “Farmers Able to Buy Farms under Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act,” Louisiana Weekly, 9 August 1941, 7; [Statistics on African American Gains under FSA Programs], n.d. [ca. between 1937 and 1942], 1–2, file “Investigation of Clients Preference (Veterans, Indians, etc.),” box 43, General Correspondence, 1937–42, Records of the Farm Ownership Division, Records of the Central Office, Records of the FaHA, RG 96, NA.

  75. “Good Record for Pointe Coupee's FSA Farmers,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 20 January 1938, 1, 4. Statewide, the 6,899 farm families who had FSA loans in 1937 increased their net worth from an average of $213 when they received the loans to $418 at the end of the year. See “FSA Farmers Improve Net Worth in ‘37,” St. Francisville Democrat, 2 April 1938, 2.

  76. Arthur Hatfield, “FSA Performing Miracle for Low-Income Farmers, Says Writer after Tour,” Louisiana Weekly, 2 August 1941, 7 (first quotation); Bureau of the Census, Census of Agriculture: 1959, Volume 1, Part 35, 6; J. A. M. Lloyd, Annual Narrative Report, Negro Agent, Tensas Parish, 1939, 2, reel 53, FESR. Between 1935 and 1940 the number of black landowners in the parish increased from 88 to 159, raising the proportion of farm operators they represented from 5 to 9 percent. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census . . . 1940, Agriculture, Volume 1, Part 5, 143.

  77. “Some Letters from the Field,” Louisiana Farmers’ Union News, 20 August 1938, 3.

  78. “Is Communism in Our Midst?,” Opelousas Clarion-News, 3 December 1936, 4; Statement by Gordon McIntire, 9 December 1936, 1–2, file 3, reel 13, CLJP; “The Farmers’ Union and the Negro,” Louisiana Farmers’ Union News, 15 February 1938, 1; “Some Letters from the Field,” Louisiana Farmers’ Union News, 20 August 1938, 3. Some planters honestly believed that union organizers were taking advantage of their black laborers for mercenary reasons. Numerous references to the poverty of the New Orleans staff members in the papers of the LFU show that this was not the case. Organizers received no regular salaries and depended on donations from northern supporters in addition to some limited funds allocated by the NFU. When they traveled out to the rural parishes to visit union locals, they relied on members to feed and house them. “Racketeers Said to Be Robbing Poor as Alleged RA Workers,” Opelousas-Clarion News, 2 January 1936, sec. 2, 4; George A. Dreyfous and M. Swearingen, “Report to the Executive Committee of the LLPCR on Investigations in West Feliciana Parish,” n.d. [1937], 6, file 19, box 2, HNLP; Tex [Gordon McIntire] to Clyde [Johnson], 17 February, 16 April, 22 May 1937, 22–23 June 1938, all in file 3, reel 13, CLJP.

  79. Report of T. F. Wilson, FBI, 1 August 1939, 25, file “144–32–2,” box 17587, CSF, RG 60; Elma Godchaux to LLPCR, 17 October 1937, 2, file 7, box 1, HNLP.

  80. Report of T. F. Wilson, FBI, 1 August 1939, 28, file “144–32–2,” box 17587, CSF, RG 60; “Natchitoches Farmers Rally to Defend Clark,” Louisiana Weekly, 17 August 1940, 5; “Trouble with Checks,” Southern Farm Leader, January 1937, 3 (quotations). Similar complaints were made by farmers in Alabama and Arkansas as well as other parishes in Louisiana. See “Resettlement,” Southern Farm Leader, May 1936, 4.

  81. Gordon McIntire to Gardner Jackson, 17 July 1939, 1, file 3, reel 13, CLJP.

  82. Report of J. O. Peyronnin, FBI, 6 September 1939, 2–3, file “144–32–2,” box 17587, CSF, RG 60 (first and last quotations); “Statement of Terror against Farmers’ Union Leaders in West Feliciana Parish Louisiana,” 2 July 1937, 1–3, file 3, reel 13, CLJP.

