1. A. Z. Young, Zelma Wyche, Harrison H. Brown, T. I. Israel, F. W. Wilson, and Moses Williams, Joseph Carter, interviews by Miriam Feingold, MFP.
2. See, e.g., Morris, Origins of the Civil Rights Movement; Brown, “Womanist Consciousness”; Lewis, In Their Own Interests; Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights; Woodruff, “African American Struggles for Citizenship”; Kelley, Race Rebels; Reich, “Soldiers of Democracy”; Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom,; and Fairclough, “ ‘Being in the Field of Education.’” In But For Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle (1997), Glenn Eskew challenges the emphasis on continuity by arguing that the civil rights movement represented a significant departure from black activism in earlier decades. Before the mid-twentieth century, he asserts, the “traditional Negro leadership class” accommodated the Jim Crow social order, rarely agitating for anything more than small improvements within the confines of segregation. The civil rights movement began “when local black activists in the South organized new indigenous protest groups in the 1950s and 1960s that demanded immediate and equal access to the system” (p. 15). Although Eskew's analysis offers some valuable insights into class conflict and other divisions that afflicted the black community (which has too often been portrayed as monolithic), his account does not warrant rejection of the continuity thesis. Eskew conflates black activism in the early twentieth century with the black middle class, ignoring working-class and rural poor people's resistance to oppression. The agenda that Eskew associates with the “race men” who led the fight for civil rights reflected long-standing goals of many African Americans, not a new departure as he suggests. More than ideology, shifting political and economic contexts that allowed a change in tactics were what set the freedom movement of the 1950s and 1960s apart from earlier decades.
3. Wyche et al. interview.
4. Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 160.
5. Bureau of the Census, Eighteenth Decennial Census . . . Population: 1960, Volume 1, Part 20, 90–95.
6. Adam Fairclough's Race and Democracy provides a statewide study of the civil rights movement in Louisiana.
7. Writing in 1960, for instance, Elliott Rudwick (W. E. B. Du Bois, 118) suggested that the majority of African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century were “little interested in politics” and required exceptionally inspirational leadership to stir them to action. The almost exclusive focus on national civil rights organizations and leaders that characterized studies of the movement for the next three decades did little to refute this view, though this does not detract from the significant contributions these works have made to the field. The most useful and comprehensive accounts are Meier and Rudwick, CORE; Carson, In Struggle; Garrow, Bearing the Cross; Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America; Branch, Parting the Waters; and Goldfield, Black, White, and Southern.
8. McMillen, Dark Journey; Litwack, Trouble in Mind; Cecelski and Tyson, review of Trouble in Mind, 736.
9. Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll; Thompson, Making of the English Working Class; Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness.
10. James C. Scott, Moral Economy of the Peasant and Weapons of the Weak; Kelley, Race Rebels; Allen Isaacman et al., “ ‘Cotton Is the Mother of Poverty”’; Stern, Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness; Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom. See also Guha, Subaltern Studies, Volume I, and subsequent volumes in this series.
11. For a summary of the main issues in this debate and some helpful critiques, see the essays in Journal of Peasant Studies 13 (January 1986), a special issue devoted to studies of everyday forms of peasant resistance in Southeast Asia, especially those by James Scott, Christine Pelzer White, and Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet. Another useful overview is O'Hanlon, “Recovering the Subject.”
12. Woodruff, “African-American Struggles for Citizenship.” Michael Honey (Black Workers Remember) provides further evidence that black activists viewed economic rights as an integral part of the fight for equality.
13. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 200–227. Steve Stern makes a similar point in his introduction and contribution to Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness, 9–10, 34–93. Stern suggests looking at “preexisting patterns of ‘resistant adaptation’” as a way to understand peasant rebellions, arguing that open protests might not reflect a sudden awakening to political consciousness on the part of the oppressed (as is often supposed), but rather the continuation, in new contexts, of earlier efforts to overcome injustice.
14. Daniel, Breaking the Land; Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost.
15. Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton; Kelley, Hammer and Hoe. See also Foley, White Scourge, 163–82.
16. See, e.g., Kelley, Hammer and Hoe; Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights; and Sullivan, Days of Hope.
17. One exception is Jeannie M. Whayne's New Plantation South.
18. Harrison and Earnestine Brown, interview by author, THWC—LSU.
1. Vandal, Rethinking Southern Violence, 40–46.
2. Smith and Hitt, People of Louisiana, 47–49; “The Social Setting of the Louisiana Negro Schools,” n.d. [ca. 1940], 2–3, file 8, box 226, CSJP.
3. Johnson, Louisiana Educational Survey, 13, 15.
4. Vandal, Rethinking Southern Violence, 52–53, 57; Hyde, Pistols and Politics, 186, 209.
5. Vandal, Rethinking Southern Violence, 50–51; Johnson, Louisiana Educational Survey, 5.
6. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 453; Sitterson, Sugar Country, 104–7; Hall, African Americans in Colonial Louisiana, 150; Hyde, Pistols and Politics, 180–212. See also Thomas Becnel's study of labor organizing efforts in the sugar parishes and plantation owners’ responses in Labor, Church, and the Sugar Establishment. Becnel finds that most Catholic planters rejected the admonitions of priests who supported workers’ struggles, acting according to their economic interests rather than their religious beliefs in refusing to give in to union demands.
7. This analysis is drawn from general works on the post–Civil War South and more specific studies of Louisiana itself. The best overviews of the period are Du Bois, Black Reconstruction; Woodward, Origins of the New South and Reunion and Reaction; Kousser, Shaping of Southern Politics; Powell, New Masters; and Foner, Reconstruction. For Louisiana, see Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle; Hair, Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest; Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed; Vincent, Black Legislators; Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction; and Hyde, Pistols and Politics.
8. Reed, “Race Legislation,” 380; General Assembly of . . . Louisiana, Acts of the General Assembly . . . 1865, 3–9.
9. U.S. Senate, Report and Testimony, 176–77, 192–211 (quotation, p. 176).
10. Engstrom et al., “Louisiana,” 104; Prestage and Williams, “Blacks in Louisiana Politics,” 293–96.
11. Reed, “Race Legislation,” 381–84; Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction, 113–15, 117–18; Vincent, Black Legislators, 48–70.
12. Crouch, “Black Education,” 289, 297–98; Anderson, Education of Blacks in the South, 21; Robert Dabney Calhoun, History of Concordia Parish, 136.
13. Foner, Nothing but Freedom, 44–45; Aiken, Cotton Plantation South, 17–21.
14. Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle, 228–29; Hair, Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest, 17–18, 56; Vandal, Rethinking Southern Violence, 34, 67–89.
15. Hyde, Pistols and Politics, 166–68; Taylor, Louisiana, 111–12; Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction, 173–209; Vincent, Black Legislators, 183–85, 202–17; Vandal, Rethinking Southern Violence, 24, 29, 102–3.
16. Vandal, Rethinking Southern Violence, 178, 10, 179; Warmoth, War, Politics, and Reconstruction, 67–68; Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction, 189–92.
17. Woodward, Origins of the New South, 23–51; Vandal, Rethinking Southern Violence, 189–91. Nell Irvin Painter (Exodusters) provides a detailed account of the Exodus of 1879.
18. Hair, Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest, 60–61, 142–233; Becnel, Labor, Church, and the Sugar Establishment, 7–8.
19. Hair, Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest, 234–67 (quotation, p. 260).
20. Dart, Civil Code of . . . Louisiana, 424–25; Act 50 of 1892, General Assembly of . . . Louisiana, Acts Passed by the General Assembly . . . 1892, 71–72; Constitution of . . . Louisiana . . . 1898, 77–87, 104.
21. Foner, Nothing but Freedom, 72.
1. Field workers normally picked between one hundred and two hundred pounds of cotton per day. Taylor, Louisiana, 66–67. Tom Alexander therefore owed the men between seven and fourteen dollars each.
2. Bernice Wims to Attorney General Murphy, 25 October 1939, frames 0959–60, reel 9, PFUS.
3. O. John Rogge to Bernice Wims, 7 November 1939, frame 0958, and Wims to Rogge, 18 November 1939, frame 0957, ibid.
4. Key, Southern Politics, 664.
5. C. Vann Woodward first suggested that post–Civil War southern society was shaped chiefly by northern capitalists and southern converts to new ideologies that emphasized industrial development, profits, and progress. Jonathan Wiener presented a different view, arguing that conservative plantation owners retained control over the economic development of their states, allowing them to limit industrialization and ensure that the South remained a primarily agricultural region powered by cheap black labor. Yet as scholars such as Stanley Greenberg, James Cobb, and Alex Lichtenstein have shown, the interests of planters and industrialists were not necessarily incompatible. Employers of all types of labor (in the North as well as the South) benefited from racist ideas and practices that originated in slavery and were perpetuated in the twentieth century. See Woodward, Origins of the New South; Wiener, Social Origins of the New South; Greenberg, Race and State in Capitalist Development; Cobb, Industrialization and Southern Society; and Lichtenstein, Twice the Work of Free Labor. Two other very useful works are Fields, “Ideology and Race,” and Hale, Making Whiteness. Both argue persuasively that racism is not a static entity that has existed throughout time. Their analyses suggest that the twentieth-century southern social order did not necessarily have to be based on racist discrimination, and that these practices were perpetuated because they served the interests of powerful elites.
6. M. Buck to Sister, 20 February [1866], 2, file 187, box 8, CLMP; John T. Bramhall, “The Exploitation of Louisiana,” Country Gentleman, 14 October 1909, 970; Nesom, “Louisiana Delta”; “Who's Who in the Making of Madison,” Madison Journal, 26 October 1930, 3; Shannon, Toward a New Politics, 38–53; Hair, Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest, 35–39; Hyde, Pistols and Politics, 145–46, 194–98.
7. As Gavin Wright (Old South, New South, 47–50) points out, whether post–Civil War landowners had been members of the antebellum planter class or were northern immigrants is not as important as the changes in economic relationships that resulted from the abolition of slavery. All postbellum planters were members of a new class whose interests were different from those of Old South plantation owners.
8. “Who's Who in the Making of Madison,” Madison Journal, 26 October 1930, 3.
9. Hyde, Pistols and Politics, 196–98. See also “Two Industries for Opelousas through Bureau,” St. Landry Clarion-Progress, 10 March 1923, 1; “The Future of Opelousas,” St. Landry Clarion-Progress, 17 October 1925, 6; “Louisiana Should Watch Her Step,” Madison Journal, 30 June 1928, 1; and “Industries for Tallulah,” Madison Journal, 29 November 1929, 1.
10. Constitution of . . . Louisiana . . . 1898, 94, 128–30 (quotation, pp. 129–30).
11. Reidy, “Mules and Machines and Men,” 184; “Cotton Planters Organize,” Country Gentleman, 2 July 1903, 575.
12. Hair, Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest, 35–39; Sitterson, Sugar Country, 262–63, 311–13; “Excerpt from Regional Director's Weekly Report, Region VI,” 25 January 1937, 1, loose in box, box 4, RCFT, RG 83. Louisiana's “business plantations” closely resembled those described in studies of the Mississippi and Arkansas deltas by Robert Brandfon (Cotton Kingdom of the New South) and Jeannie Whayne (New Plantation South). Also useful for understanding the transformation of the plantation economy after the Civil War are Woodward, Origins of the New South, 178–85; Gaston, New South Creed; Powell, New Masters; Mandle, Roots of Black Poverty; and Woodman, New South—New Law.
13. Goins and Caldwell, Historical Atlas of Louisiana, 68–69; Bureau of the Census, Eighteenth Decennial Census . . . Population: 1960, Volume 1, Part 20, 5, and Census of Manufactures: 1947, Volume 3, 251.
14. Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census . . . 1910, Volume 2: Population, 778, and Volume 4: Population, Occupation Statistics, 465–66; John R. McMahon, “Scraping the American Sugar Bowl,” Country Gentleman, 15 December 1917, 1958–59, 1994; Whayne, New Plantation South, 27; Hair, Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest, 51–55, 87; Sitterson, Sugar Country, 292–93.
15. Sitterson, Sugar Country, 221; Ferleger, “Problem of ‘Labor,’” 146; “Labor Troubles in North Louisiana,” New Orleans Times-Democrat, 26 April 1900, 4; Rodrigue, “ ‘Great Law of Demand and Supply,’” 168; M. Buck to Sister, 20 February [1866], 1, file 187, box 8, CLMP; P[aul] L. DeClouet, Diary, 1869–70, entries for 1–3 January 1870, vol. 5, box 2, Alexandre Etienne DeClouet and Family Papers, HML; Jas Selby to P[enelope] Mathews, 2 February 1871, 2–3, file 193, box 9, CLMP; Peter [Henry M. Stewart] to Nance [Annie L. Allain], 27 December 1906, 1–3, file 19, box 8, TAFP.
16. Henry [M. Stewart] to Nan [Annie L. Allain], 29 November 1898, file 14, box 8, TAFP; Sarah T. Bowman to Nina Bowman, n.d. [1907], 7, file 7, box 2, Turnbull-Bowman-Lyons Family Papers, HML; “The Negro,” Madison Journal, 28 April 1928, 2.
17. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census . . . 1940, Agriculture Crop-Sharing Contracts, 14–16.
18. Alston and Kauffman, “Up, Down, and Off the Agricultural Ladder,” 263–65; Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census . . . 1930, Agriculture, Volume 2, Part 2, 2–3; Woodman, New South—New Law, 105–6. In this study, I have sometimes used “tenants” to refer to all those who labored in return for a portion of the crop, including sharecroppers. “Sharecroppers” refers more specifically to those workers who owned no farm animals or implements, and “renters” is used to distinguish cash tenants from those farming on shares.
In a recent review essay, Alex Lichtenstein (“Was the Emancipated Slave a Proletarian?”) questioned whether sharecroppers should really be categorized as wage laborers, as Woodman and others have suggested. Highlighting some important distinctions between sharecropping and free labor as it existed elsewhere (e.g., year-long contracts that bound workers to the plantations, the use of family labor, and the illusion of autonomy gained from working individual plots of land), Lichtenstein argued that until the 1930s, southern sharecroppers constituted an American peasantry, not a displaced rural proletariat. Although Lichtenstein's approach might be useful for analyzing farm tenancy in some parts of the South, Woodman's wage labor thesis seems more appropriate for the region under study here. As is noted in Chapter 3, most African Americans who worked on plantations in rural Louisiana viewed themselves as exploited laborers, not semi-independent farmers.
19. After 1920 agricultural censuses grouped African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans together in the category of “nonwhite” farmers. Between 1900 and 1960 the vast majority of people in this category were African American, with other groups never making up more than 0.5 percent of the total nonwhite population in Louisiana. See Bureau of the Census, Census of the Population: 1970, Volume 1, Part 20, 42. In the agricultural statistics cited in this study, the terms “black” and “African American” correspond to the census category of “nonwhite.”
20. Ramsey and Hoffsommer, Farm Tenancy in Louisiana, 7–8, 11–17. My interviews with civil rights activists who grew up on Louisiana plantations also suggest the prevalence of closely supervised tenancy arrangements. See, e.g., Harrison and Earnestine Brown, Moses Williams, and Robert and Essie Mae Lewis, interviews by author, THWC—LSU.
21. Aiken, Cotton Plantation South, 97–100.
22. Byron A. Case, “In the Mississippi Delta—II,” Country Gentleman, 28 March 1907, 322–23; “The Problem,” n.d., 3–4, file “LU-1 184-047, Farm Tenancy,” box 1, RCFT, RG 83; Hair, Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest, 51–52; Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 401–3; Mertz, New Deal Policy, 8–9; Brown interview.
23. Sitterson, Sugar Country, 240–41, 389–90.
24. Ibid., 114–33; Reidy, “Mules and Machines and Men,” 185–94.
25. Sugar wage rates fluctuated from year to year and during different times of the season, according to prices, market conditions, and the labor supply. Workers had some leverage during the harvest season, as planters could not afford to allow the cane to spoil. In the decades following the Civil War, field hands used that power to gain a few concessions from planters (like monthly instead of yearly payments) while plantation owners explored ways to undermine workers’ bargaining power. By adopting labor-saving cultivating methods and implements, agreeing among themselves not to pay more than a certain wage rate each season, and using violence and intimidation to crush strikes, sugar growers in Louisiana gradually brought their workforce under control. In the early 1890s wages stabilized at around 75¢ per day during the cultivating season and $1.00 per day during harvesting, rising slightly in the early twentieth century because of competition from the lumber industry. Sitterson, Sugar Country, 318–22; Reidy, “Mules and Machines and Men”; Rodrigue, “ ‘The Great Law of Demand and Supply.’”
26. Laws, “Negroes of Cinclare Central Factory,” 107–12; Sitterson, Sugar Country, 391; Gordon McIntire to Miss La Budde, 12 October 1937, 3–4, file 3, reel 13, CLJP.
27. Hair, Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest, 48–49; Mary White Ovington, Bogalusa (New York: NAACP [1920]), frames 0002–5, reel 10, part 10, PNAACP—Micro; Dinwiddie, “International Woodworkers of America,” 4–5; John C. Howard, Negro in the Lumber Industry, 3–4, 7–8, 12, 26–28.
28. “Abolish the Commissaries,” Louisiana Farmers’ Union News, 1 March 1938, 2; “Madison Parish; Its Customs—Yesterday and Today,” Madison Journal, 27 March 1926, 1.
