A Different Day Read online

  The political and economic systems that allowed wealthy white Louisianans like Tom Alexander to control, cheat, and abuse black people took shape in the decades after the end of Reconstruction, guided by a coalition of former slaveholders and new entrepreneurs who migrated to the region from the North and West. This chapter outlines the development of those systems and the obstacles they placed in the way of black political activity. Although it was neither static nor uncontested, the New South political economy proved highly resilient for the first half of the twentieth century. Chapters 2 and 3 cover the decades up to World War II, because it was only after the 1940s that rapid economic change, the emerging civil rights movement, and federal intervention enabled the construction of a more equitable society.

  Historians have debated whether the laws that segregated, disfranchised, and limited economic opportunities for black southerners in the late nineteenth century represented an attempt by white reactionaries to reestablish traditional racial hierarchies or whether they were part of the process of modernization itself.5 Louisiana's plantation parishes provide examples of the way old and new people, money, and ideologies blended together in the New South to create a hybrid political economy based on neither slavery nor completely free labor. White Louisianans rejected northern political domination but they were desperate for northern capital. The Civil War had left most landowners without cash or the basis for obtaining credit that had previously been provided by slave ownership. Local merchants and professionals whose fortunes survived the war, along with entrepreneurs from outside the region, saw that they could provide financial assistance to impoverished planters and in doing so profit themselves. Some of them bought or leased plantations from their owners, hoping to grow rich from cultivating cotton and sugarcane. Others established general stores in rural areas and allowed farmers to purchase supplies on credit in return for liens on the crops they expected to produce. Simultaneously, northern-financed extractive industries, particularly lumber companies, began to exploit the state's natural resources. Agricultural and commercial interests gradually overlapped as merchants and other businesspeople accumulated enough wealth to purchase landholdings of their own. Recent migrants sometimes formed alliances with older residents through economic partnerships or marriage. Their sons attended college and entered medical, financial, or legal professions in addition to helping to operate the family estates. Out of this mix emerged a new elite comprised of planters, business owners, bankers, lawyers, doctors, and industrialists who dominated economic and political life in the rural parishes for much of the twentieth century.6

  Former Confederates and Yankee fortune seekers merged into a single, conservative ruling class.7 According to an account of the development of Madison Parish in the late nineteenth century, families that had lived for generations in the area welcomed immigrants in a “wonderful spirit of harmony.”8 Some local governments and community leaders actively encouraged northern investment and industry, emphasizing low taxes, abundant natural resources, and the availability of cheap labor as the region's main attractions.9 State legislators generously exempted the owners of railroads, factories, sawmills, and mines from paying taxes for the first ten years of the twentieth century and empowered the State Board of Agriculture and Immigration to adopt “needful measures” to bring about the “peopling with a desirable population the vast unoccupied areas” of Louisiana.10

  At the same time, the idea that farming was best approached as a business enterprise gained influence among planters. Corporate owners bought some of the old plantations in both the sugar and cotton parishes, reorganizing them to maximize efficiency and profits. Native Louisianans who had managed to hold onto their land readily adapted to new management and operating systems that promised greater productivity and higher incomes. In 1887 the region's most prominent sugar planters formed the Louisiana Sugar Planters’ Association, urging members to adopt modern business practices and scientific farming methods. Five years later plantation owners in the northern parishes organized the North Louisiana Cotton Association to disseminate information, lobby for better freight rates and prices, and encourage the development of cotton production along scientific lines.11 In the next few decades many Louisiana plantations came to resemble the rationalized, efficiency-driven enterprises associated with northern capitalism and industry. Corporate owners and absentee landlords gave little thought to the welfare of their workers, with whom they rarely had any direct contact. Agricultural laborers increasingly came to be viewed as statistics in plantation record books, important only to the extent that they counted as profits or losses.12

  Despite the devastation caused by the Civil War, a rejuvenated Louisiana experienced remarkable economic growth in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1880 the state had only 652 miles of railroad, mostly traveling from east to west. By 1915 railroads totaling 5,728 miles crisscrossed its entire area, creating new markets and opening previously undeveloped forests and farmland to exploitation. In roughly the same period Louisiana's population almost doubled, increasing from 939,946 to 1,798,509. Although the state remained overwhelmingly rural until the 1940s, there was some industrial expansion in the early part of the century. Between 1899 and 1914 the number of manufacturing establishments in Louisiana increased from 1,826 to 2,206, raising the number of wage earners employed in industry from 40,878 in 1880 to 77,648 in 1920.13

