John L. Handcox

When I was looking for music I came across John L. Handcox for my presentation. I'm surprised I haven't found music from him because he contributed a lot to the STFU. He was a tenant farmer himself and most of his songs and poems were used at meetings.  Here's one called "King Cotton." The planter was always the enemy to tenant farmers and this portrays it.

The planters celebrated King Cotton in Memphis, May fifteen.
It was the largest gathering you most ever seen.
People came from far and near to celebrate King Cotton
Whom the planters love so dear.
Thousands of flags were hung in the street,
But they left thousands of sharecroppers on their farms with nothing to eat.
Why do they celebrate Cotton? Here, I'll make it clear:
Because they cheat, beat and take it away from labor every year.
Cotton is King, and will always be,
Until labor in the South is set free.
The money spent for decorations and flags,
Would sure have helped poor sharecroppers who are hungry and in rags.
Oh! King Cotton, today you have millions of slaves
And have caused many poor workers to be in lonesome graves.
When Cotton is King of any nation,
It means wealth to the planer- to the laborer starvation.

Ideas

I just started my presentation project. I think I am going to do a handout/brochure to give to everyone and try my hardest to be as entertaining as possible!  I found some art made from the New Deal that I think will work well and I want to use some songs or hymns that were popular in the STFU. I also think it would be cool to show pictures of the secret coding used by the union. I hope it doesn't come out too boring.....

thinking.

I've been thinking about how I want to incorporate topics discussed in class into my paper. I want to use the vigilante women in The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction and compare them to the STFU women. Women were very important in the union which was unusual for Southern women in the 1930's. They helped make union decisions and were considered "equal" to men and were involved in all of the rituals the men were. Some women helped get men out of jail, stop fights and went on night rides to recruit other members. This was very rare because Southern women often had a weak or submissive stereotype.

I'm also having trouble with a thesis. I never know how to include everything in my paper in a thesis without listing or having it be too much of a mouthful.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Done!

I just printed out my rough draft and I feel pretty good about it. I think I'm going to take a break from the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union for a couple of days!

Here is a picture of a group of STFU members listening to a speech in Arkansas. This is an important picture because it has whites, blacks and women in the picture. Each made an impact on the movement.

Civil Rights

As I have altered my topic a bit, I am finding some very interesting information. I am focusing on the Southern Tenant Farmers Union which was located mainly in the NE part of Arkansas (Johnny Cash is from this region!) The STFU was an interracial group of black and white tenant farmers and some historians say this union is the backbone to the Civil Rights movement. Women were also allowed in the union which was rare in the 1930's. Here's an interesting quote from a book I'm reading. A black man said this at the first meeting of the STFU. They were trying to decide if they wanted to have a segregated union or not.

"We colored people can't organize without you. Aren't we all brothers and ain't God the Father of us all? We live under the same sun, eat the same food, wear the same kind of clothing, work on the same land, raise the same crop for the same landlord who oppresses and cheats us both. For a long time now the white folks and the colored folks have been fighting each other and both of us had been getting whipped all the time. We don't have nothing against one another but we got plenty against the landlord. The same chain that holds my people holds your people too. If we're chained together on the outside we ought to stay chained together in the union. It won't do no good for us to divide because there's where the trouble has been all the time. The landlord is always betwixt us, beatin' us and starvin' us and makin' us fight each other. There ain't but one way for us to get him where he can't help himself and that's for us to et together and stay together."

This was a class issue more than a race issue. I thought it was cool.

good stuff!

I've been working on my paper and it's going well! I had to change my topic just a bit and i'm focusing more on the Southern Tenant Farmer's Union more than just the Missouri Bootheel. The STFU (funny, right?) had a very a very rich culture and many unique rituals to their union. I feel much more confident about the culture of the STFU than I did with the small town in Missouri.

Having trouble.....

So I have founds lots of information about sharecroppers and the Roadside Demonstration of 1939. The problem I am having is what the sharecroppers community was like! Professor Sullivan recommended some books at the MSU library that I rented out about Mississippi culture but I have found these books to be very general. I want to focus on the Bootheel of Mississippi and I'm still not sure what the community was like during the Great Depression. Help!

Helpful or not?

I found a children's book that is based on the childhood life of Owen Whitfield in the Mississippi Delta. It is fictional but I'm still wondering if it would be helpful with culture. Is it a bad idea to use a fictional story as a source or could this be useful to find out cultural details of the Mississippi Delta?