  83. Report of T. F. Wilson, FBI, 1 August 1939, 28, file “144–32–2,” box 17587, CSF, RG 60; Gordon McIntire [to St. Landry Farm LFU Members], February 1937, 3, file 2, reel 13, CLJP. See also Johnson, “Brief History,” 11–12, and Rosen, “Alabama Share Croppers Union,” 92.

  84. George A. Dreyfous and M. Swearingen, “Report of the Executive Committee of the LLPCR on Investigations in West Feliciana Parish,” n.d. [1937], 3, file 19, box 2, HNLP (1937 report); “Union Men Don't Scare,” Louisiana Farmers’ Union News, 15 February 1938, 1–2.

  85. Gordon McIntire to Gardner Jackson, 17 July 1939, and to Clyde Johnson, 19 July 1939, both in file 3, reel 13, CLJP; Report of T. F. Wilson, FBI, 1 August 1939, and Report of J. O. Peyronnin, FBI, 6 September 1939, both in file “144–32–2,” box 17587, CSF, RG 60. The FBI's involvement was reluctant, and its agents showed more sympathy with plantation owners than with sugar workers. In his final report, the bureau's special agent in charge in New Orleans dismissed McIntire's complaints, saying: “The Bureau's attention is invited to the fact that McIntire is a labor union organizer who is trying to organize the negro workers in the cane fields and he, of course, is meeting with the usual opposition any such movement would have, especially in this part of the country, in connection with attempts to organize negro workers. His interests in the whole matter are purely mercenary, in attempts to secure members for his organization.” B. E. Sackett to Director, FBI, 7 September 1939, 2, file “144–32–2,” box 17587, CSF, RG 60.

  86. �
��The Sugar Battle Still Rages,” Louisiana Farmers’ Union News, September 1939, 3; Margery Dallet, “Case of Clinton Clark, Natchitoches, La.,” 17 August 1940, 1–2, file 15, box 3, HNLP.

  87. H. L. Mitchell to Members of Executive Council of the STFU, memorandum, 7 March 1941, 1, reel 18, STFUP; “Farm Bureau Advocates Abolition of Tenant Program,” Tenant Farmer, 15 July 1941, 1, file “Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union 1940–1941,” box 527, ser. A, pt. 3, PNAACP—LC; H. L. Mitchell, “The People at the Bottom of Our Agricultural Ladder,” 7 October 1952, 1, reel 36, STFUP; Baldwin, Poverty and Politics, 335–62; Holley, Uncle Sam's Farmers, 174–278; Mertz, New Deal Policy, 218–20; Daniel, Breaking the Land, 91–109; Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost, 51–79.

  88. FBI, “Louisiana Farmers’ Union (Farmers’ Educational and Cooperative Union of America, Louisiana Division),” 20 February 1943, 1, LFU—FBI. The figure of 3,000 members was an estimate given to an FBI agent by a former member of the LFU. It is unclear whether it refers to the union's total membership or only dues-paying members—if there were 3,000 dues-paying members, then the union's total membership would have been several times that number.

  89. Gordon McIntire, “Dear Friends,” n.d. [1938], file 3, reel 13, CLJP; FBI, “Louisiana Farmers’ Union (Farmers’ Educational and Cooperative Union of America, Louisiana Division),” 20 February 1943, 1, LFU—FBI; Letter from unknown author to Peggy and Gordon [McIntire], 9 June 1941, excerpted in FBI, “Louisiana Farmers’ Union (Farmers’ Educational and Cooperative Union of America, Louisiana Division),” 27 September 1941, 22, LFU—FBI; Rosen, “Alabama Share Croppers Union,” 122.

  90. Gordon McIntire to Members and Friends of the Farmers’ Union in Louisiana, 10 March 1942, 1, file 3, reel 13, CLJP; Fred Kane, “Clinton Clark Threatened with Mob Violence,” Louisiana Weekly, 31 January 1942, 1, 7; “Farm Union Organizers Are Freed,” Louisiana Weekly, 11 April 1942, 2.