  Although this seemed like progress to some people, the black residents who made up nearly half of the population did not fare well in the new economic order. Lack of resources, inadequate education, and discrimination confined the majority of them to unskilled, low-paid jobs. In 1910, 76 percent of the state's black workers labored in agriculture or domestic service, usually for white employers. Another 7 percent worked in logging camps and sawmills, where wages and conditions were similar to those that prevailed on the plantations. Cotton, sugar, and lumber production were all labor-intensive enterprises subject to changing weather, market, and credit conditions. Plantation and lumber company owners operated with a chronic shortage of capital and often incurred heavy debts. Periods of prosperity alternated with times of economic hardship, buffeting these entrepreneurs about and frequently making life miserable both for them and their employees.14

  In all three industries, ready access to a large, cheap labor force at crucial times in the production process was necessary for success. Sugar growers, for example, had only a small window of time each year to harvest their crops before exposure to cold weather reduced the sucrose levels in the cane, causing it to decrease in value or destroying it altogether. Lumber contractors and sawmill operators could (and did) incur thousands of dollars in losses when labor shortages prevented them from fulfilling their obligations to their customers. The end of the crop year was a dreaded experience for both cotton and sugar planters who could never be sure of retaining enough laborers to work their lands in the coming seasons. Plantation manager Henry Stewart of West Feliciana Parish gave expression to the exasperation that annually afflicted many agricultural employers when, in December 1906, he wrote: “The labor conditions here are frightful. My negroes have all cleared moving and were the first negroes to want to start moving, two families have left me and I have moved several but still I am short of last or this year. . . . How can any one accomplish anything with the whole country upset in any such way, every year?”15

  The financial uncertainty and other problems associated with rural Louisiana's three main commercial enterprises encouraged attempts by employers to squeeze the most out of their employees for the least possible cost. Since the majority of laborers were African American, ruthless exploitation and brutal methods of controlling them were easy to justify. Henry Stewart advised a neighbor not to consider paying her workers more because “it is simply money thrown away (money given a negro is always thrown away) and setting a premium of worthlessness.” Comparing management practices on the Bowman family's plantations in West Feliciana, Iberville, and Pointe Coupee Parishes,
Sarah Bowman found those under the charge of a strict overseer to be more profitable; she concluded that when it came to dealing with black workers, “fear is far better than love.” According to an article that appeared in the Madison Journal in 1928, African Americans had less need for food or clothing than white people. Its author claimed: “The negro . . . can weather the fiercest winter gale, clad in only a pair of cotton overalls and a blue jumper. . . . He can live a week on three soda crackers, a box of sardines, and five cents worth of cheese. . . . His surplus money he spends on entertainment. . . . and it very often happens that when the birds begin to sing, Mr. Negro is seized with wanderlust and suddenly disappears.”16 The prevailing view among white Louisianans could be summarized as follows: black people would not work unless they were coerced, they could survive on less money than other people, and offering them higher wages only caused them to become shiftless and unreliable.

  Most African Americans in the cotton parishes worked as tenants and sharecroppers, closely supervised by plantation owners or managers. Although tenancy had traditionally been a rental arrangement that allowed landless farmers to lease land in return for paying either cash or a portion of the crops they raised as rent to their landlords, on large “business plantations” like those that emerged in Louisiana's delta regions it evolved into something more resembling wage labor. State courts recognized clear differences between two sets of relations that could exist on plantations: that of lessor and lessee, and that of employer and employee. The status of lessee applied only to tenants whose agreements with their landlords allowed them some autonomy, giving them control over management decisions and the sale of their portion of the crops. Where landowners or their managers supervised the work on plantations, tenants were merely employees, with no right to the products of their labor until after these had been sold and the proceeds divided by their landlords, who had legal ownership of the crops.17 Common usage and the U.S. census after 1920 defined those workers who provided their own farm animals and equipment as tenants, distinguishing them from sharecroppers, who had only their labor to contribute to the production process. In reality, as Harold Woodman has observed, the differences were not so obvious. When landowners or overseers assigned workers tasks, decided when to harvest and sell the crops, and controlled the division of earnings, tenants became simply sharecroppers with mules, the only difference being that they received a larger share (usually two-thirds) as payment for their labor than sharecroppers, who received one-half.18

  Census statistics do not reveal the exact status of individual farm families, but they do provide a general indication of the prevalence of farm ownership and the different types of tenancy. In 1910, 80 percent of Louisiana's 54,879 black farmers were tenants. Of those, 20 percent were cash tenants, 76 percent were share tenants, and 4 percent were listed as share-cash or unspecified tenure. By 1930 the percentage of nonwhite farmers who were tenants had increased to 86 percent, and the proportion who were cash tenants had decreased to 11 percent.19 (See Table 2.1.) A 1941 study of farm tenancy in Louisiana that divided tenants into “independent,” “semi-independent,” and “supervised” categories according to the extent of their managerial responsibilities found that African Americans were most likely to be supervised, especially if they resided on plantations in the Mississippi or Red River delta parishes.20