29. Act 50 of 1892, General Assembly of . . . Louisiana, Acts Passed by the General Assembly . . . 1892, 71–72.
30. “Negroes in Keen Demand,” New York Sun, 30 January 1904, item 295, frame 30, Hampton University Peabody Newspaper Clipping File, microfiche; “Planters Resist Exodus of Labor,” New Orleans Daily Picayune, 25 March 1914, 7. William Cohen (At Freedom's Edge) provides a useful analysis of plantation owners’ attempts to control workers and African Americans’ ability to move about in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cohen argues that peonage and restrictive labor practices were not constant elements but related to specific times and places—plantation owners were most likely to resort to such methods during labor shortages, and when labor was plentiful they allowed workers to leave. In addition, the conflicting interests of different classes of white people in the South, combined with periods of intense planter competition for labor, enabled a certain amount of worker mobility.
31. F. M. Tatum to FDR, 9 September 1903, frames 0224–0025, reel 2, PFUS; H. M. A. [Henry M. Stewart] to Annie [L. Allain], 15 December 1905, 5, file 17, box 8, TAFP. For more reports of peonage in Louisiana, see Walter L. Jones to Department of Justice, 1 June 1903, frame 0045, reel 2, PFUS; Fred R. Jones to Attorney General, 23 January 1909, frames 0542–44, reel 13, PFUS; B. F. Wilmer to Attorney General, 24 October 1929, frames 0689–91, reel 11, PFUS; and J. A. Persons to Richard Leche, 4 August 1938, file “Labor Miscellaneous,” box 39, RWLP. At least sixty-seven cases of peonage in Louisiana were reported to the U.S. Department of Justice between 1901 and 1945, providing another indication of the extent of this practice. See Schipper, Guide to the Microfilm Edition, 1–59.
32. Act 50 of 1892, which prevented workers who were indebted to their employers from leaving, was modified slightly in 1906 and declared unconstitutional in 1918. See Act 54 of 1906 in Louisiana Department of Labor, Compilation of General Labor Laws, 188–89, and State v. Oliva 144 La. 51 (1918). The federal government's efforts to eradicate peonage are discussed in Daniel, Shadow of Slavery.
33. Clark M. Votaw to S. T. Early, 23 November 1937, file “[080] V,” box 10, General Correspondence, 1937–42, Records of the Farm Ownership Division, Records of the Central Office, Records of the FaHA, RG 96, NA.
34. Galarza, Louisiana Sugar Cane Plantation Workers, 27.
35. “The Bill against Illiterate Immigrants,” New Orleans Daily Picayune, 7 February 1914, 6 (first quotation); Unidentified school superintendent quoted in Johnson, Louisiana Educational Survey, 14 (second quotation).
36. Martin Williams, interview by author, THWC—LSU; Johnnie Jones Sr., interview by Mary Hebert, 6, 19, THWC—LSU; Rovan W. Stanley Sr., interview by Janie Wilkins, 1, CRS—SLU; “Official Proceedings of the School Board,” St. Francisville Democrat, 11 July 1936, 2; “Farmers’ Union Asks Federal Aid for Rural Schools,” Louisiana Farmers’ Union News, 1 June 1938, 1. Even when schools were open for longer periods of time, poverty forced some black parents to send children to the fields instead of to class for much of the year. As late as 1967, the NAACP field director for Louisiana expressed concern that a campaign to enforce the state's compulsory school attendance laws might create “severe economic hardships” for families who relied on the labor of younger members to survive. “Field Director Newsletter, Louisiana N.A.A.C.P.,” March 1967, 1, file 3, box 2, NAACP Louisiana Field Director Papers, ARC.
37. Louisiana Education Association Department of Retired Teachers, We Walked Tall, 38–40; “Want Adequate Schools, Equal Salaries; State Parent-Teachers Association Is Planning Action,” Louisiana Weekly, 4 January 1941, 1; Anderson, Education of Blacks in the South, 190; “Public High Schools (Negro),” n.d. [ca 1940], file 4, box 227, CSJP; State Department of Education of Louisiana, Ninety-Second Annual Report, 109.
38. H. H. Long, “Washington Parish,” n.d. [ca. 1940], 8–20, 22–23, file 8, box 225, CSJP; Johnson, Louisiana Educational Survey, 14–15, 38–39, 69; Leo M. Favrot to Francis W. Shepardson, 27 May 1923, file 5, box 339, RFP; T. H. Harris to Parish Superintendents and Parish School Board Members, Circular No. 1017, 2 April 1938, file “Cases Supported—Teachers Salary Cases—Louisiana 1938–1940,” box 88, ser. D, pt. 1, PNAACP—LC.
39. Leo M. Favrot to Francis W. Shepardson, 27 May 1923, file 5, box 339, RFP.
40. Statement on Sugar Cane Wages by Gordon McIntire, Federal Hearing, 16 June 1939, 4, file 3, reel 13, CLJP.
41. “Ecological Description of Concordia Parish, Louisiana,” n.d. [ca. 1940], 17, file 5, box 225, CSJP.
42. Johnson, Louisiana Educational Survey, 35; T. H. Harris to Parish Superintendents and Parish School Board Members, Circular No. 1017, 2 April 1938, 2, file “Cases Supported—Teachers Salary Cases—Louisiana 1938–1940,” box 88, ser. D, pt. 1, PNAACP—LC.
43. Jones interview, 65; Palmer, “Evolution of Education,” 116.
44. Brundage, Lynching in the New South, 103–60; Finnegan, “ ‘At the Hands of Parties Unknown’”; Moses Williams interview; “Elstner Reviews Joel Johnson Case,” clipping, Shreveport Journal, n.d. [ca. 1909], frames 0038–39, reel 17, PFUS; Report of George R. Faller, FBI, 13 August 1942, frame 0525, reel 20, PFUS.
45. See, e.g., Moses Williams, Martin Williams, and Lewis interviews.
46. Malcolm E. Lafargue to Attorney General, 21 July 1944, 2, file “144-33-17,” box 17589, Classified Subject Files—Correspondence, Central Files and Related Records, 1904–67, General Records, Records of the Department of Justice, RG 60, NA (first quotation); Martin Williams interview.
47. Report of George R. Faller, FBI, 13 August 1942, frame 0551, reel 20, PFUS.
48. Report of T. F. Wilson, FBI, 1 August 1939, 16, file “144–32–2,” box 17587, CSF, RG 60. Sheriff Andrew Sevier of Madison Parish, e.g., began his career as a bookkeeper and manager of several plantations and, according to one account, “soon his personality and ability at leadership caused him to be offered the position of sheriff.” He served the parish for thirty-seven years, from 1904 until his death in 1941. “He Was Her Sheriff,” Madison Journal, 12 September 1941, 2; “Madison Loses Dean of Peace Officers,” Madison Journal, 29 August 1941, 1, 6.
49. “Woman Witness Tells of Burning of Aged Negro,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 23 December 1914, 9; “Ignores Charges in Lynching Cases,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 9 April 1915, 9.
50. J. Leo Hardy to [John] Shillady, 5 April 1918, file “Shreveport, La.,” box 357, ser. C, pt. 1, PNAACP—LC.
51. Benjamin J. Stanley to Walter White, 7 March 1935, frame 0322, reel 12, ser. A, pt. 7, PNAACP—Micro.
52. A. C. Rutzen to Director, FBI, 6 September 1940, 1–2, file “144–32–5,” box 17588, CSF, RG 60; “A. P. LeBlanc,” St. Francisville Democrat, 7 May 1954, 2. For more evidence of elite white people's complicity in violence, see “Coroner Names Four Men in Caddo Lynching Probe,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 31 December 1914, 1; John R. Shillady to R. G. Pleasant, 15 February 1919, frame 0031, reel 12, ser. A, pt. 7, PNAACP—Micro; C. S. Hebert to Joseph E. Ransdall, 7 January 1923, file “198589 Sec 4,” box 3033, SNF, RG 60; “Sol Dacus Loses Heavy Damage Case in United States Court; Foremost Whites Joined Mob,” newspaper clipping, source unknown, 9 March 1925, frame 0307, reel 14, ser. A, pt. 12, PNAACP—Micro; “Kill Innocent Colored Men in Louisiana,” clipping, Philadelphia Tribune, 16 June 1928, frame 1152, reel 11, ser. A, pt. 7, PNAACP—Micro; Report of T. F. Wilson, FBI, 1 August 1939, 26, 28, file “144–32–2,” box 17587, CSF, RG 60; Report of P. M. Breed, FBI, 9 December 1932, frames 0447–48, reel 22, PFUS; George A. Dreyfous and M. Swearingen, “Report to the Executive Committee of the L.P.C.R. on Investigations in West Feliciana Parish,” n.d. [1937], 7, file 19, box 2, HNLP.
53. “Sheriff Holds Off Lynchers,” clipping, Savannah Tribune, 11 February 1926, frame 1150, reel 11, ser. A, pt. 7, PNAAC—Micro. Similar incidents are reported in “Scott Is Convicted Johnson Acquitted in Assault Case,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 3 July 1915, 16; “Sheriff Saves Negro Threatened by Mob,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 26 September 1915, 12; and “Negro Taken to Pen via Eunice,” St. Landry Clarion-Progress, 20 February 1926, 11; Jones interview, 62. See also Brundage, Lynching in the New South, 26–28.
54. Fred R. Jones to Attorney General, 23 January 1909 and 6 July [1909], frames 0542–44 and 0525–27, reel 13, PFUS (quotation, frame 0543).
55. Martin Williams interview. See also unsigned letter to Charles Houston, 15 October 1938, frames 0191–92, reel 21, part 10, PNAACP—Micro.
56. Brown interview. See also Jones interview; Report of T. F. Wilson, FBI, 1 August 1939, 25, file “144–32–2,” box 17587, CSF, RG 60; Louisiana Education Association Department of Retired Teachers, We Walked Tall, 39; Ezekiel C. Smith to A. H. Rosenfeld, memorandum, 23 May 1960, 4, file “General—Louisiana—BBS,” box 2, SS, RG 453.
57. Lumber camps were often located in isolated areas and existed only as long as it took to clear all of the surrounding timber. Peonage and other abuses were usually discovered too late, if at all, making it difficult to deter operators from using such practices. Russell, Report on Peonage, 17–18; Cobb, Industrialization and Southern Society, 69; Dinwiddie, “International Woodworkers of America,” 7.
58. Quoted in Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 346.
59. See, e.g., Stephen Norwood's (“Bogalusa Burning”) account of union organizing efforts in Bogalusa after World War I.
60. Notes on NAACP Training Conference, 6 October 1945, 6, file “Leadership Training Conference, Louisiana-Texas (Conference) Correspondence 1945,” box 375, ser. C, pt. 2, PNAACP—LC; J. E. Clayton to H. L. Mitchell, 23 September 1941, reel 19, STFUP; Edgar A. Schuler, Weekly Tensions Report, 20 March 1943, 7, file “Edgar Schuler—Field Reports,” box 1824, FRSD, RG 44; H. A. Douresseau to A. P. Tureaud, 8 September 1949, file 28, box 9, APTP. Black lawyer and civil rights activist J. L. Chestnut Jr. outlines a similar phenomenon in another Deep South state in Black in Selma, 22–23, 114, 154. See also Zora Neale Hurston, “The Pet Negro System,” Folklore, 914–21.
61. See, e.g., the portrait of the black landowning community in Washington Parish given in Bond and Bond, Star Creek Papers, esp. 11, 23. Mark R. Schultz (“The Dream Realized?,” 305) makes a similar observation about black landowners in Georgia.
62. Jones interview, 11–12.
63. J. H. Scott to Walter White, 9 December 1940, frames 0340–41, reel 1, ser. A, pt. 13, PNAACP—Micro.
64. Carr, Federal Protection of Civil Rights, 77–84, 122–46; Daniel, Shadow of Slavery, 19–64. During the peonage trial of Joel Johnson in 1909, a U.S. attorney outlined the difficulties involved in prosecuting at the local level. A conviction in the case was unlikely, he reported, given the power and influence of the plantation owner. “Joel F. Johnson is . . . a man totally without respect for any consideration except his individual will,” he stated, “and . . . will not hesitate to resort to any methods to circumvent the ends of justice. Johnson is a man of means and will employ the very best of counsel to aid him in his defense. . . . Besides, I am sure, he will try and enlist the services of some persons selected by him for that purpose to tamper with witnesses and jurors. . . . During the investigation of the cases before the Grand Jury it became necessary for me to have Joel F. Johnson arrested to prevent his interference with the Government witnesses.” M. C. Elstner to Attorney General, 24 September 1909, frames 0042–0043, reel 17, PFUS.
65. Key, Southern Politics, 9; Zangrando, NAACP Crusade against Lynching, 15–19.
66. Milburn Calhoun, Louisiana Almanac, 385; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 31, 168; H. L. Mitchell, Statement on Senator Allen J. Ellender prepared for International Free Trade Union News, n.d., 2, filed at n.d. [1955], reel 39, STFUP.
67. Brown interview; Moses Williams interview.
1. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, xiii.
2. Saxon, Dreyer, and Tallant, Gumbo Ya-Ya, 450.
3. Hurston, Folklore, 77; Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, 239–70.
4. Oliver, Story of the Blues, 11–25, 85–91, and Conversation with the Blues, 125 (J. D. Miller).
5. “Lafourche Parish Ecology,” n.d., 5–6, box 225, file 6, CSJP; Oliver, Conversation with the Blues, 180 (Willie Thomas).
6. For more on the ways African Americans have used entertainment and culture to assert their independence from white control, see Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom, 168–86, and Kelley, Yo’ Mama's Disfunktional!, 43–77. The role that religion played in the lives of rural black people is discussed in more detail later in this chapter.
7. Thomas quoted in Oliver, Conversation with the Blues, 22.
8. Saxon, Dreyer, and Tallant, Gumbo Ya-Ya, 374.
9. Black Ace (B. K. Turner) quoted in Oliver, Conversation with the Blues, 53.
10. Government researchers found that in the spring of 1935, more than one-third of all sharecroppers and tenants in the nation had been on their present farms for less than one year. Report of the President's Committee on Farm Tenancy: Findings and Recommendations, February 1937, 19, file “Tenancy (Jan 1–Feb 1),” box 2661, GCOS, RG 16.
11. Entries for Affy Gilstan and Henry Haldman, 1915, Share Croppers’ Record Book, 1904–8, 1914–18, box 16, LSFP; Report of William H. Pokorny, FBI, 1 December 1942, frames 0869–70, 0872 (quotation), reel 23, PFUS; “The Negro,” Madison Journal, 28 April 1928, 2.
12. Statement of John Pickering, 8 April 1926, frame 0633, reel 12, PFUS.
13. Harrison and Earnestine Brown, interview by author, THWC—LSU; W. C. Brown to NAACP, n.d. [ca. 1920s], frame 0683, reel 14, ser. A, pt. 12, PNAACP—Micro; James Willis, interviewer unknown, transcript, 20 July 1939, 176, file 20–16, reel PP2.9, RTC.
14. “Runaway Negroes Again,” New York Sun, 2 February 1912, item 295, frames 27–28, Hampton University Peabody Newspaper Clipping File, micro-fiche. The story was written by the Sun's Louisiana correspondent, based on local newspaper accounts. According to these reports, plantation owners in Louisiana had customarily allowed indebted sharecroppers and tenants to leave if another employer agreed to pay their debts. A growing tendency among planters not to allow families to move under any circumstances precipitated the migration of thousands of black people to Arkansas.
15. Peter [Henry M. Stewart] to Annie [L. Allain], 31 March 1907, 6–7, file 20, box 8, TAFP.
16. Robert H. Stirling to Sarah, 22 August 1910, 2, file 28, box 3, LSFP; “Trespass Notices,” every issue of St. Francisville Democrat, 1929–70.
17. Vandal, “Property Offenses,” 129–30; Peter [Henry M. Stewart] to Old Girl [Annie L. Allain], 17 June 1906, 7, file 19, box 8, TAFP; Sarah T. Bowman to Nina Bowman, n.d. [1907], 7, file 7, box 2, Turnbull-Bowman-Lyons Family Papers, HML (owner of Hazelwood); [J. S. McGehee] to G. A. Marsh, 22 August 1916, 1, file M, letter file box 1, John Burrus McGehee Papers, HML.
18. Jones, Labor of Love, 129 (quotation), 132; Aunt Ollie to Hattye, 3 March 1942, 3, file 2, box 1, John Hamilton and Harriet Boyd Ellis Papers, HML (white Louisianan); Saxon, Dreyer, and Tallant, Gumbo Ya-Ya, 501–3 (domestic worker); Kelley, Race Rebels, 18–20; Hunter, To –Joy My Freedom, 132–34.
19. S. M. Kilgore to [Henry] Wallace, 18 September 1933, file “Negro,” box 90, Subject Correspondence Files, 1933–38, General Records of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, Records of the Predecessor Agencies, Records of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, RG 145, NA. For the antebellum origins of black people's notions of economic justice and their belief in the right to take from white employers what they needed to survive, see also Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 599–612.
20. Elizabeth Ross Hite, interview by Robert McKinney, n.d. [ca. 1930s], in Clayton, Mother Wit, 110; Martin Williams, interview by author, THWC—LSU; Joseph Carter, interview by Miriam Feingold, MFP.