Delmo Homes

This is an example of the Delmo Homes that sharecroppers moved into after the government helped these homeless people. Here's a description from an issue in the "Preservation Issues" Volume 3 Number


"Construction on the Delmo Project houses began in 1940 and was completed in 1941. A total of 595 houses were constructed, with 30 to 80 houses in each village. The villages were segregated by race; four of the 10 - North Wyatt (Wilson City), North Lilbourn, Gobler, and South Wardell - were constructed for African Americans. Each village was constructed in a roughly circular loop around a central common area; Circle City near Grayridge in Stoddard County apparently derived its name from this arrangement.
The houses had four rooms with closets, built-in cabinets, storage space for fruits and vegetables, and were wired for electric lighting. Each house was furnished with one bedroom suite, a cooking stove, a coal heating stove, a dining table, its own privy, and an approximately one-acre plot for growing food. The total cost for each house was $800."

Narratives.

I found slave narratives written in the late 1930's, about the time period I am researching. It is interesting to read their opinions. Many of them say that slavey wasn't "all that bad" or that the present times are going pretty well too. It seems as though they can't imagine having equal opportunities. I want to compare these narratives with some of the 2nd generation share croppers thoughts.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/

Important People

Thanks to help to Professor Sullivan I have found much more information! Currently I'm trying to focus on important people that were apart of the strike in 1939. The 3 most important I've found have been Owen Whitfield, who was basically in charge of the strike, Fannie Cook, and Marcus "Al" Murphy. 

Fanny Cook, a Jewish woman from St. Charles, Missouri, played a key role in the fight. She was a writer, her first book published in 1938 about a middle-class white woman who fought to help minorities in the labor force. The story was fictional, but provided an insight into Cook's opinion about labor issues. In 1939, Cook stayed with a local family who in the Bootheel to work on her next novel. She found the experience enriching but hated what she saw. This is what I found from an article "St. Louis and the Sharecroppers: Urban Connections to a Rural Protest."

"According to Cook, state police "dumped" the roadside demonstrators at camps in various locations in the Bootheel after clearing their tents from the roadside. In Charleston, they lived in stalls made of cardboard boxes, propped up against bare walls, and they had no running water or privies. Women gave birth without medical care. Others lived out in the country in similar circumstances. As a doctor's wife, Cook lamented that sick people lay in makeshift beds in rough camps with no one to determine what ailed them. Although she went to the Bootheel to obtain material for a novel, Cook became personally involved in the sharecroppers' cause. Later, she told a reporter for the Post-Dispatch that the poor people of Southeast Missouri had become her friends. "When people become your friends," she said, "you want to do something for them."

Video

Here is an interesting informational video about the strike of 1939.

http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=146043

I am finding a lot of information but still having trouble finding primary sources.....

Paper Topic?

I've been looking into the topic of sharecropping. I found that there was a sharecroppers strike in 1939 in southeast Missouri. This was started when the Agricultural Adjustment Act was created from the New Deal. There was a loophole in this Act that allowed farmers to keep government money they owed to sharecroppers. The organizer, Owen H. Whitfield had a significant influence in the strike.

Butlercountyhistory.org says, "Owen Whitfield was a sharecropper and Vice President of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, which was dedicated to creating better conditions for farm workers. Reverend Whitfield always said “Take your eye’s out of the sky, cause somebody is stealing your bread”. He convinced the other sharecroppers, that this demonstration would draw public attention to their plight. "


The Butler County history website has very interesting facts about how the community came about. Here it says, 
"Day after day, the sharecroppers remained by the roadside, huddling in tents, some with only old iron cook stoves to warm them. The demonstration began to attract national attention and to embarrass the state government. Reporters and photographers from major newspapers flocked to the Bootheel to follow the crisis. A professor of history at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri went to visit the demonstrators and came away horrified. When he described what he had seen to his classes, students gave up their spring prom and donated the money to help the sharecroppers. Activist Fannie Cook organized a committee of citizens to send relief to the protesters. Cook’s committee along with the Lincoln University students donated money so that the sharecroppers, led by Owen Whitfield, could buy a parcel of land: 93 acres near Poplar Bluff, Missouri. Several hundred both black and white sharecroppers moved to the site, which came to be known as “Cropperville”.


I think it would be interesting to write my research paper about a community that was built from a labor movement. I have not looked for primary sources or looked on libraries, so I don't know how much credible resources I will be able to find. I think this will be most challenging. 

First Blog

I just joined the class last week and I am just now starting my blog. I am an Elementary Education major with a History minor. The time period I am most interested in the 60's/70's time period. I love learning about Vietnam. THe "Hippie" era and Civil Rights Movement is interesting to me. I am a junior and have some experience with history classes. I have taken a few but nothing too in depth. I have never worked with archives but I have worked with textbooks!