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.