21. George E. Lewis to Miss Ovington, n.d. [ca. 1918], 3, file “Shreveport, La. 1918–1919,” box 83, ser. G, pt. 1, PNAACP—LC; “Notes on NAACP Regional Training Conference,” 6 October 1945, 6, file “Leadership Training Conference, Louisiana-Texas (Conference) Correspondence 1945,” box 375, ser. C, pt. 2, ibid.
22. Clifton and Eual Hall, Lorin Hall, interviews by author, THWC—LSU; Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage, 40 (Willa Suddeth).
23. Andrews, To Tell A Free Story, 13; Gates, introduction to Classic Slave Narratives, ix; Cornelius, “When I Can Read My Title Clear,” 1–4, 59–84, 142–50; Wilkie, Ethnicity, Community and Power, 317; Robert and Essie Mae Lewis, interview by author, Baton Rouge; Brown interview. This belief in the importance of education was universal among the participants in the freedom struggle who were interviewed for this book. Many of the older people had sent some or all of their children to college, and this was among their proudest achievements. Asked whether other black people in his community shared his emphasis on education, Martin Williams of Madison Parish stated, “There's any number of them, and more of them would do it if they had the support.”
24. William Adams, Anthony Rachel, and Frank Wilderson, interview by Linda Jules Adams, Friends of the Cabildo Collection, New Orleans Public Library; Palmer, “Evolution of Education,” 230, 35, 232, 412; Wilkie, Ethnicity, Community,and Power, 83; Johnnie Jones Sr., interview by Mary Hebert, 10, Baton Rouge; State Department of Education of Louisiana, Organizational Study, 2.
25. Leo M. Favrot to Julius Rosenwald, 17 May 19[31], file 5, box 339, RFP; Embree, Julius Rosenwald Fund, 23.
26. Palmer, “Evolution of Education,” 240–43; “Negro Education in Louisiana,” n.d. [ca. 1940s], 2, file 5, box 4, SHJP. See also Kevin K. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 32–34, and Anderson, Education of Blacks in the South, 33–147.
27. Collins, “Community Activities of Rural Elementary Teachers,” 6 (President of Grambling College); State Department of Education of Louisiana, State Course of Study, 64; Lewis interview.
28. Lewis and Martin Williams interviews; Bond and Bond, Star Creek Papers, 43 (Willie Crain). The accommodationist approach had its drawbacks and has been rightly criticized, but many black people who were labeled “Uncle Toms” by more militant activists were not the obliging accomplices in white supremacy that they appeared to be. While preaching self-help and acceptance of inequality to black people in the late nineteenth century, Booker T. Washington covertly lent financial assistance to lawsuits that challenged segregation and disfranchisement, fought the exclusion of African Americans from the southern Republican Party, and supported efforts to end peonage. Similarly, Adam Fairclough's study of southern black teachers in the Jim Crow era (for whom some accommodation to the social order was necessary for survival) suggests that these educators made subtle but valuable contributions to the freedom struggle in the long term. See Meier, “Toward a Reinterpretation”; Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 288–303; and Fairclough, “ ‘Being in the Field of Education,’” 73–75.
29. “Ecology of East Feliciana Parish,” n.d. [ca. 1940], 7, file 5, box 225, CSJP (quotations); Neyland, “Negro in Louisiana,” 78; Anderson, Education of Blacks in the South, 153–56.
30. Palmer, “Evolution of Education,” 29.
31. Laws, “Negroes of Cinclare Central Factory,” 117; Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage, 138 (Ruth Cherry); James C. Scott, Moral Economy of the Peasant, 240. See also Thompson, Making of the English Working Class, 189–212, 418–29, and “Moral Economy of the English Crowd.”
32. “Some Cultural Traits of Louisiana Families,” n.d. [ca. 1940], 15, file 8, box 226, CSJP.
33. Frazier, Negro Church in America, 46; Johnson, Louisiana Educational Survey, 26; E. W. Grant, “Social Agencies,” n.d. [ca. 1940], 3–5, file 8, box 226, CSJP.
34. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, 326–28; Saxon, Dreyer, and Tallant, Gumbo Ya-Ya, 483–84 (quotation).
35. “Some Cultural Traits of Louisiana Families,” n.d. [1940], 14–17, file 8, box 226, CSJP; E. W. Grant, “Social Agencies,” n.d. [ca. 1940], 3–5, ibid. For a useful discussion of the black church's dual role as an agent of social control and social change, see Williams, “A Mighty Fortress.”
36. Wilkie, Ethnicity, Community, and Power, 83; Sepia Socialite, Negro in Louisiana, 89; “Women's 4th Dist. Home Mission Baptist Association,” 26 July 1938, 148, file 11–6, reel PP2.9, RTC; “50 Year History of the Knights and Ladies of Peter Claver,” Claverite, November–December 1959, 12, file 38, box 6, APTP.
37. “Types of Organizations Engaging Interest and Participation of Rural Negro Families in Louisiana,” n.d. [ca. 1940], file 10, box 226, CSJP (quotation, p. 12).
38. Muraskin, Middle-Class Blacks, 123–32; Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, 268; Lewis, In Their Own Interests, 70–73; Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 4–13; Beito, “Black Fraternal Hospitals,” 112–13; [Constitution], St. Mary Parish Benevolent Society, [23] October 1891, file 1, box 1, DTP; Oshinsky, “Worse Than Slavery,” 127, 131; Rebecca Field, Promissory Note, 5 September 1898, file 1, box 1, DTP; Record Book, 1922–24, Bethel Baptist Church Records, HML.
39. “The Negro,” Madison Journal, 28 April 1928, 2.
40. W. T. Meade Grant Jr. to FDR, 20 March 1934, and enclosed petition, file “158260 Sub 10, 2-12-34-4-15-34,” box 1278, SNF. These connections are discussed in more detail in Chapters 5 and 7. See also Speech Delivered by Daniel E. Byrd at the [NAACP] National Convention, 27 June 1946, 5, additions file, box 8, DEBP; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 69–72; Beito, “Black Fraternal Hospitals,” 123–24; and Muraskin, Middle-Class Blacks, 219–36.
41. Unknown author to NAACP, n.d. [ca. 1921], frame 0418, reel 12, ser. A, pt. 7, PNAACP—Micro.
42. Walter White to John Garibaldi Sargent, 26 January 1926, frames 0755–56, reel 11, PFUS.
43. D. W. Taylor to NAACP, 11 August 1934, frames 0096–98, reel 12, ser. A, pt. 7, PNAACP—Micro; Bond and Bond, Star Creek Papers, 122–26.
44. Similar incidents are reported in “Man Hunt Starts for Negro Slayer,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 4 July 1914, 1; “Tie Negro to Auto, Then Throw on Speed,” ibid., 6 August 1914, 7; “Two More Deaths Added to Long List,” ibid., 10 August 1914, 12; “I. H. Cain Stabbed by Negro,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 9 April 1921, 3; “C. E. Speed Is Shot by Negro,” Madison Journal, 15 March 1924, 1, 4; “Bad Negro Captured,” St. Francisville Democrat, 1 December 1934, 3; “Negro Attacks White Farmer of Woodside in Palmetto Friday,” Opelousas Clarion-News, 1 August 1935, 3; “Four Negroes Convicted,” newspaper clipping, source unknown, n.d. [January 1936], frame 0013, reel 12, ser. A, pt. 7, PNAACP—Micro; “Negro Evades Arrest,” St. Francisville Democrat, 10 September 1938, 3; and “I. E. Darnell's Head Cut Open by Negro,” Madison Journal, 3 March 1939, 1. Violent attacks on white people might have occurred more often than this list suggests. Black newspapers suppressed news of these events for fear of causing the culprits to be lynched, and white newspapers usually reported them only after the attacker had been caught and punished. See Bond and Bond, Star Creek Papers, 126.
45. Jones interview, 63; Lolis Elie, interview by Kim Lacy Rogers, 23 June 1988, ARC.
46. Walter White to FDR, 12 January 1935, file “15820, Sub 26, Jan 1935 Only,” box 1280, SNF, RG 60; Bond and Bond, Star Creek Papers, 126; “Negro Taken to Pen via Eunice,” St. Landry Clarion-Progress, 20 February 1926, 11; James A. Ray to President [Woodrow Wilson], 27 February 1912, file “158260, Section 1, #3,” box 1276, SNF, RG 60; John R. Shillady to R. G. Pleasant, 25 June 1918, frame 0319, reel 12, ser. A, pt. 7, PNAACP—Micro; “Kill Innocent Colored Men in Louisiana,” clipping, Philadelphia Tribune, 16 June 1928, frame 1152, reel 11, ser. A, pt. 7, PNAACP—Micro; “Somebody Ought to Pay These Mob Bills,” clipping, Chicago Defender, 26 May 1928, frame 0436, reel 12, ibid.
47. Guzman, Negro Yearbook, 308.
48. See, e.g., [Henry M. Stewart] to [Annie L. Allain], letters dated n.d. [November 1898], 3; 29 November 1898, 4; 18 April 1900, 2; 8 February 1906, 7; 30 March 1906, 4; 26 June 1906, 4; and 27 December 1906, 1–3, files 14–19, box 8, TAFP. (No wonder she never married him.)
49. Peter [Henry M. Stewart] to Annie [L. Allain], 21 January 1908, file 21, 3, box 8, ibid.
50. Notes on Home Visits of Lucille Cook Watson, 6 November 1933, file 11, box 5, ser. 1, Cross Keys Plantation Records, Manuscripts Division, HTL.
51. Bond and Bond, Star Creek Papers, 91–94.
52. Ibid., 77–79 (quotation, p. 79); H. H. Long, “Washington Parish,” n.d. [ca. 1940], 21–22, file 8, box 225, CSJP.
53. Wells-Barnett, Southern Horrors, 42; [W. E. B. Du Bois], “Cowardice,” Crisis, October 1916, 270–71; “Tulsa—A Horror and a Benediction,” Baltimore Afro-American, 10 June 1921, 2.
54. “Straight Talk,” Louisiana Weekly, 15 March 1930, sec. 1, 6.
55. “Signs of the New Negro,” ibid., 29 August 1931, sec. 1, 6.
56. Rogers, “ ‘You Came Away with Some Courage,’” 179; Elie (Rogers) interview; Jerome Smith, interview by Kim Lacy Rogers, ARC.
57. Lewis interview.
1. See, e.g., Gottlieb, Making Their Own Way; Grossman, Land of Hope; Marks, Farewell—We're Good and Gone; and Sernett, Bound for the Promised Land.
2. U.S. Department of Labor, Division of Negro Economics, Negro at Work, 10.
3. “Labor Agents Warned,” Madison Journal, 26 December 1914, 4; Untitled article, ibid., 2 June 1917, 4; Grossman, “Black Labor Is the Best Labor,” 51–52.
4. Charles S. Johnson, “Negro Migration,” n.d. [ca. 1930s], file 31, box 167, CSJP (quotations, pp. 6–8). More recent scholarship on black migration to the North supports Johnson's analysis. See, e.g., Gottlieb, Making Their Own Way, 1–11; Grossman, Land of Hope, 66–97; and Sernett, Bound for the Promised Land, 36–86.
5. Unknown writers, 24 April 1917 (p. 296) and 18 April 1917 (p. 330), in Emmett J. Scott, “Letters of Negro Migrants”; Unknown writer, 30 April 1918, in Scott, “Additional Letters of Negro Migrants,” 448.
6. Unknown writers, 13 May 1917 (p. 417), 6 June 1917 (p. 413), 12 August 1916 (p. 423), in Emmett J. Scott, “Additional Letters of Negro Migrants.”
7. A. G. Smith, “Holding Labor on the Farms in the South,” n.d. [ca. 1918–19], frame 00075, reel 22, BWEGM.
8. Unknown writers, 23 April 191[7] (p. 434), 5 May 1917, (p. 433), in Emmett J. Scott, “Additional Letters of Negro Migrants.”
9. Unknown writers, 20 May 1917 (p. 450—first quotation), 23 May 1917 (p. 449—second quotation), ibid.; John R. Shillady, Address Delivered at the Tenth Anniversary Conference of the NAACP, 23 June 1919, frame 0504, reel 8, pt. 1, PNAACP—Micro; Scherer, Nation at War, 66–67; Tolnay and Beck, “Rethinking the Role of Racial Violence,” 29–30.
10. Marks, Farewell—We're Good and Gone, 138; Tindall, Emergence of the New South, 541; Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln, 78–95; Sitkoff, New Deal for Blacks, 88–101.
11. Grossman, Land of Hope, 3–4.
12. Shillady, Address Delivered at the Tenth Anniversary Conference of the NAACP, frames 0499–0500, reel 8, pt. 1, PNAACP—Micro. See also Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 31, and Finch, NAACP, 24–27.
13. Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 8; Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census . . . 1910, Volume 2: Population, 790, and Fourteenth Census . . . 1920, Volume 3: Population, 399; A. W. Hill to NAACP, 1 June 1914, file “Shreveport, La. 1914–1917,” box 83, ser. G, pt. 1, PNAACP—LC; Application for Charter, Alexandria Branch, 27 November 1918, file “Alexandria, La. 1918–1930,” box 79, ser. G, pt. 1, PNAACP—LC; Application for Charter, Baton Rouge Branch, 10 March 1919, frames 0194–95, reel 13, ser. A, pt. 12, PNAACP—Micro; Application for Charter, Monroe Branch, 18 November 1927, frames 0651–53, reel 13, ser. A, pt. 12, PNAACP—Micro.
14. Application for Charter, St. Rose Branch, 15 July 1918, file “St. Rose, La. 1918,” box 83, ser. G, pt. 1, PNAACP—LC; Application for Charter, [Clarence Branch], n.d. [ca. 1922], file “Clarence, La. 1922,” box 79, ibid.
15. Shreveport Branch, NAACP, to Luther E. Hall, 11 August 1914, file “Louisiana—1914,” box 357, ser. C, pt. 1, PNAACP—LC. As mentioned in Chapter 2, the governor finally sent investigators to Caddo Parish after several more lynchings occurred there toward the end of the year, but this action failed to persuade local authorities to punish those responsible for the murders.
16. George E. Lewis to [John] Shillady, 17 February 1919, 2, file “Shreveport, La. 1918–1919,” box 83, ser. G, pt. 1, PNAACP—LC; Forest Trottie to [Robert] Bagnall, 13 January 1922, file “Clarence, La. 1922,” box 79, ibid.
17. George G. Bradford, “Save,” Crisis, May 1918, 7; Marks, Farewell—We're Good and Gone, 95; Henri, Bitter Victory, 88.
18. [W. E. B. Du Bois], “The Black Soldier,” Crisis, June 1918, 60, and “Close Ranks,” Crisis, July 1918, 111; “The Negro's Reward,” Vindicator, 3 September 1918, frame 0212, reel 14, ser. A, pt. 12, PNAACP—Micro.
19. T. G. Garrett to [NAACP], [September] 1917, file “Shreveport, La. 1914–1917,” box 83, ser. G, pt. 1, PNAACP—LC.
20. Emmett J. Scott, American Negro, 93, 103–4; Marks, Farewell—We're Good and Gone, 97; Henri, Bitter Victory, 47–51; Reich, “Soldiers of Democracy,” 1485.
21. James B. Aswell, Entry for 25 September 1918, Diary, September 23– October 4 [1918], MS vol. 3, James B. Aswell and Family Papers, HML.
22. Henri, Bitter Victory, 38, 44; Tuttle, Race Riot, 208–41; Seligmann, Negro Faces America, 56.
23. Ray C. Burrus to Arthur Woods, 3 May 1919, frame 00366, reel 21, BWEGM.
24. “Planters Resist Exodus of Labor,” New Orleans Daily Picayune, 25 March 1914, 7.
25. “Exodus of Negroes,” New Orleans Times Democrat/Daily Picayune, 12 April 1914, 8 (reprinted from Houma Courier); “Labor Agents Warned,” and “Notice to Labor Agents,” Madison Journal, 26 December 1914, 4.
26. House of Representatives of . . . Louisiana, Official Journal . . . May 13, 1918, 136–37; Louis Posby to T. W. Gregory, 17 October 1916, frames 09948–50, reel 19, BWEGM; Henderson, Negro Migration, 45–46; Grossman, “Black Labor Is the Best Labor,” 57–58; Wayne G. Borah to Attorney General, 3 February 1925, frame 1083, reel 9, PFUS (quotation).
27. State of Louisiana, Act No. 139, 9 July 1918, frame 0382, reel 23, pt. 10, PNAACP—Micro; Walter F. White, “ ‘Work or Fight’ in the South,” New Republic, 1 March 1919, 144; Winn Parish Police Jury Resolution, 2 July 1918, reprinted in Louisiana Historical Records Survey, Inventory of the Records, 19; Lafayette Parish Police Jury Resolution, 1 August 1918, reprinted in Louisiana Historical Records Survey, Inventory of the Records, 15; Louisiana State Council of Defense, Minutes of the Meeting . . . September 24, 1918, 8.
28. Louisiana State Council of Defense, Minutes of the Meeting . . . September 24, 1918, 11–12; George E. Haynes to Felix Frankfurter, 21 August 1918, frame 00505, reel 19, BWEGM; [Frankfurter] to Haynes, 28 August 1918, frame 00507, ibid. (quotation).