  Table 2.1 African American Farm Operators in Louisiana, 1910 and 1930

  1910 1930

  Tenure Number Percentage Number Percentage

  Ownersa 10,725 20 10,503 14

  Managers 77 (-)b 54 (-)

  Tenants 44,077 80 63,213 86

  Total 54,879 100 73,770 100

  Tenants 44,077 100 63,213 100

  Cash 8,723 20 6,692 11

  Sharec 33,596 76 32,214 51

  Other 1,758 4 24,307 38

  SOURCES: Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1910, Volume 6: Agriculture (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1913), 12, 684, and Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Agriculture, Volume 2: Reports by States, Part 2: The Southern States (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1932), 2–3, 1219.

  aFarm operators listed as part owners in the census (i.e., those who owned part of the land they worked and rented other parts) are included in the category of farm owners.

  b(-) indicates less than 0.5 percent.

  cFarm operators listed as share tenants in the 1910 census included all those who labored in return for a portion of the crop. In the 1930 census, this figure included only sharecroppers (i.e., share tenants who owned no farm animals or equipment). A large number of farmers classed as share tenants in 1910 were therefore listed as “other tenants” in 1930.

  Usually, all members of tenant families who were old enough worked. The crop year began with plowing in the spring, a task that was performed by men and older boys. Women and younger children joined male workers in the fields to plant the cotton seeds, and they helped with the weeding and thinning that were needed periodically between late spring and midsummer. When the plants grew tall enough to survive on their own, the crops were “laid by” for a few weeks and work was temporarily suspended. All hands returned to the fields again during the cotton-picking season, beginning late in the summer and lasting until the fall or winter.21

  Children picking cotton, location unknown, n.d. In the early twentieth century, sending children to the fields instead of to school for much of the year was both an economic necessity and a condition of employment for many tenant families. RG 83-ML-4-90, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

  Tenants were not paid until after the harvest, when they received a share of the income from the crops they had raised. Lacking cash for most of the year, plantation workers relied on their employers for housing, food, clothing, and other necessities. These were purchased on credit and the costs, plus interest, deducted from their wages at “settlement time.” Planters often charged usurious interest rates on credit extended to their employees, arguing that these were necessary because of the high risks involved. Landlords had sole responsibility for keeping accounts and selling the crops, so that workers had to take their employer's word for how much they had earned and how much they owed. At the end of the year, most tenants either just broke even or landed in debt. Civil rights leader Harrison Brown, who grew up in a sharecropping family in Tensas Parish in the 1920s, recalled that he never saw any money. “Negroes didn't even sell crops in those days,” he stated. “All he did was raise them, and pick them, and after that he'd see nothing.”22

  In the sugar plantation regions farther south, tenant farming was less common. African Americans in these parishes were mostly wage laborers who worked in gangs watched over by white supervisors. Like cotton growers, sugar planters had experimented with tenants in the decades following the Civil War but found these arrangements unsatisfactory. Sugar production required a highly disciplined, tightly supervised labor force, and the considerable financial investments that planters had in sugarhouses and other specialized equipment made them unwilling to rely on tenants for their maintenance. In addition, there was no way to accurately measure the amount of sugar that each tenant's cane produced, making a fair division of the proceeds difficult and discouraging more widespread use of tenancy in the sugar parishes. By the 1930s almost 80 percent of the Louisiana sugar crop was produced using wage labor, with African Americans making up 75 percent of the resident workforce.23

  Sugar production divided into three main phases: plowing and planting (in the spring and fall), cultivating (from late March until early July), and harvesting (from October to January). Plowmen and their families provided the core labor supply and were hired on year-long contracts. Men prepared the fields at the beginning of the season, and women planted the seed cane. The rows then had to be weeded every ten days until June or July, when the cane was left to mature. During the sugar harvest planters employed extra workers from the surrounding areas, including many cotton farmers from northern Louisiana and Mississippi who came south to cut
cane after their crops had been laid by.24

  Payment arrangements varied. To ensure that year-round employees fulfilled their contract obligations, some planters paid them half of their earnings every two weeks and withheld the other half until after the harvest. Others paid both permanent and temporary employees weekly or daily wages. Whatever the method, wages were universally low, averaging about eighty-five cents to one dollar a day during the planting and cultivating seasons and slightly more at harvest time.25 Though employers customarily provided houses, garden plots, firewood, and medical care, there was a growing tendency in the early twentieth century to eliminate these benefits. Plantation owners knew that there was money to be made in furnishing employees with food and other necessities. Like their counterparts in the cotton parishes, some sugar workers never saw any cash. Employers either paid them in scrip redeemable only at plantation stores or simply kept a record of their purchases and labor.26

  Women cutting sugarcane on a plantation near Baton Rouge, April 1939. Poverty forced many black women into the workforce in the early twentieth century, either as agricultural workers or as domestics. RG 69-GU-2-886, National Archives, Washington, D.C.