Justice
Nov 16, 2005, @ 04:34 AM
The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union (stfu) was formed in July 1934 in the cotton country of eastern Arkansas. Although founders H. L. Mitchell and Clay East were socialists, the stfu was a broad-based, indigenous protest movement. While advocating "land for the landless" and cooperative farming communities, it concentrated on challenging the way the Agricultural Adjustment Administration's (aaa) crop-re-duction programs were administered. Many tenants had been driven off the land or forced into day labor as cotton production was cut under the law. Others were deprived by landlords of their portion of aaa subsidy payments. The stfu protested evictions and called strikes to raise farm labor wages. Their efforts, though of limited success, were impressively interracial. Separation of the races was permitted in locals, but the stfu boasted both talented black organizers and some integrated local units. Blacks composed from one-half to two-thirds of the membership, which came to number between twenty-five thousand and thirty-five thousand in six southern states.
The stfu drew national attention to the plight of sharecroppers. It quickly won the moral and financial support of reform organizations, radicals, and liberal clergy and gained powerful allies in New Deal Washington. But official action on sharecropper issues was taken only after socially prominent white supporters became targets of the widespread anti-stfu violence and harassment in Arkansas. Farm tenancy commissions were formed at the federal and state levels, but the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenancy Act of 1937 provided only a limited program of loans to tenants, administered by the new Farm Security Administration.
The union's influence declined soon after that year. Factional battles between socialists and communists and black dissatisfaction with the white leadership of the stfu increased after its affiliation with a cio agricultural union in 1937. The stfu survived under various names until 1960, but it scored few successes as farm mechanization thinned the ranks of southern sharecroppers.
!!!!!!!
cheers, and
-=</|Awesome Party!|\>=-
The stfu drew national attention to the plight of sharecroppers. It quickly won the moral and financial support of reform organizations, radicals, and liberal clergy and gained powerful allies in New Deal Washington. But official action on sharecropper issues was taken only after socially prominent white supporters became targets of the widespread anti-stfu violence and harassment in Arkansas. Farm tenancy commissions were formed at the federal and state levels, but the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenancy Act of 1937 provided only a limited program of loans to tenants, administered by the new Farm Security Administration.
The union's influence declined soon after that year. Factional battles between socialists and communists and black dissatisfaction with the white leadership of the stfu increased after its affiliation with a cio agricultural union in 1937. The stfu survived under various names until 1960, but it scored few successes as farm mechanization thinned the ranks of southern sharecroppers.
!!!!!!!
cheers, and
-=</|Awesome Party!|\>=-