29. White, “ ‘Work or Fight,’” 144–46; [Walter White], “Louisiana,” [16 December 1918], frames 0332–33, reel 23, pt. 10, PNAACP—Micro; George E. Haynes to Secretary, Department of Labor, 20 March 1919, frame 00004, reel 14, BWEGM.
30. U.S. Department of Labor, Division of Economics, Negro Migration, 32.
31. H. George Davenport to Roy Nash, 5 May 1917, frame 0143, reel 14, ser. A, pt. 12, PNAACP—Micro.
32. Shillady, Address Delivered at the Tenth Anniversary Conference of the NAACP, frame 0504, reel 8, pt. 1, ibid.; Francis Williams, “Louisiana's Sugar Industry Revives,” Country Gentleman, 3 November 1917, 1696; Henderson, Negro Migration, 49; Tolnay and Beck, “Rethinking the Role of Racial Violence,” 29–30.
33. Leo M. Favrot, “Some Problems in the Education of the Negro in the South and How We Are Trying to Meet Them in Louisiana,” n.d. [June 1919], frames 0597–0603, reel 8, pt. 1, PNAACP—Micro (quotation, frame 0599).
34. Daniel, Breaking the Land, 3–22.
35. Cotton, Lamplighters, 12; Crosby, “Building the Country Home,” 59–64.
36. “T. J. Jordan Ag. Extension Leader Retires after 34 Years of Service,” Louisiana Weekly, 2 October 1948, 12; J. S. Clark, “A Supplement to the Annual Report of the Agricultural Extension Service as Performed by Negroes,” 1920, 3, 2 (last quotation), reel 5, FESR; Oscar G. Price, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, St. Helena Parish, 1921, reel 8, FESR (first quotation).
37. Mason Snowden, Annual Narrative Report, State Agent, 1916, 348, reel 1, FESR. See also Baker, County Agent, 191–206; Daniel, Breaking the Land, 9–12; Crosby, “Building the Country Home,” 9, 104, 165; and Cotton, Lamplighters, 89–100.
38. Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent; Kevin K. Gaines, Uplifting the Race. Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore (Gender and Jim Crow) provides another very useful account of black middle-class activism.
39. Adolph B. Curet, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, Pointe Coupee Parish, 1919, reel 4; O. G. Price, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, St. Helena Parish, 1919, reel 5; T. J. Watson, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, Madison Parish, 1921, reel 7; State Agent's Report, Louisiana, 1922, 7, reel 8—all in FESR.
40. Harrison and Earnestine Brown, interview by author, THWC—LSU.
41. “T. J. Jordan Ag. Extension Leader Retires after 34 Years of Service,” Louisiana Weekly, 2 October 1948, 12; Leon Robinson, Annual Narrative Report, Negro Agent, St. Landry Parish, 1938, 23, reel 49, FESR.
42. S. W. Vance, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, South Madison and Tensas Parishes, 1915, reel 1, and 1917, reel 3, FESR.
43. Cotton prices increased from 7¢ per pound in 1914 to 36¢ per pound in 1919, then dropped to 14¢ per pound in 1920. Similarly, the average price per pound for raw sugar rose from 4¢ in 1914 to 13¢ in 1920, then fell to 5¢ in 1921. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Yearbook of Agriculture 1930, 680, 703. For some narrative accounts of economic conditions in the rural South during and after World War I, see Barton W. Currie, “Sky-High Cotton,” Country Gentleman, 17 February 1917, 310–11; Francis Williams, “Louisiana's Sugar Industry Revives,” Country Gentleman, 3 November 1917, 1696; and Mertz, New Deal Policy, 1–15.
44. J. E. Ringgold, Annual Narrative Report, Negro Agent, West Feliciana Parish, 1925, 1–2, reel 15, FESR.
45. Nine parishes (Bienville, Caddo, Claiborne, East Baton Rouge, East Feliciana, Lincoln, St. Landry, Washington, and West Feliciana) had extension agents working with black farmers between 1925 and 1930. The increases in black farm ownership in those parishes ranged from 10 to 71 percent and averaged 33 percent. In the same period, black farm ownership in the state increased by 10 percent. But at the same time, the number of tenants in each parish and in the state increased at a much greater rate than landowners. Between 1925 and 1930 the proportion of black farmers who were tenants rose by 7 percent for the state and by an average of 5 percent for the parishes with extension agents. T. J. Jordan, Annual Narrative Report, Assistant State Agent, Negro Extension Work, 1931, 10, reel 29, FESR; Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census . . . 1930, Agriculture, Volume 2, Part 2, 1219–23, 1275–80.
46. L. W. Wilkinson, Annual Narrative Report, State Agent, Negro Extension Work, Louisiana, 1931, 9, reel 29, FESR.
47. J. E. Ringgold, Annual Narrative Report, Negro Agent, West Feliciana Parish, 1921, reel 8, FESR.
48. Myrtis A. Magee, Annual Narrative Report, Negro Agent, Washington, Tangipahoa, St. Tammany, and St. Helena Parishes, 1936, 12, vol. 510, AESP. See also L. J. Washington, Annual Narrative Report, Assistant State Agent for Work with Negroes, Franklin, Richmond, and Tensas Parishes, 1934, vol. 499, AESP, and T. J. Jordan, Annual Narrative Report, Assistant State Agent for Work with Negroes, 1945, 8, vol. 484, AESP.
49. O. G. Price, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, St. Helena Parish, 1918, reel 4, and 1921, reel 8, FESR; J. E. Ringgold, Annual Narrative Report, Negro Agent, West Feliciana Parish, 1920, reel 6, FESR; “Extension Agent, M. Magee, Dies,” Louisiana Weekly, 17 February 1940, 6.
50. Crosby, “Building the Country Home,” 35; “Negro Work in Louisiana, 1920–21,” n.d. [1921], 1, filed with State Administration Reports, reel 6, FESR; Cotton, Lamplighters, 102, 13. For a detailed study outlining the unequal allocation of federal funds and the poor quality of service provided to black farmers, see Wilkerson, Agricultural Extension Services among Negroes.
51. “Negro Work in Louisiana, 1920–21,” n.d. [1921], 1, filed with State Administration Reports, reel 6, FESR; Annual Narrative Report, State Agent, Louisiana, 1924, 10, reel 13, FESR; Baker, County Agent, 198–99; W. B. Mercier to J. A. Evans, 10 March 1930, file “Director La. 1929–1930,” box 193, General Correspondence of the Extension Service and its Predecessors, June 1907–June 1943, Correspondence, Records of the Federal Extension Service, RG 33, NA.
52. Brunner and Yang, Rural America and the Extension Service, 68–70; “Minority Report of W. L. Blackstone, Special Statements by Individual Members of the Special Committee on Farm Tenancy,” n.d. [February 1937], 1–2, file “Tenancy (Jan 1–Feb 1),” box 2661, GCOS, RG 16.
53. Henri, Bitter Victory, 112–13, 115–17; Gottlieb, Making Their Own Way, 89–116; Cohen, “Great Migration,” 73, 76; Matthews, “American Negro Leadership,” 72; Emmett J. Scott, American Negro, 465.
54. Kellogg, NAACP, 235.
55. John R. Shillady to R. G. Pleasant, 15 February 1919, frame 0031, reel 12, ser. A, pt. 7, PNAACP—Micro; “Discharged Soldier Lynched and Burned,” clipping, Brooklyn Standard Union, 1 September 1919, frame 0027, ibid.; Ernest J. Gaines, Gathering of Old Men, 104. For references to similar incidents in real life, see Henri, Bitter Victory, 113–14; Matthews, “American Negro Leadership,” 73; and Reich, “Soldiers of Democracy,” 1485.
56. Anonymous to Mr. Officer of Bigness [President], 18 March 1919, file “158260, Section 1, #1,” box 1276, SNF; Anonymous to White House (via Dearborn Supply Co.), 15 September 1921, file “158260, Section 3, #2,” SNF.
57. Green, Grass-Roots Socialism, 345–408; Dawley, Struggles for Justice, 254–94; MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry; Tuttle, Race Riot, 3–31. For federal agencies’ efforts to curtail the activities of black civil rights organizations during and after the war, see Kornweibel, “Seeing Red.”
58. Mary White Ovington, Bogalusa (New York: NAACP [1920]), frames 0002–5, reel 10, pt. 10, PNAACP—Micro; Frank Duffy to District Councils and Local Unions of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, 9 January 1920, frames 0007–10, ibid.; Norwood, “Bogalusa Burning.”
59. Report of the Secretary, December 1920, frame 0120, reel 4, pt. 1, PNAACP—Micro; Robert Bagnall, Report of Field Work, 9 May 1921, frame 0171, ibid.; “Parker and the Klan,” Madison Journal, 2 December 1922, 2; “Comparative Statements of July 31, 1920 and August 31, 1920,” frame 0102, reel 4, pt. 1, PNAACP—Micro (quotation); Record, Race and Radicalism, 31–33, 44. See also Reich, “Soldiers of Democracy,” 1498–1504.
60. Director of Branches to B. V. Jennings, 11 August 1924, frame 0202, reel 13, ser. A, pt. 12, PNAACP—Micro; H. C. Hudson to Robert W. Bagnall, 27 March 1923, 1–2, file “Shreveport, La. 1920–1927,” box 83, ser. G, pt. 1, PNAACP—LC (quotation); O. B. F. Smith to Robert Bagnall, 3 May 1926, file “Alexandria, La. 1918–1930” (box 79), “Shreveport Branch N.A.A.C.P. Sleeping,” 7 April 1928, file “Shreveport, La. 1928–1932” (box 83), and N. H. Baker to Walter White, 3 February 1933 (box 83)—all in ser. G, pt. 1, PNAACP—LC.
1. Baldwin, Poverty and Politics, 32; Mertz, New Deal Policy, 1–15; Holley, Uncle Sam's Farmers, 10–14; Moses Williams, interview by author, THWC—LSU.
2. Taylor, Louisiana, 149–66; Brinkley, Voices of Protest, 15–35. T. Harry Williams (Huey Long) offers a sympathetic account of Long's regime, arguing that his ruthless tactics were necessary to oust the reactionaries from power. More critical assessments are given in Sindler, Huey Long's Louisiana; Hair, Kingfish and His Realm; and Jeansonne, Messiah of the Masses.
3. “Huey Long Is Dead,” Louisiana Weekly, 14 September 1935, 8; Sepia Socialite, Negro in Louisiana, 2. Like most of his southern white contemporaries, Long commonly referred to black people as “niggers.”
4. Daniel, Breaking the Land, 65–68; Sullivan, Days of Hope, 3. See also Piven and Cloward, Poor People's Movements, 12.
5. Olson, Historical Dictionary of the New Deal, 177–78, 549; Leuchtenburg, Roosevelt, 118–42.
6. Douty, “FERA and the Rural Negro,” 215; Sitkoff, New Deal for Blacks, 59–75; Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln, 220–21; Sullivan, Days of Hope, 41–67; Barnard, Outside the Magic Circle, 127; Willie Dixon to U.S. Attorney General, 24 April 1939, frame 0987, reel 9, PFUS (quotation).
7. “Final Enrolling of State CCC Begins July 6th,” Madison Journal, 3 July 1936, 1–2; “Tells of Work CCC Boys Have Done in State,” Madison Journal, 6 October 1939, 2; Martin Williams, interview by author, THWC—LSU (first quotation); CCC, Office of the Director, The Civilian Conservation Corps and Colored Youth (Washington, D.C.: [CCC], 1939), frames 0530–33, reel 1, pt. 10, PNAACP—Micro; Gordon P. Hogan and John Percy Bond, Monthly Educational Report, June 1935, 1, file “La. L-72, New Roads,” box 89, CIR, RG 35; “Youth Impressions (Regarding Negroes),” 27 September 1941, 1, file “Special Reports Re: Negroes,” box 4, Project Files, 1940–45, Records of the Division of Program Surveys, Divisional Records, Records of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, RG 83, NA (second quotation).
8. Douty, “FERA and the Rural Negro,” 215; James H. Crutcher, “Prosperity Returns to Louisiana,” Work, October 1936, 3; “Chicago Mill Veneer Plant Burns Monday,” Madison Journal, 4 December 1936, 1. In 1930 African Americans made up 71 percent of workers employed in sawmills and planing mills in Madison Parish. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census . . . 1930, Population, Volume 3, Part 1, 999.
9. “Chicago Mill Is Operating under NRA Agreement,” Madison Journal, 25 August 1933, 1. The rate works out at $1.92 per day or $38.40 per month, compared with an average wage rate of $17.31 per month (without board) for Louisiana farm laborers in 1933. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Crops and Markets, 119.
10. Martin Williams interview; Harrison and Earnestine Brown, interview by author, THWC—LSU. Between 1930 and 1940 Tallulah grew in population from 3,332 to 5,712. African Americans comprised 86 percent of the increase, numbering 2,043. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census . . . 1930, Population, Volume 3, Part 1, 992, and Sixteenth Census . . . 1940, Population, Volume 2, Part 3, 419.
11. Sepia Socialite, Negro in Louisiana, 74, 79; “Literacy,” Work, February 1937, 18 (first quotation); George Washington, “Adult Education among Negroes in Louisiana,” Louisiana Colored Teachers’ Journal, February–March 1939, frame 0322, reel 3, LWPA; “Adult Classes Proving Popular,” Work, October 1936, 6 (second quotation); “School Days,” Work, April 1938, 4 (last quotation).
12. J. H. Chapmon to FDR, 12 April 1938, frame 0665; Leola Dishman to FDR, 18 February 1939, frame 0794; and Annette Nelson to Harold S. Hopkins, 29 May 1936, frame 0430—all in reel 29, LWPA.
13. In its second year of operation, e.g., the FSA received 147,972 applications for the 7,000 loans that were available. In 1940 the 6,678 families who were receiving help from the agency's tenant purchase program represented only 2 percent of tenants in the United States. Baldwin, Poverty and Politics, 199.
14. “Works Progress Administration of Louisiana,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 23 July 1936, 1.
15. Charlie Young to Richard Leche, 15 December 1936, file “Public Welfare (T–Z),” box 36; Lillie Pearl Jackson to Leche, 15 December 1936, file “Public Welfare (J–L),” box 36; and Charlie Hines et al. to Leche, 23 March 1938, file “A,” box 7—all in RWLP.
16. Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln, 50–59; Daniel, Breaking the Land, 80–81; Baldwin, Poverty and Politics, 196–97, 200–201, 279–80; “The Differential Labor Policy,” Louisiana Weekly, 7 October 1933, sec. 1, 8 (first quotation); Louis Israel to A. P. Tureaud, 11 December 1933, file 6, box 1, APTP; “WPA Chief Tells of Racial Problem in U.S. Relief Work,” Louisiana Weekly, 7 December 1935, 1, 7.
17. “Personnel of West Feliciana Parish Board of Public Welfare Selected by Police Jury at Meeting,” 6 January 1937, file “Public Welfare Personnel—Parish Directors and Staff,” box 36, RWLP; M. L. Wilson to W. W. Alexander, 10 December 1938, 15, file “Tenancy 2.1 (County Committee),” box 2902, GCOS, RG 16; “Personnel of Pointe Coupee Parish Board of Public Welfare Selected by Police Jury at Meeting,” 4 January 1937, file “Public Welfare Personnel—Parish Directors and Staff,” box 36, RWLP; Gordon McIntire, Statement on Sugar Cane Wages, Federal Hearing, 16 June 1939, 7, 11–12, file 3, reel 13, CLJP; Clyde Johnson, interview by Bob Dinwiddie, transcript, 4 April 1976, 46, file 1, reel 13, CLJP; Daniel, Breaking the Land, 91–109; Conrad, Forgotten Farmers, 39–42.
18. Clay Jackson to Alfred Edgar Smith, 11 March 1938, frame 0386, reel 29, LWPA (first quotation); C. L. Kennon to Richard Leche, 15 February 1936, file unlabeled [5], box 60, RWLP; Fritz Falcon to Henry Wallace, 23 March 1936, file “AD 510 Appeals for Aid, Louisiana Counties,” box 193, GCCO.
19. W. F. Oakes to Alfred Edgar Smith, 2 November 1937, frame 0095, reel 5, LWPA; Cornelia Edge to Howard Sinclair, memorandum, 17 December 1941, frames 0316–17, reel 7, LWPA (first quotation, by Walter F. Craddock); J. B. Garrett, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, West Feliciana Parish, 1940, 21, reel 56, FESR (second quotation); Guy Campbell to Allen J. Ellender, 8 August 1941, frame 0453, reel 7, LWPA.
20. “Cooperation,” Work, September 1936, 4; Frank H. Peterman to Harry L. Hopkins, 10 August 1935, frame 0059, reel 1, LWPA (first quotation); Mildred Taylor, Narrative Report—Monroe District, Sewing Projects, 15 September 1936, frame 0818, reel 26, LWPA; Clay Jackson to Alfred Edgar Smith, 11 March 1938, frame 0386, reel 29, LWPA; Edgar A. Schuler, Weekly Tensions Report, 20 March 1943, 5, file “Edgar Schuler—Field Reports,” box 1824, FRSD, RG 44.
21. Anonymous letter, no addressee (referred to Department of Justice), n.d. [ca. December 1933–January 1934], file “158260, Sub 46, 12/20/33–1/10/34,” box 1291, SNF; Neill McL. Coney Jr., Camp Report, 11 September 1933, 2, file “La. L-61, Krotz Springs, Co. #1481,” box 88, CIR, RG 35; John P. Davis to Robert H. Jackson, 11 March 1940, 1, file “198589, Section 8,” box 3034, SNF, RG 60.
22. N. Watts Maddux to Lewis B. Hershey, 30 September 1941, frame 0464, reel 7, LWPA; W. D. Haas to A. Leonard Allen, 21 October 1942, frame 0470, LWPA; “Resolution of Caddo Parish Police Jury,” 24 September 1942, file 5, box 9, SHJP.
23. W. F. Oakes to David K. Niles, 14 May 1937, frames 0864–65, reel 4, LWPA.
24. C. C. Huffman to Sam H. Jones, 27 October 1942, file 5, box 9, SHJP. As Cindy Hahamovitch (“Standing Idly By,” 16) has noted, decisions about whether or not labor shortages really existed were “inherently political” and rested on subjective judgments more than empirical measurements. Planters who were accustomed to a large and therefore cheap supply of workers were likely to perceive labor “shortages” whenever competition between employers caused wage rates to rise, regardless of the actual number of farmworkers who were available.
25. J. H. Crutcher to District Directors, memorandum, 26 August 1936, file “Federal—Public Works Administration,” box 34, RWLP; “Workers Told by WPA Chief to Take Jobs,” Opelousas Clarion-News, 19 November 1936, 8; Weekly News Letter, WPA of Louisiana, 23 August 1938, frames 0816–18, reel 1, LWPA; “WPA Will Guard against Scarcity of Farm Labor,” Madison Journal, 9 September 1938, 1; “Welfare Office to Co-operate with Farmers,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 3 September 1942, 1.
26. Aiken, Cotton Plantation South, 100–104; Sitterson, Sugar Country, 386–87; Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census . . . 1940, Agriculture, Volume 1, Part 5, 121; Wright, Old South, New South, 234.
27. Bureau of the Census, Census of Agriculture: 1954, Volume 1, Part 24, 11; Conrad, Forgotten Farmers, 58–82; Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, 23–25; Mertz, New Deal Policy, 23; Tensas Parish Department of Public Welfare, “For the Welfare of Tensas Parish,” 15 March 1937, 7, Tensas Parish Scrapbook, 1937–75, MS vol. 9, Gladys Means Loyd and Family Papers, HML (quotation); Maude Barrett to Loula Dunn, 11 September 1935, frames 0015–16, reel 1, LWPA.
28. Conrad, Forgotten Farmers, 50–63; Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, 21–23; Clyde Johnson interview, 47; Brown interview.
29. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe; Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton; Flamm, “National Farmers Union”; Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost, 151–52; Holley, Uncle Sam's Farmers, 82–104; Mertz, New Deal Policy, 20–44. For a firsthand account of these struggles, see Rosengarten, All God's Dangers.
30. Clyde Johnson interview, 48, 29; Kelley, Hammer and Hoe, 168–69, 63, 172; Tom [Clyde Johnson] to H. L. Mitchell, 31 January [1936], reel 1, STFUP (quotation); Rosen, “Alabama Share Croppers Union,” 89, 138–39; C. L. Johnson, “The Sharecroppers Union,” Louisiana Weekly, 16 May 1936.
31. Johnson later became involved in organizing beet workers in Colorado, pecan shellers and oil workers in Texas, and electrical workers in Pittsburgh before taking a job as a carpenter and union official in California in the 1950s. According to Robin Kelley, after his election as business agent for Local 550 of the Carpenters’ and Millmen's Union, Johnson turned the local into “a powerful force for civil rights, trade union democracy, and antipoverty work in the Bay Area.” Kelley, Hammer and Hoe, 63, 169, and “Lifelong Radical,” 254–58 (quotation, p. 257).
32. Rosen, “Alabama Share Croppers Union,” 4, 89, 138–39; Reuben Cole, “Southern Farm Students Praise College for Workers,” Southern Farm Leader, February 1937, 2; Tex [Gordon McIntire] to Clyde and Anne [Johnson], 13 April 1956, file 3, reel 13, CLJP; Johnson, “Brief History,” 18; FBI, “Louisiana Farmers’ Union (Farmers’ Educational and Cooperative Union of America, Louisiana Division),” 27 September 1941, 8, file 100–45768, LFU, FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
33. “Southern Farm Leader,” Southern Farm Leader, May 1936, 1; Rosen, “Alabama Share Croppers Union,” 89 (Johnson).
34. “Share Croppers Union Expresses Its Thanks to Secretary Johnson,” Southern Farm Leader, August 1936, 5; “Your Paper—Our Bow,” Louisiana Union Farmer, November 1939, 4 (McIntire).
35. “For Unity in the South,” Southern Farm Leader, May 1936, 4; Rosen, “Alabama Share Croppers Union,” 99–106. Noncommunist contemporaries as well as many historians of New Deal era social movements viewed the part that communists played in these struggles with ambivalence. Communist Party members received funding and direction from the Soviet Union for their activities, raising concerns about their underlying motives and goals. Rigid adherence to the party line and the efforts of some members to gain control over the noncommunist organizations they belonged to antagonized more moderate activists and contributed to the weakening of the American left in the 1940s. On the other hand, the party provided many of the most dedicated and effective organizers in the labor movement, and its members were among the few white people who openly supported racial equality in the decades before World War II.
H. L. Mitchell's and others’ suspicions notwithstanding, the organizers of the SCU and LFU bore little resemblance to the uncompromising ideologues depicted in some accounts of communist activity. The decision to seek alliances with other liberal and left-wing organizations was reached independently of Soviet influence and antedated the Communist International's formal proclamation of the Popular Front by more than a year. Although they might have started out with the goal of transforming southern sharecroppers and tenants into the vanguard of an American workers’ revolution, organizers ultimately became more concerned with helping rural people to achieve a measure of comfort and security in their daily lives. By early 1935, Johnson stated, “all of the pretense of running party units á la New York was given up,” and union organizers’ contacts with the Communist Party leadership were minimal. Rosen, “Alabama Share Croppers Union,” 3–4, 95–96 (quotation, p. 96). For some historical analyses of the role of communists in the freedom struggle, see Kelley, Hammer and Hoe; Record, Race and Radicalism; Naison, Communists in Harlem; Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights; and Horowitz, “Negro and White, Unite and Fight!.”
36. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe, 169–72; Rosen, “Alabama Share Croppers Union,” 86–87, 99–107, 112–13.
37. A union newsletter explained, “The charter gives the local the legal right to hold closed meetings and it is unlawful for anyone who is not a member to break in a meeting.” “Organization Information,” Union News, 30 April 1937, 2, file 2, reel 13, CLJP.
38. Clyde Johnson to J. M. Graves, 15 May 1937, 1, ibid.; “S.C.U. Locals Transferring to Farmers’ Union,” Southern Farm Leader, February 1937, 2.
39. Clyde Johnson interview, 48; [Clyde Johnson] to G. S. Gravlee, 23 September 1936, file 2, ibid.
40. SCU leaders strongly supported working with organized labor, encouraging members to form local farmer-labor cooperatives and to support candidates of the Farmer-Labor Party when they ran for political office. In return, leaders of the AFL and the CIO promised support for the struggles of rural people in the South. At its annual convention in April 1937, the Louisiana State Federation of Labor endorsed the LFU's efforts. The editor of the state AFL's newspaper, William L. Donnells, provided office space for LFU organizers and helped produce the Southern Farm Leader for more than a year before the farm union's failure to pay its bills caused him to withdraw this support. “Farmers’ Union National Convention,” Louisiana Farmers’ Union News, 1 December 1937, 1–2; Farmers’ Educational and Cooperative Union of America, National Program, December 1937, file 3, reel 13, CLJP; “Washington Hears Farm Workers’ Plea for Recognition,” Southern Farm Leader, May 1936, 1; “A New Party Is Needed to Battle for Justice,” Southern Farm Leader, August 1936, 5; “Louisiana Labor Pledges Support for Farm Union,” Southern Farm Leader, April–May 1937, 1; “New Office for Louisiana Farmers’ Union,” Louisiana Farmers’ Union News, 15 January 1938, 1; Gordon McIntire to Mack, Bob, and Clyde [Johnson], 23 June [1938], file 3, reel 13, CLJP.
41. “For Unity in the South,” Southern Farm Leader, May 1936, 4.
42. Although UCAPAWA represented agricultural workers at federal hearings and before government agencies concerned with labor, most of its organizing activity centered on the processing industries. [Clyde Johnson], “Activities in United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America, 1938,” 3 July 1976, 1–2, file 4, reel 13, CLJP; Kelley, Hammer and Hoe, 172; UCAPAWA Yearbook, December 1938, 8, 14, file 5, reel 13, CLJP; Rosen, “Alabama Share Croppers Union,” 113–15.
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 October 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.
91. Gordon McIntire to G. Warburton, 14 November 1939, 1–3, file 3, reel 13, CLJP; “Pointe Coupee Farmers Organize,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 13 June 1940, 1; M. L. Wilson to H. C. Sanders, 9 June 1943, 1–3, file “Dir. La. 1.43–6.43,” box 886, General Correspondence of the Extension Service and Its Predecessors, June 1907–June 1943, Correspondence, Records of the Federal Extension Service, RG 33, NA; Rosen, “Alabama Share Croppers Union,” 79.
92. “Memorandum concerning Economic and Employment Conditions in Louisiana, Notes on Individual WPA Districts,” June 1941, frames 0753–55, reel 6, LWPA; “Louisiana and National Defense, Second Report,” 30 April 1941, 3, file 3, box 13, SHJP; Bureau of the Census, Census of Agriculture: 1945, Volume 1, Part 24, 4, 10. Approximately 60,000 rural people, representing more than one-quarter of Louisiana's farm population, left the land between 1940 and 1945.
93. Gordon McIntire to Members and Friends of the Farmers’ Union in Louisiana, 10 March 1942, 4–5, file 3, reel 13, CLJP; FBI, “Louisiana Farmers’ Union (Farmers’ Educational and Cooperative Union of America, Louisiana Division),” 6 August 1943, 1, LFU—FBI.
1. See, e.g., Garfinkel, When Negroes March; Finkle, Forum for Protest; Buchanan, Black Americans; and Wynn, Afro-American.
2. “No Crooked Talk in Such a Fix Says St. Landry Tenant,” Southern Farm Leader, December 1936, 3.
3. Sepia Socialite, Negro in Louisiana, 50.
4. Edgar A. Schuler, “Weekly Report,” 5 April 1943, 5, file “Edgar Schuler—Field Reports,” box 1824, FRSD, RG 44.
5. Chicago Defender, 11 April 1942, quoted in “Weekly Media Report No. 11,” 18 April 1942, 46, loose in box, box 1720, WMRRD, RG 44. Hundreds of documents in the record collections of wartime agencies held at the National Archives testify to the government's concern about African American attitudes toward the war.
6. Hill, FBI's RACON, xvii.
7. See, e.g., “Preliminary Appraisal of the Present Negro Situation,” 9 March 1942, 2–4, 6, file “Surveys Div. Rep. No. 7,” box 1786, Reports of the Division, 1942–44, RMRD, RG 44; “Current Problems of Negro Morale,” 16 May 1942, 8, file “Sur. Div. Sp. Rep. No. 10,” box 1784, ibid.; and “The Grievance Pattern: Elements of Disunity in America,” 25 June 1942, 28, file “Sur. Div. Sp. Rep. No. 15a,” box 1786, ibid.
8. FEPC, First Report, 96; Hill, FBI's RACON, 34. See also Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage, and Lemann, Promised Land.
9. “Negroes Called from Here Going to Armed Forces,” Madison Journal, 28 May 1943, 6.
10. “Many Volunteer after Colored Soldiers Pass,” Madison Journal, 11 April 1941, 3.
11. “Courses in Many Subjects Offered WAAC Trainees,” Madison Journal, 5 March 1943, 1. See also “Booths Provided Here to Recruit Women for WAAC,” ibid., 12 February 1943, 1; “Special Effort Will Be Made to Recruit WAC's,” ibid., 1 October 1943, 1; “WAC Anniversary” and “WACs to Stage Recruiting Drive in Louisiana,” ibid., 12 May 1944, 2. Nationwide, approximately 6,500 African American women served in the WAC during the war. Martha S. Putney (When the Nation Was in Need) provides a useful account of the experiences of black women in the auxiliary corps.
12. Brown interview; Young interview; Veterans’ Administration News Release, 14 March 1945, 2–3, file “Negro Problems—Misc. Material,” box 386, OFWCL, RG 228; Wynn, Afro-American, 28.
13. “Army to Continue Use of WPA Aid, Says Gen. Hodges,” Madison Journal, 14 February 1941, 4; “Louisiana and National Defense, Second Report,” 30 April 1941, 2, file 3, box 13, SHJP; J. H. Crutcher to Malcolm J. Miller, 2 June 1941, frame 1092, reel 6, LWPA; “Memorandum concerning Economic and Employment Conditions in Louisiana,” March–April 1942, frame 0956, reel 6, LWPA; Leon Robinson, Annual Narrative Report, Negro Agent, St. Landry Parish, 1943, 24, vol. 509, AESP; J. B. Garrett and H. B. Fairchild, Annual Narrative Report, County Agents, West Feliciana Parish, 1943, 9, reel 64, FESR. In the 1940s Baton Rouge became the state's fastest-growing city, reporting an increase in the number of manufacturing establishments from thirty-one in 1939 to sixty-two in 1947 and an increase in population from 34,719 to 125,629 between 1940 and 1950. Shreveport's population increased by 30 percent, from 98,167 to 127,206, and the city gained eighteen new industries. Rapides Parish experienced a similar boom, stimulated by the location of a military training center (Camp Clai-borne) near Alexandria. Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufactures: 1947, Volume 3, 252, and Seventeenth Decennial Census . . . Population: 1950, Volume 2, Part 18, 7; Hill, FBI's RACON, 326.
14. Bernhardt, Sugar Industry and the Federal Government, 263, 275–76; “1942 Sugar Cane Wage Rates,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 29 October 1942, 1; U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Digest of Clippings on Agriculture from the Negro Press,” 13–20 June 1943, 2, file “Publications 1-1, Negro Press,” box 25, General Correspondence, March–July 1943, Correspondence, Records of the Office of Labor (War Food Administration), RG 224, NA. Wage rates (without board) for farmworkers in Louisiana for 1941–42 averaged $25.79 per month, compared with $21.72 per month for the years 1935–40. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Crops and Markets, 119.
15. Bartlow, Louisiana Study, 61. The higher wage bill was also shared among fewer laborers—18,954 in 1945 compared with 56,712 in 1940. Bureau of the Census, Census of Agriculture: 1945, Volume 1, Part 24, 4.
16. “Food for Freedom Program,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 6 November 1941, 1; “Farmers Hold Annual State Convention,” Louisiana Weekly, 8 November 1941, 2.
17. “Pointe Coupee Parish U.S.D.A. Defense Board,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 6 November 1941, 1, 8 (first quotation); Claude A. Barnett and F. D. Patterson to Claude R. Wickard, 26 June 1942, 2, file “Negroes,” box 3, GCN, RG 16.
18. Sepia Socialite, Negro in Louisiana, 143, 16.
19. Hill, FBI's RACON, 315.
20. Ibid., 320–25, 462, 464; Louisiana State Conference of NAACP Branches, “Proposed Yearly Budget for State Office,” 4 January 1947, file 1, box 9, APTP.
21. Iberville Parish Improvement Committee, “Petition to Iberville Parish School Board,” 21 April 1943, 1–2, file 1, box 35, APTP; J. K. Haynes to Sam H. Jones, telegram, 15 June 1943, file 6, box 4, SHJP.
22. “Current Problems of Negro Morale,” 16 May 1942, summary page, file “Sur. Div. Sp. Rep. No. 10,” box 1784, RSD, RG 44; “March on Washington Movement among Negroes,” 12 May 1942, 7, ibid.; Finkle, Forum for Protest, 90, 96–97.
23. Office of Facts and Figures, Bureau of Intelligence, “Survey of Intelligence Materials No. 25,” 27 May 1942, 9, file “Negroes,” box 3, GCN, RG 16.
24. Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage, 76–78, 153–77; Buchanan, Black Americans, 15–27; Sitkoff, Struggle for Black Equality, 11; Finkle, Forum for Protest, 96–97.
25. Winn, Afro-American, 49–54; John A. Davis to Malcolm Ross, 29 February 1944, file “New Orleans,” reel 76, Tension File, July 1943–October 1945, Headquarters Records, RFEPC.
26. Lena Mae Gordon to Civil Service Commission, 2 February 1943, 1–2, file “Q.M. Laundry, Camp Claiborne, La. 10-GR-148,” reel 100, Closed Cases, August 1941–March 1946, Field Records, RFEPC; Edith A. Pierce to FEPC, 6 November 1944, file “Port of Embarkation 10-GR-433,” ibid.
27. Finkle, Forum for Protest, 163–82; Wilson, Jim Crow Joins Up, 7–9, 11, 99; Treadwell, Women's Army Corps, 589–601; Putney, When the Nation Was in Need, 4, 50.
28. Samuel Bonery to Gloster B. Currant, 19 August 1942, frame 0442, reel 11, ser. B, pt. 9, PNAACP—Micro; Edgar B. Holt to Mr. Gibson, 14 October 1943, in McGuire, Taps for a Jim Crow Army, 66; George V. Grant to NAACP, 4 May 1943, frames 0242–45, reel 12, ser. B, pt. 9, PNAACP—Micro; Milton Adams to W. H. Hastie, 13 May 1942, in McGuire, Taps for a Jim Crow Army, 149.
29. Quoted in Putney, When the Nation Was in Need, 81.
30. Dorothy C. Bray to War Department, 4 October 1944, frames 0467–70, reel 1, ser. C, pt. 9, PNAACP—Micro; Darnell Harris to Walter White, 3 May 1942, frame 0344, reel 12, ser. B, pt. 9, ibid.
31. Peery, Black Fire, 173; Edgar A. Schuler, “Weekly Report,” 5 April 1943, 1, 3, file “Edgar Schuler—Field Reports,” box 1824, FRSD, RG 44. See also Kelley, Race Rebels, 55–75.
32. “Memorandum from Office of Commanding Officer, Headquarters Polk Louisiana,” n.d. [ca. 1940s], frame 0440, reel 11, ser. B, pt. 9, PNAACP—Micro.
33. Edgar A. Schuler, “Weekly Report,” 5 April 1943, 1–2, file “Edgar Schuler—Field Reports,” box 1824, FRSD, RG 44; Schuler, “Weekly Report,” 3 April 1943, 5, ibid.; Schuler, “Tension Area Analysis: Racial Problems,” 22 January 1943, 2, ibid.; Schuler, “Weekly Report,” 5 April 1943, 4, ibid.
34. Edgar A. Schuler, “Summary of Tension Area Analysis: Racial Problems,” 22 January 1943, ibid.; Aunt Ollie to Hattye, 3 March [1942], 2, file 2, box 1, John Hamilton and Harriet Boyd Ellis Papers, HML (resident of Tangipahoa Parish); Schuler, “Summary of Tension Area Analysis: Racial Problems,” 22 January 1943, and “Tension Area Analysis: Racial Problems,” 22 January 1943, 1, file “Edgar Schuler—Field Reports,” box 1824, FRSD, RG 44. Howard Odum of the University of North Carolina collected hundreds of similar reports from across the South in his wartime study, Race and Rumors of Race.
35. John Beecher to Lawrence W. Creamer, memorandum, 7 March 1942, 7, file “1-1 Reports—John Beecher,” reel 48, Central Files of the FEPC, August 1941– April 1946, Headquarters Records, RFEPC; Beecher to Creamer, memorandum, n.d. [ca. March 1942], 1, ibid. (quotation); Beecher to Creamer, memorandums, 16 March 1942, 2, n.d. [ca. March 1942], 1–2, and 7 March 1942, 6—all in ibid.
36. FEPC, First Report, 65; Peery, Black Fire, 154; Hill, FBI's RACON, 34; Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census . . . 1940, Population, Volume 3, Part 3, 264, 357, and Seventeenth Decennial Census . . . Population: 1950, Volume 2, Part 18, 225.
37. John Beecher to Lawrence W. Creamer, memorandum, 7 March 1942, 7, file “1-1 Reports—John Beecher,” reel 48, Central Files of the FEPC, August 1941– April 1946, Headquarters Records, RFEPC (quotation); Clarence M. Mitchell to George Johnson, memorandum, 24 July 1945, file “Tension Report Region XIII,” reel 63, ibid.
38. Edith A. Pierce to War Department, 6 November 1944, 1, file “Port of Embarkation 10-GR-433,” reel 100, Closed Cases, August 1941–March 1946, Field Records, RFEPC; Joseph A. Prevost to FEPC, 13 October 1942, file “Port of Embarkation 10-GR-147,” ibid.
39. “Louisiana and National Defense, Second Report,” 30 April 1941, 3, file 3, box 13, SHJP; S. S. McFerrin, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, St. Helena Parish, 1942, 10, reel 62, FESR; A. B. Curet, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, Pointe Coupee Parish, 1942, 9, reel 61, FESR; “Every Citizen Is Asked to Aid in Harvesting Crops,” Madison Journal, 9 October 1942, 6.
40. Edgar Schuler, “Tension Area Analysis: Racial Problems,” 22 January 1943, 2, file “Edgar Schuler—Field Reports,” box 1824, FRSD, RG 44; “Crops and Labor,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 12 August 1943, 3; “Tax Losses,” Madison Journal, 19 March 1943, 2. See also Woodruff, “Pick or Fight,” 75.
41. A. J. Bouanchard to Sam Houston Jones, 14 September 1942, file “Pointe Coupee,” box “Governor's File, New Orleans-St. Mary,” SHJP.
42. Philleo Nash to Eugene Katz, memorandum, 3 October 1942, 1–2, file “Groups and Organizations Section, Bureau of Intelligence, OWI,” box 1788, RSD, RG 44.
43. Woodruff, “Pick or Fight,” 78–80; “Labor Freezing Covers Agriculture,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 20 May 1943, 1 (quotations); “McKenzie Says Farm Labor Cannot Migrate,” Madison Journal, 17 September 1943, 1.
44. C. E. Kemmerly Jr., Annual Narrative Report, Extension Farm Labor Program, Louisiana, 1943, 9, vol. 589, AESP.
45. “Nazi-Like Interpretation Given to ‘Work or Fight Order’ by City Official,” Louisiana Weekly, 24 April 1943, 1 (first quotation); Social Science Institute at Fisk University, “A Monthly Summary of Events and Trends in Race Relations,” September 1943, 3, file “Tension Areas Reports,” box 389, OFWCL, RG 228.
46. C. E. Kemmerly Jr. to Meredith C. Wilson, 18 June 1943 (consolidated with Wilson to Kemmerly, 26 June 1943), file “La. K–O,” box 887, General Correspondence of the Extension Service and Its Predecessors, June 1907–June 1943, Correspondence, Records of the Federal Extension Service, RG 33, NA (Extension Service administrators); “State Summary of County Statistical Reports, Louisiana,” 1943, 4, vol. 589, AESP; A. B. Curet, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, Pointe Coupee Parish, 1944, 5, reel 66, FESR; G. B. Martin, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, St. Landry Parish, 1944, 5, reel 67, FESR; “Annual Report of Farm Labor Program, Louisiana,” 1944, 4, vol. 589, AESP; “Eight Camps Set for Sugar Areas,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 9 October 1943, 16 (proponents of the camps); Max McDonald, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, Madison Parish, 1944, 25, reel 66, FESR.
47. Max McDonald, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, Madison Parish, 1945, 25, vol. 245, AESP; “Rapid[e]s Parish Points the Way,” Madison Journal, 15 September 1944, 2; Farrell M. Roberts, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, East Feliciana Parish, 1945, 4, vol. 146, AESP; “The Big Shift,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 16 December 1948, 2; Bureau of the Census, Census of Agriculture: 1959, Volume 1, Part 35, 11–16.
48. Arthur Lemann, interview by Bernard Lemann, FCC—NOPL; “Mechanization Spreads,” Madison Journal, 19 January 1945, 2; Bernhardt, Sugar Industry and the Federal Government, 282; R. J. Badeaux, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, Iberville Parish, 1945, 18, vol. 181, AESP.
49. Bureau of the Census, Census of Agriculture: 1959, Volume 1, Part 35, 7, 6, Sixteenth Census . . . 1940, Agriculture, Volume 1, Part 5, 138, and Census of Agriculture: 1945, Volume 1, Part 24, 10; B. B. Jones, “Weekly Market News Letter,” St. Francisville Democrat, 27 December 1946, 1; C. P. Seab, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, Concordia Parish, 1949, 4, vol. 119, AESP.
50. Edgar A. Schuler, “Weekly Report,” 3 April 1943, 5, file “Edgar Schuler—Field Reports,” box 1824, FRSD, RG 44.
51. C. L. G. and J. A. D., “The Fair Employment Practice Committee and Race Tensions in Industry,” n.d. [ca. 1940s], 8, file “The FEPC and Race Tensions in Industry,” box 426, RFDRA, RG 228.
52. “Opinions about Inter-racial Tension,” Division of Research Report No. C12, 25 August 1943, 13, file unlabeled, box 1719, RMRD, RG 44.
53. John A. Davis to Malcolm Ross, 29 February 1944, 1, file “New Orleans,” reel 76, Tension File, July 1943–October 1945, Headquarters Records, RFEPC; Copy of article from Sepia Socialite, 27 May 1944, file “New Iberia,” ibid.; “A Disgusted Negro Trooper” to Cleveland Call & Post, 16 August 1944, in McGuire, Taps for a Jim Crow Army, 196. On the January 1942 riot, see Sepia Socialite, Negro in Louisiana, 30–31, 33; Hill, FBI's RACON, 326–27; and Finkle, Forum for Protest, 106.
54. Prentice Thomas to Nora Williamson, 14 January 1943, frame 0485, reel 14, ser. B, pt. 9, PNAACP—Micro; Fred Hoord to Chicago Defender, n.d. [ca. June 1943], frames 0241–42, reel 13, ibid.; Francis Biddle to Mrs. Roosevelt, 17 May 1944, 1, file “144–33–14,” box 17589, CSF, RG 60; George M. Johnson and S. Bradley to National Legal Committee, NAACP, 17 March 1944, frame 0548, reel 14, ser. B, pt. 9, PNAACP—Micro.
55. Edgar A. Schuler, “Weekly Tensions Report,” 20 March 1943, 5–6 (quotation, p. 5), and 3 April 1943, 5, file “Edgar Schuler—Field Reports,” box 1824, FRSD, RG 44; G. P. Bullis to Perry Cole, 21 January 1943, file “Request for Organizing,” and A. B. Crothers to Cole, n.d. [June 1943], file “Ferriday, La.,” Louisiana State Guard Records, Louisiana State Archives, Baton Rouge.
56. Peery, Black Fire, 170, 173–218.
57. R. Keith Kane to Reginald Foster, memorandum, 25 November 1942, 10, file “Civilian Problems,” box 1790, Special Memoranda of the Division, 1942–44, RMRD, RG 44 (quotation); Thurgood Marshall to Tom C. Clark, 5 May 1944, frame 0556, reel 14, ser. B, pt. 9, PNAACP—Micro.
58. Quoted in “Information Roundup, No. 7,” 24 April 1944, 23–24, loose in box, box 1712, RMRD, RG 44.
59. Transcript of Oral History Interview, Addendum, [Spring 1967], 55, file “Oral History Interview with John H. Scott and Related Material,” John Henry Scott Papers, Archives, Manuscripts, and Special Collections Department, Earl K. Long Library, University of New Orleans, New Orleans.
60. Arthur to Mother, 18 November 1943, file 18, box 8, APTP; “R. L. Betz Assaulted by a Negro Soldier,” Madison Journal, 8 February 1946, 1; Statement of Cora Mae Harris, n.d. [February 1946], frames 0222–23, reel 20, ser. C, pt. 9, PNAACP—Micro.
61. “March on Washington Movement among Negroes,” 12 May 1942, 7, file “Sur. Div. Sp. Rep. No. 8,” box 1784, RSD, RG 44.
62. “Preliminary Appraisal of the Present Negro Situation,” 9 March 1942, 2–4, 6, file “Surveys Div. Rep. No. 7,” box 1786, RSD, RG 44; “Current Problems of Negro Morale,” 16 May 1942, 8, file “Sur. Div. Sp. Rep. No. 10,” box 1784, RSD, RG 44; “The Grievance Pattern: Elements of Disunity in America,” 25 June 1942, 28, file “Sur. Div. Sp. Rep. No. 15a,” box 1786, RSD, RG 44; Hill, FBI's RACON, 3.
63. Buchanan, Black Americans, 76; Wilson, Jim Crow Joins Up, 125; “A Disgusted Negro Trooper” to Cleveland Call & Post, 16 August 1944, in McGuire, Taps for a Jim Crow Army, 196.
64. Carr, Federal Protection of Civil Rights, 163–76; Buchanan, Black Americans, 9–10, 125–26; Hill, FBI's RACON, 8–9; Goldfield, Black, White, and Southern, 33; Brundage, Lynching in the New South, 251.
65. Darlene Clark Hine, Black Victory, 212–42; Goldfield, Black, White, and Southern, 33–34.
66. Von Eschen, Race against Empire, 109–13; Wynn, Afro-American, 117–20; Finch, NAACP, 116–18. See also Berman, Politics of Civil Rights.
67. Southwest Region NAACP Newsletter, 20 November 1948, 1, file 26, box 15, APTP.
68. William A. Caudill, “Negro GI's Come Back,” n.d., 2, file “Negro GI's Come Back,” box 426, RFDRA, RG 228. See also Edgar A. Schuler, “Weekly Report,” 5 April 1943, 2, file “Edgar Schuler—Field Reports,” box 1824, FRSD, RG 44, and Albert Anderson, “Reactionaries and Progressives in Showdown Fight,” Louisiana Weekly, 2 February 1946, 12.
1. Alexandria Branch of the NAACP to Nora Windon, August 1946, frame 0592, reel 8, pt. 4, PNAACP—Micro.
2. See, e.g., Wynn, Afro-American, 129–36. Wynn suggests that scholars have overstated the significance of World War II and that “some views may now need modification and qualification” (p. 129). David H. Onkst (“ ‘First a Negro’”) reaches a similar conclusion.
3. Burran, “Racial Violence in the South”; Norrell, “One Thing We Did Right,” 68–70.
4. Arthur G. Klein, quoted in Ruchames, Race, Jobs, and Politics, 95.
5. For participation by black war veterans in the civil rights movement in other states, see Mills, This Little Light of Mine, 27; Dittmer, Local People, 1–18; Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom, 24, 29–31, 47–49, 56–61, 66, 136–37, 181–82, 299, 404; and Tyson, “Robert F. Williams,” 547–48.
6. Zelma Wyche, Harrison H. Brown, T. I. Israel, F. W. Wilson, and Moses Williams, interview by Miriam Feingold, MFP; Harrison and Earnestine Brown, interview by author, THWC—LSU; A. Z. Young, interview by Miriam Feingold, MFP; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 395–98. See also Dittmer, Local People, 1–18, and Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom, 29–66.
7. Bureau of the Census, Seventeenth Decennial Census . . . Population: 1950, Volume 2, Part 18, 225, and Census of Agriculture: 1959, Volume 1, Part 35, 6; Norvel E. Thames, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, Tensas Parish, 1947, 2, vol. 392, AESP. See also “The Problem,” n.d. [ca. 1930s], 1–3, file “LU-1 184-047 Farm Tenancy,” box 1, RCFT, RG 83.
8. Bartlow, Louisiana Study, 50; “Louisiana Ideal for Many Industries, States Gov. Davis,” Madison Journal, 27 June 1947, 4; “La. Industrial Leaders to Meet in New Orleans on December 16th,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 4 December 1952, 1; “La. Matching Agricultural with Industrial Expansion,” Opelousas Daily World, 1 April 1955, 3; “Third Annual La. Industrial Development Conference Slated November 17th,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 27 October 1955, 13.
9. “President's Message,” La. Delta Council News, October 1948, 2; “Objectives of the Louisiana Delta Council,” ibid., October 1948, 3. For analyses of the Mississippi Delta Council and its efforts to preserve white supremacy in the face of the economic transformation of the South, see Woodruff, “Mississippi Delta Planters,” and Woods, Development Arrested, 121–82.
10. Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufactures 1954, Volume 3, 117–3, 117–4; Myrtle D. Anderson, Annual Narrative Report, Home Demonstration Agent, Iberville Parish, 1956, 2, vol. 184, AESP; LeRoy Barton, Annual Narrative Report, Negro Agent, Iberville Parish, 1957, 1, vol. 184, AESP; Prince H. Lewis, Annual Narrative Report, Negro Agent, East Feliciana Parish, 1957, 1, vol. 149, AESP.
11. “Sweet Potato Becomes an Industry,” St. Francisville Democrat, 27 March 1942, 1; “Canning Plant to Locate Here,” ibid., 23 March 1945, 3; “Paper Mill to Build Plant Here,” ibid., 28 December 1956, 1, 4; W. D. Magee, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, West Feliciana Parish, 1957, 4, vol. 457, AESP.
12. “Lumber and Logging Industry Increases,” Madison Journal, 24 May 1946, 2; “Louisiana's Timber Industry Ranks High in Nation,” ibid., 12 March 1948, 6; Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufactures 1954, Volume 3, 117-12–117-14; John C. Howard, Negro in the Lumber Industry, 12–13.
13. R. J. Courtney, Annual Narrative Report, Assistant State Agent for Work with Negroes, 1959, 3, vol. 525, AESP.
14. Accommodation to white supremacy was a feature of industrial development throughout the South. See Cobb, Industrialization and Southern Society, 83–85, and Greenberg, Race and State in Capitalist Development, 209–35.
15. Ronnie M. Moore to National CORE, memorandum, n.d. [ca. September 1964], 2, file 9, box 7, CORE—SROP; “St. Francisville Yam Canning Plant Charged by Labor Dept.,” Opelousas Daily World, 14 December 1958, 44; “West Feliciana (St. Francisville),” [Summary Report, April 1965], file 10, box 7, CORE—SROP; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 349; Miriam Feingold to Parents, 3 December 1963, frame 00738, reel 25, COREP.
16. State Department of Education of Louisiana, Facilities for Veterans’ Education, 9; “G.I. Bill of Rights and What It Means,” Louisiana Weekly, 16 September 1944, 10; Wynn, Afro-American, 15.
17. “G.I. Bill of Rights Amounts to Nothing More Than So [Many] Empty Words in Louisiana,” Louisiana Weekly, 27 July 1946, 1. See also Onkst, “ ‘First a Negro,’” 519–23.
18. “The Veteran's Institute,” Louisiana Weekly, 16 March 1946, 12; Secretary, Veterans Affairs, to Alphonce Williams, 23 May 1947, frame 0214, reel 1, ser. C, pt. 9, PNAACP—Micro; Record, Race and Radicalism, 137; “SRC Pushing 3 Point Program to Aid Veterans,” Louisiana Weekly, 7 September 1946, 7.
19. “GI Education Bill Key to La. Vet's Success Story,” Louisiana Weekly, 7 August 1954, 7.
20. Statement of Harrison H. Brown in “Trial Fact Book, Hearing on Voting, Shreveport, La., July 13, 1959,” file “Trial Fact Book, Louisiana Hearings,” box 7, SS, RG 453; Brown interview.
21. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Parade of Progress, 6.
22. “Louisiana's Farm Family Pioneer Vegetable Growers,” Louisiana Weekly, 24 January 1959, 12; “Louisiana Man Top Sweetpotato Farmer,” ibid., 5 November 1960, 12.
23. Martin Williams, interview by author, THWC-LSU.
24. Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census . . . 1910, Volume 2, 774, Thirteenth Census . . . 1910, Volume 4, 465–66, and Seventeenth Decennial Census . . . Population: 1950, Volume 2, Part 18, 28, 35.
25. Transcript of Oral History Interview, spring 1967, 43, file “Oral History Interview with John H. Scott and Related Material,” John Henry Scott Papers, Archives, Manuscripts, and Special Collections Department, Earl K. Long Library, University of New Orleans, New Orleans; Roland Prejean to A. P. Tureaud, 7 April 1942, file 15, box 3, APTP; Dugas Theirry to Tureaud, 22 September 1943, and Tureaud to Theirry, 2 October 1943, both in file 18, box 8, APTP; Speech Delivered by Daniel E. Byrd at the [NAACP] National Convention, 27 June 1946, 5, additions file, box 8, DEBP; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 69–71; Martin Williams interview; Brown interview; Moses Williams, interview by author, THWC-LSU; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 395–98.
26. Brown interview.
27. Application for Charter, Carville Branch, 10 March 1946, file “Charter Applications, Louisiana A–J” (box 242), Application for Charter, Pointe Coupee Parish Branch, n.d. [ca. February 1954], file K–W (box 242), “Notes on NAACP Regional Training Conference,” 6 October 1945, 6–7, file “Leadership Training Conference, Louisiana-Texas (Conference) Correspondence 1945” (box 375)—all in ser. C, pt. 2, PNAACP—LC. See also Bates, “New Crowd.”
28. A comparison of names that appear in the records of the LFU and the NAACP suggests that several residents of Pointe Coupee Parish who were active in the 1930s were also involved in civil rights work in the 1950s (e.g., Siegent Caulfield and Leon Lafayette). Members of this group also assisted CORE workers in the 1960s. LFU leader Abraham Phillips later became involved in the Deacons for Defense and Justice, an armed self-defense group that was formed to protect civil rights activists in Louisiana. See Abraham Phillips, Siegent Caulfield, Leon Lafayette, and J. C. Prater to Mr. Baldwin, 21 October 1941, file “Pointe Coupee Parish, La. AD-510,” box 193, GCCO; Application for Charter, Pointe Coupee Parish Branch, n.d. [ca. February 1954], file K–W, box 242, ser. C, pt. 2, PNAACP—LC; “Told ‘No Order’ Received Yet to Register Negroes,” Louisiana Weekly, 26 January 1952, 1–2; Mimi Feingold, “Parish Scouting Report—Summer Project, Pointe Coupee Parish,” 14 April 1964, 2, file 20, box 1, CORE—SCDP; “Report for Pointe Coupee Parish,” n.d. [11 October 1963], 1, file 3, box 6, CORE—SROP; and Kelley, Hammer and Hoe, 169. Similar connections between the rural unions of the 1930s and civil rights organizations in the 1950s and 1960s are noted in Couto, Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round, 101–2, and Payne, “The Lady Was a Sharecropper,” 24.
29. “Statewide Drive for Full Citizenship Launched by La. Branches of NAACP,” Louisiana Weekly, 25 October 1947, 1, 3.
30. NAACP, Teachers’ Salaries in Black and White: A Pamphlet for Teachers and Their Friends (New York: NAACP, 1941), frames 0397–0404, reel 7, ser. B, pt. 3, PNAACP—Micro.
31. Memorandum, n.d. [ca. 1936], 2, file “Education—La. State Department of Education,” box 3, RWLP; Lola Stallworth, interview by author, THWC—LSU.
32. See, e.g., J. K. Haynes to Sam H. Jones, 15 June 1943, file 6, box 4, SHJP. Haynes informed Governor Jones that many black teachers were abandoning their poorly paid profession to take higher-paying jobs in defense industries.
33. A. P. Tureaud to J. K. Haynes, 12 May 1943, file 19, box 34, APTP.
34. W. W. Harleaux to A. P. Tureaud, 12 February 1943, file 18, ibid.; W[illie] Franklin to A. P. Tureaud, 10 May 1943, file 19, ibid.
35. “The Teachers’ Salary Issue,” Louisiana Weekly, 10 July 1943, 10; “Principal Brings Suit to Equalize Salary; Paid $500 a Year by Board,” newspaper clipping, source unknown, n.d., 8, file 27, box 35, APTP; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 99–100.
36. “School Board Files Brief in Salary Suit,” Louisiana Weekly, 8 April 1944, 1–2; “Iberville School Board Loses Teacher's Salary Case in Federal Court,” Shreveport Sun, 29 April 1944, 7, file 27, box 35, APTP; “The Iberville School Board Fails to File Answer; NAACP Seeks Judgment by Default,” Louisiana Weekly, 20 May 1944, 11.
37. “Salary Schedule for Teachers and Principals,” Iberville Parish School Board Circular No. 776, n.d. [ca. July 1944], file 4, box 35, APTP; “Memorandum for Plaintiff, Civil Action No. 212, Baton Rouge Division, United States Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, Wiley Butler McMillon vs. Iberville Parish School Board,” n.d., 1, file 19, ibid.; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 102.
38. H. E. Jarvis to A. P. Tureaud, 4 December 1944, and Thurgood Marshall, Tureaud, and Joseph A. Thornton to Ferdinand C. Claiborne and J. Studebaker Lucas, 6 December 1944, file 22, box 34, APTP; Claiborne and Lucas to Marshall, 13 December 1944, and Tureaud to Claiborne and Lucas, 27 December 1944, ibid.; Marshall [to NAACP], memorandum, 23 January 1945, file “Teachers Salaries Louisiana Iberville Parish Correspondence 1943–45,” box 177, ser. B, pt. 2, PNAACP—LC; Tureaud to Marshall, 23 January 1945, file 23, box 34, APTP; “Meeting of Special Committee on Educational Planning,” 23 January 1945, 1, file 6, box 35, APTP.
39. A. P. Tureaud to Thurgood Marshall, 25 February 1945, file 23, box 34, APTP; Tureaud to J. K. Haynes, 6 April 1945, file 24, ibid.; “11 Dismissed Iberville Parish Teachers Express Confidence in Lawyers,” Louisiana Weekly, 25 August 1945, 1, 7; L. P. Terrebonne to Wiley McMillon, 19 July 1945, and McMillon to Tureaud, 30 July 1945, file 25, box 34, APTP; Tureaud to Harold N. Lee, 17 October 1945, file 32, box 8, APTP.
40. A. P. Tureaud to Iberville Parish School Board, 13 August 1945, and Tureaud to Edward Dudley, 14 August 1945, file 26, box 34, APTP.
41. Thurgood [Marshall] to NAACP Office, 11 September 1945, frame 0482, reel 8, pt. 4, PNAACP—Micro.
42. A. P. Tureaud to Willie Franklin, n.d. [September 1945], file 27, Tureaud to Edith M. Jones, 13 April 1946, file 28, and Tureaud to Thurgood Marshall, 29 [August], 30 August 1946, file 28—all in box 34, APTP.
43. A. P. Tureaud to Thurgood Marshall, 14 March 1947, file 29, box 34, APTP; “Rules Dual Teacher Pay Is Illegal,” newspaper clipping, no source, 7 November 1947, 14, file 27, box 35, APTP; “Federal Judge Orders Jefferson Parish School Board Stop Salary Bias,” Louisiana Weekly, 7 August 1948, 1, 3.
44. A. P. Tureaud to J. K. Haynes, 19 June 1948, file 16, box 19, APTP; “New Suit Charges School Inequality,” clipping, New Orleans Times-Picayune, 4 June 1948, 3, file 10, box 36, APTP; “Equal Facilities Suit Brings More Problems to Louisiana School Boards,” Louisiana Weekly, 2 April 1949, 1, 8.
45. W. W. Harleaux to A. P. Tureaud, 1 August 1951, file 2, box 36, APTP; “Iberville Parish School Equalization Case to Be Tried May 1, 1952,” [news release], n.d., file 30, box 19, APTP.
46. A. P. Tureaud to Thurgood Marshall, 4 August 1949, file 27, box 9, APTP; B. D. Donatto to Tureaud, 2 September 1949, file 15, box 56, APTP; “St. Landry School Board Asks Dismissal of Suit for Equal Facilities,” Louisiana Weekly, 21 January 1950, 1–2.
47. Glenn Douthit, “Battles for Better Schools,” clipping, New Orleans Item, 17 November 1949, file 19, box 76, APTP; Daniel E. Byrd, Activity Report, July 1952, 1, file 1, box 4, DEBP; Robert and Essie Mae Lewis, interview by author, THWC—LSU; Kurtz and Peoples, Earl K. Long, 198; Cline, “Public Education in Louisiana,” 267; Clipping, Southern School News, 3 March 1955, 11, file 53, box 556, Russell B. Long Papers, HML.
48. “Louisiana Branch of National Progressive Voters League Organized as South Plans Mobilization of an Intelligent Negro Vote,” Louisiana Weekly, 20 May 1944, 9.
49. Lewis interview; Meg Redden (formerly Peggy Ewan), interview by author, THWC—LSU; Martin Williams interview.
50. Speech Delivered by Daniel E. Byrd at the [NAACP] National Convention, 27 June 1946, 5, file “Additions,” box 8, DEBP; “Longshoremen to Compel Applicants to Register, Vote,” Louisiana Weekly, 12 July 1947, 4; “NAACP Drive Moves into High Gear,” Louisiana Weekly, 29 April 1950, 1, 3; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 69–71.
51. Byrd speech at the [NAACP] National Convention, 6; Ernest J. Wright, “Negroes Seek Ballot in Iberville Parish,” Louisiana Weekly, 9 August 1947, 10.
52. “NAACP Survey Reveals Negroes Registered in Many Louisiana Parishes,” Louisiana Weekly, 23 September 1944, 1, 8; “Enthusiasm High All over State in Registration Drive,” ibid., 30 August 1947, 1–2.
53. Wyche et al. interview; [Report of Field Agents, Louisiana], 22–27 June 1959, 5, file “Louisiana Voting Case,” box 4, SS, RG 453; “Pistol-Packing Politician Terrorizes Negroes at Poll,” Louisiana Weekly, 9 August 1952, 1, 6; S. E. Briscoe to A. P. Tureaud, 28 July 1949, file 26, and Tureaud to M. O. Mouton, 12 December 1949, file 31, box 9, APTP; Junior Antoine to Tureaud, 20 February 1950, Hayward Dupre to Tureaud, 20 February 1950, and Carlton N. Frank to Tureaud, 20 February 1950, file 3, box 10, APTP; “Mob Slugs Educator,” Pittsburgh Courier, 17 June 1950, 1, 5; “FBI Probing La. Vote Case,” Pittsburgh Courier, 24 June 1950, 5; OPPVL's Silver Anniversary Celebration, 7–8 July 1974, 3, file 26, box 18, APTP; “Beating in Registrar's Office Thought to Be a ‘Contributing Factor,’” Louisiana Weekly, 3 November 1951, 1, 8.
54. “Told ‘No Order’ Received Yet to Register Negroes,” Louisiana Weekly, 26 January 1952, 1–2; Wheaton, “Sheriff D. J. ‘Cat’ Doucet.”
55. Perry H. Howard, Political Tendencies in Louisiana, 275–77; Kurtz and Peoples, Earl K. Long, 151, 197–98; Wheaton, “Sheriff D. J. ‘Cat’ Doucet,” 6–7; “Suit May End 36 Year Old Vote Drought,” Louisiana Weekly, 4 November 1961, 1, 7; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 303, 306.
56. Griffith, Crisis of American Labor, 64–66; Record, Race and Radicalism, 88–91; “Resolutions, National CIO,” 1950, frame 0354, reel 58, ODP.
57. Griffith, Crisis of American Labor, 63–64, 72–74, 81; Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights, 135–41; Lucy Randolph Mason to E. T. Mollegen, 11 May 1945, frame 0110, reel 63, ODP.
58. Quoted in Griffith, Crisis of American Labor, 72.
59. Ibid., 72, 74.
60. Percy Wyly II to Director, FBI, 29 December 1942, 3, 5, file “144-33-7,” box 17588, CSF, RG 60.
61. John A. Ritter, [Notes on Past Organizing Efforts in Louisiana], n.d. [1953], file 298, box 196, IWAP.
62. J. L. Baughman to R. W. Starnes, 3 March 1953, file 5, box 184, IWAP; “Officer's Report, Sixth Annual Convention, District Council No. 4 IWA-CIO,” 12 September 1953, 16, file 1648, box 255, IWAP; William O. Jones to E. L. Luter, 10 November 1952, file 1094, box 231, IWAP.
63. A. C. Hudson, Weekly Report, 25 July 1953, 2, file 205, box 192, IWAP; A. M. Collins to Scott, 18 August 1953, file 1634, box 254, IWAP; A. M. Collins to Elizabeth H. Foster, 25 February 1956, file 1050, box 229, IWAP. The NAWU was the descendant of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, which changed its name to the National Farm Labor Union in 1946 and became the National Agricultural Workers’ Union in the 1950s. The name changes reflected both an expansion in regional scope and the change in status of many agricultural workers in the South from tenant farmers to wage laborers after World War II. For more on the NAWU's organizing efforts in Louisiana's sugar parishes and planter reactions, see Galarza, Louisiana Sugar Cane Plantation Workers, 43–72, and Becnel, Labor, Church, and the Sugar Establishment, 43–48, 93–159.
64. “Labor Relations,” AFBF News Letter, 14 December 1943, 3; “Union and Closed Shop,” ibid., 4 August 1952; “Labor Management Relations,” ibid., 22 December 1952, 5.
65. H. L. Mitchell, Draft of pamphlet on Louisiana State Labor Council of the AFL-CIO's role in repeal of Louisiana Right-to-Work Law, 4, enclosed in Mitchell to Fay Bennett, 5 September 1956, reel 39, STFUP. The AFBF's weekly newsletter also credited the Louisiana Farm Bureau with spearheading the right-to-work effort and ensuring passage of the legislation. See “Dougherty Retains LFBF Post, Wins Acclaim of Press,” AFBF News Letter, 16 August 1954, 1, 4.
66. “La. Farm Bureau Prexy to Lead Move for ‘Right to Work’ Law,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 15 April 1954, 12; “Farm Bureau Prexy Says ‘Right-to-Work’ Bill Response ‘Wonderful,’” ibid., 29 April 1954, 14; “Two Police Juries Endorse ‘Right to Work’ Legislation,” ibid., 29 April 1954, 19; Kurtz and Peoples, Earl K. Long, 184–85; “Comments on the ‘Special Convention Program’ of the Louisiana State Labor Council AFL-CIO, Baton Rouge, August 4–5, 1956,” 20 August 1956, reel 39, STFUP.
67. John A. Ritter, Weekly Report, 17 July 1954, file 297, box 196, IWAP.
68. Thurman Sensing, “Unionization in the South,” Opelousas Daily World, 24 February 1957, 25; Griffith, Crisis of American Labor, 62–87. One reason for the success of this technique was that large numbers of white workers were deeply racist. Many resented their union leaders’ support for black civil rights, and thousands of white members defected from their union locals in the wake of antiracism initiatives undertaken at the state and national levels. See Draper, Conflict of Interests, esp. 15–40, 105, and Halpern, “CIO and the Limits of Labor-Based Civil Rights Activism.”
69. H. L. Mitchell, “On the Rise of the White Citizens Council and Its Ties with Anti-Labor Forces in the South,” 30 January 1956, frames 0324–31, 0334, reel 13, part 20, PNAACP—Micro. See also “Labor and the Southern Negro,” The Nation, 27 September 1952, 261, and Griffith, Crisis of American Labor, 62–87. For reports on the spread of white supremacist organizations in Louisiana, some of which also indicate the links between antilabor and segregationist leaders, see “Candidates Say ‘No Comment’ on Secret ‘Ku Klux,’” Opelousas Daily World, 25 October 1955, 2; “Southern Gentlemen Group Formed in Lakeland,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 27 October 1955, 1; “Group Promises Legislation to Strengthen Segregation Barriers,” Opelousas Daily World, 26 April 1956, 31; “ ‘Klan’ Reborn in Louisiana,” Opelousas Daily World, 3 June 1956, 1, 40; and “State Klan Leader Announces Plans for Organization,” Opelousas Daily World, 28 April 1957, 1.
70. “How Might Communism Attack the United States?,” St. Francisville Democrat, 15 August 1957, 2 (reprinted from Clinton Citizen-Watchman).
71. See, e.g., “Segregation Rule Based on Reds, Claims Perez,” Opelousas Daily World, 19 February 1956, 3; Robert M. Stewart, “States’ Rights Party Held Last Hope of This Country,” ibid., 22 July 1956, 31; and W. M. Rainach, “Communist-Front NAACP Leadership,” ibid., 26 May 1957, 31.
72. Record, Race and Radicalism, 162–64; Egerton, Speak Now against the Day, 443–48; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 137–47; Griffith, Crisis of American Labor, 139–60. See also Penny M. Von Eschen's illuminating study of the anticolonialist movement in the 1940s and 1950s, Race against Empire, esp. 96–166. As she notes, anticommunism weakened civil rights groups ideologically as well as organizationally by making them less willing to highlight the economic and political roots of inequality. An internationalist approach that had located the origins of racism in the economic exploitation of black people across the globe was replaced in the postwar decades by psychological explanations that portrayed discrimination as the result of individual prejudices.
73. Morris, Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 30–35; Daniel Byrd to Fay O. Wilson, 28 May 1956, file 10, box 2, DEBP; “Desire for Freedom Indestructible,” Louisiana Weekly, 12 May 1956, 3B; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 208; Arthur J. Chapital Sr., Affidavit, 24 November 1959, file 12, box 68, APTP; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 196–97, 207–11.
74. Daniel E. Byrd, Activity Report, April 1956, 3, file 3, box 4, DEBP (quotation); E. C. Smith to A. H. Rosenfeld, memorandum, 16 March 1961, 8–9, file “Louisiana,” box 6, SS, RG 453; “Dissolution of the Citizens’ Council of East Feliciana,” clipping, Clinton Watchman, 11 June 1965, 7, file 7, box 1, CORE—SCDP; Ward E. Bonnell and Raymond H. Miller to A. H. Rosenfeld, memorandum, 29 June 1959, 1, file “Louisiana,” box 6, SS, RG 453; Nils R. Douglas, “The United States Supreme Court and Clinton, Louisiana,” n.d., frame 01068, reel 20, COREP; Kurtz and Peoples, Earl K. Long, 207.
75. “Supreme Court's Unequivocal Ruling Is Hailed as Second Emancipation,” Louisiana Weekly, 22 May 1954, 1, 8.
76. “Segregation Fading, ‘Diehards’ Die Hard,” ibid., 29 May 1954, 4B; “Statesmanship in Legislature,” ibid., 5 June 1954, 4B; “Louisiana,” n.d., file “Desegregation: Schools Branch Action—Louisiana 1954–55,” box 227, ser. A, pt. 2, PNAACP—LC; Southern Educational Reporting Service, A Statistical Summary, State by State, of Segregation-Desegregation Activity Affecting Southern Schools from 1954 to Present (n.p.: Southern Education Reporting Service, 1961), 19–22, file 9, box 1, CORE—SROP (“good moral character”); William L. Taylor to Robert L. Carter, memorandum, 28 March 1955, 1, file “Schools—Louisiana 1943–54,” box 143, ser. B, pt. 2, PNAACP—LC (“to promote and protect”).
77. “2 Suits Ask Right to Attend White Schools,” Louisiana Weekly, 13 September 1952, 1, 6; Daniel Byrd to Thurgood Marshall, 9 April 1953, file 3, box 1, DEBP; Byrd to Marshall, memorandum, 23 August 1955, 1, file 26, box 10, APTP; “Tureaud Starts Legal Action in St. Helena Parish,” Louisiana Weekly, 11 June 1955, 1.
78. Daniel Byrd to Thurgood Marshall, memorandum, 23 August 1955, 3, file 26, box 10, APTP.
79. Lorin Hall, interview by author, THWC—LSU; Eunice Hall Harris and Lawrence Hall, interviews by author, THWC—LSU.
80. J. K. Haynes, interview by Miranda Kombert, Baton Rouge; Martin Williams interview; Redden interview; Walt Benton, “Louisiana's Top News Story: Segregation,” Opelousas Daily World, 30 December 1956, 4.
81. O'Brien, Color of the Law, 3, 12–19, 89–108; Tyson, “Robert F. Williams.” See also Umoja, “Eye for an Eye.”
82. Lewis interview. See also Tyson, “Robert F. Williams,” 547–48.
83. Lewis interview.
84. Goldfield, Black, White, and Southern, 92–106.
85. Bayard Rustin to Carroll G. Bowen, 21 February 1956, frame 00553, reel 20, Rustin Papers, ARC; William K. Hefner to A. J. Muste, 17 June 1963, frames 00667–68, ibid.; Dean B. Hancock, “Between the Lines,” Louisiana Weekly, 9 April 1960, 10; “Violence Makes Non-Violent Stronger,” Louisiana Weekly, 28 May 1960, 11; “Dr. King Deplores Move to ‘Violence,’” Louisiana Weekly, 17 July 1965, 1, 11; Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart, 11, 94, 155–56.
86. “CORE Says Greensboro Shows that Nonviolence Can Change Society,” Louisiana Weekly, 6 August 1960, 7.
87. “First Status Report, Voter Education Project,” 20 September 1962, frames 00662–63, reel 26, COREP; “Voter Education Project Launched to Stir Interest,” Louisiana Weekly, 7 April 1962, 2. The liberal foundations and government officials who helped to organize the VEP saw that increasing black political participation could strengthen the national Democratic Party; they also aimed to divert civil rights organizations away from direct action initiatives that too often resulted in violence, forcing federal authorities to choose between antagonizing white southerners by acting to protect activists or angering African Americans by failing to intervene. See Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 172–76, and Branch, Parting the Waters, 479–82.
88. “The Montgomery Story Inspiring,” Louisiana Weekly, 3 March 1956, 3B; “Patience Beginning to Wear Thin,” ibid., 20 February 1960, 10; Martin Williams interview.
89. Korstad and Lichtenstein, “Opportunities Found and Lost”; Bartley, New South, 64–69; Draper, Conflict of Interests, 17–40; Von Eschen, Rage against Empire, 7–21, 96–121.
1. Wiley Branton to James Farmer, 15 August 1962, frame 00930, reel 5, COREP; “Task Force: Freedom,” 13 November 1962, frame 00445, reel 26, COREP; Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 160, 176–78; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 294–96.
2. The six founding members of CORE were James Farmer, George Houser, Bernice Fisher, Homer Jack, Joe Guinn, and James Robinson. Two of the group (Farmer and Robinson) were African American, and the remainder were white. All were students except for Farmer, who had graduated from Howard University in 1941 and was a field worker for the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 5–8.
3. Ibid., 26–27, 31, 63, 145, 163–65.
4. “Summary of the Testimony of Ronnie Moore,” 25 May 1962, frame 00419, reel 17, COREP. For more on the student movement in Baton Rouge, see Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 107–8, 166–69, and Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 289–94.
5. Ronnie Moore to Barbara Whitaker, 21 May 1964, file 6, box 2, CORE—SROP; Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 177; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 302; W. W. Harleaux to Wiley Branton, date unreadable [ca. February–March 1963], and Branton to Moore, 7 March 1963, box 2, file 6, CORE—SROP.
6. James Farmer to James McCain, 9 May 1963, frame 00694, reel 26; Marvin Rich to Wiley Branton, 10 May 1963, frame 00696, reel 26; Richard K. Parsons to McCain, 7 June 1963, frame 00853, reel 25; and “File 318 Voter Complaints in 5 Louisiana Parishes,” Core-lator, July 1963, frame 00164, reel 49—all in COREP; Ronnie Moore to Barbara Whitaker, 21 May 1964, file 6, box 2, CORE—SROP; Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 261; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 297.
7. “Task Force, Applications,” frames 00744–00813, reel 44, COREP; Ronnie Sigal Bouma and Meg Redden (formerly Peggy Ewan), interviews by author, Baton Rouge. The papers of activists Meldon Acheson and Miriam Feingold held at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, also provide a good sense of the background, religious beliefs, and outlook of task force workers.
8. Miriam Feingold, Speech, n.d. [ca. 1961], frames 0292–96, reel 2, MFP; Jim McCain to Mary Hamilton, 16 October 1963, frame 00672, reel 36, Bill Brown, Task Force Application, frame 01368, reel 44, Mike Lesser, Task Force Application, frame 01211, reel 44, Lesser to Gordon Carey, 27 April 1963, frame 01207, reel 44, Evert Makinen to Carey, 21 May 1963, frame 01209, reel 44, and Jim McCain to Mary Hamilton, 16 October 1963, frame 00672, reel 36—all in COREP; Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 288; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 300.
9. Bouma interview; Redden interview; “Assorted Papers Prepared for Use in Informal Discussion Workshops for Volunteers and Supporters of CORE's Southern Summer Projects 1965,” frames 00479–83, reel 26, COREP; Meier and Rud-wick, CORE, 176.
10. Major Johns, a black student at Southern University, had instead organized a Student Welfare Committee to protest legislation passed by state lawmakers that made illegitimate children ineligible for public support. Johns to Gordon Carey, 22 August 1960, frame 01187, reel 36, COREP; Carey to Johns, 12 September 1960, frame 01188, ibid. For more on the welfare legislation and the black community's interpretation of the action as retaliation for civil rights activity, see “Welfare Cut Hits All Parts of La.” (30 July 1960, 1, 7), “Example of States Rights . . . Southern Style” (17 September 1960, 11), “Starving Tots No Distortion of Fact—Kerns” (1 October 1960, 1, 7), and “Child Welfare League Asks Probe of La. Welfare Laws” (1 October 1960, 2), Louisiana Weekly.
11. Miriam Feingold, Notes on CORE Staff Meeting, 6 December 1963, frame 0802, reel 1, MFP.
12. John Zippert, interview by author, THWC—LSU. St. Helena Parish had 351 black landowners in 1960, and St. Landry had 642. Bureau of the Census, Census of Agriculture: 1959, Volume 1, Part 35, 172.
13. Bill Brown, Field Report, 6–15 December 1963, frame 01378, reel 44, COREP; Sharon Burger, Field Report—St. Helena Parish, 18–24 June 1964, file 6, box 6, CORE—SROP; “St. Helena,” n.d. [early 1964], 3, file 13, box 1, CORE—SROP.
14. Court Docket, Zelma C. Wyche, Ike Oliver, Martin Williams, Earl M. Thomas, Harrison Brown, Willie Haynes, Willie Mitchell and T. I. Israel vs. Mary K. Ward, Registrar of Voters for Madison Parish, La., 1954–55, file “Louisiana Exhibits AA26-R4,” box 5, SS, RG 453; “Suit May End 36 Year Old Vote Drought,” Louisiana Weekly, 4 November 1961, 1, 7; Moses Williams, interview by author, THWC—LSU; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 395.
15. Ronnie [Moore] to Jim [McCain], [ca. March] 1963, frame 00737, reel 25, COREP; Moore, Field Report, 1–25 June 1964, frames 00754–56, ibid.; Jim Peck, Louisiana—Summer 1964: The Students Report to Their Home Towns (New York: CORE, 1964), frame 00465, reel 26, COREP; Parish Scouting Report, West Feliciana, n.d. [ca. 1964], 1, file 20, box 1, CORE—SCDP (town of Hardwood); Bureau of the Census, Census of Agriculture: 1959, Volume 1, Part 35, 173; Miriam Feingold to Parents, 3 December 1963, frame 00738, reel 25, COREP; Ronnie Moore, “The West Feliciana Story” Core-lator, November 1963, frame 00167, reel 49, COREP; Vick [Ed Vickery] to [Moore], 18 September 1963, 4, file 13, box 4, CORE—SROP.
16. There were some outstanding exceptions to this rule. W. W. Harleaux in Iberville Parish, Eunice Paddio-Johnson and Lola Stallworth in St. Helena Parish, and Hazel Matthews in East Feliciana Parish were all teachers who openly supported the movement. Black ministers Joseph Carter in West Feliciana Parish and Jetson Davis in Iberville Parish were key activists in their communities. In general, though, CORE workers found that members of these two professions preferred not to become involved in civil rights activity. Those who did usually were not solely dependent on a single source of income—female teachers were often married; Harleaux was a war veteran with access to GI benefits; and some rural ministers (like Carter) were farm owners and laborers in addition to heading their churches. Miriam Feingold, Parish Scouting Report—Pointe Coupee Parish, 14 April 1964, 1, file 20, box 1, CORE—SCDP; Feingold, Field Report—St. Helena, East Feliciana and West Feliciana Parishes, 28 June–5 July 1964, frame 00778, reel 25, COREP; FFM Newsletter, 15 August 1965, 1, MAP; “Morning Session—Saturday,” [notes for meeting], n.d., CORE—SHPP.
17. Southern Educational Reporting Service, A Statistical Summary, State by State, of Segregation-Desegregation Activity Affecting Southern Schools from 1954 to Present (N.p.: Southern Education Reporting Service, 1961), 20, file 9, box 1, CORE—SROP; Miriam Feingold, Notebook, 19, 21 November 1963, frames 0781–82, reel 1, MFP; Field Report, Pointe Coupee Parish, January 1964, frame 00578, reel 38, COREP; Fred Lacey, “Student Movement on the Schools,” 15 February 1966, 2, 6, CORE—SHPP.
18. Robert and Essie Mae Lewis, interview by author, THWC—LSU; “Negro Gas Station Burned after Insurance Canceled; Violence Continues in Ferriday, La.,” news release, 19 December 1965, file 1, box 1, FFMP; James Williams to Clarence A. Laws, 17 June 1963, file 11, box 36, APTP (activist in Iberville Parish); Notebook entry, 12 July 1963, frame 0772, and Miriam Feingold to Parents, 15 October 1963, frame 0327, reel 1, MFP; Feingold, Scouting Report, Pointe Coupee Parish, 14 April 1964, 1, file 20, box 1, CORE—SCDP; Feingold, Field Report, St. Helena, East Feliciana, and West Feliciana Parishes, 28 June–5 July 1964, frame 00778, reel 25, COREP; FFM Newsletter, 15 August 1965, 1, MAP; Spiver Gordon, Field Report, Iberville Parish, n.d. [May 1964], 1, file 3, box 5, CORE—SROP; [Wats Line Report], St. Landry Parish, 15 August 1965, file “Reports—St. Landry,” Additions, CORE—SROP; David Whatley to Zelma Wyche and Willie Johnson, 29 December 1965, file 1, box 1, FFMP; Special Report, Madison Parish, n.d. [1965], 2, file “Tallulah (Madison),” Additions, CORE—SROP.
19. Miriam Feingold to Parents, 15 October 1963, frame 0327, reel 1, MFP.
20. Miriam Feingold, Notes on Meeting, n.d. [July 1964], frame 0145, reel 2, MFP (Mr. Minor); Ronnie M. Moore, “Evaluation of the Citizenship Education Workshop, Plaquemine, Louisiana, December 16–18th, 1966,” 17 February 196[7], 4, file 4, box 23, SEDFREP.
21. Kenny Johnson, interviewer unknown, ARC; “Student Civil Rights Strike Closes School,” news release, 7 October 1963, frame 00573, reel 31, COREP; Miriam Feingold to Parents, 15 October 1963, frame 0327, reel 1, MFP (CORE worker); Louisiana Field Report, 1 October–7 November 1963, frame 00542, reel 38, COREP; Bill Brown, Field Report, Sixth Congressional District, 6–15 December 1963, frame 01379, reel 44, COREP; Feingold to Maman, 5 January 1964, frame 0378, reel 1, MFP (last quotation).
22. Lewis interview.
23. Redden interview; Bouma interview; “Registration Drive in Rural Louisiana,” Core-lator, September 1963, frame 00166, reel 49, COREP; Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 262; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 304; “ ‘Grand Lady’ of Clinton CORE Unit,” Louisiana Weekly, 18 January 1964, 13.
24. Notes on Carter v. Percy, 1963, reel 1, MBP; Weekly Report, [East Feliciana Parish], 5–11 August 1963, 1, file 14, box 1, CORE—SCDP.
25. Ronnie Moore, “The West Feliciana Story,” Core-lator, November 1963, frames 00167–68, reel 49, COREP; Carter v. Percy, Complaint, 1963, reel 1, MBP; Field Report, n.d. [ca. August 1963], frame 00666, reel 36, COREP; “Sheriff and Registrar Are Named in Suit,” Louisiana Weekly, 28 September 1963, 1, 8.
26. Carter v. Percy, 1963, rough notes, reel 1, MBP; Mary Hamilton to James McCain, report, 14 October 1963, frame 00671, reel 36, COREP; John W. Roxborough, Julius J. Hollis, and Ezekiel C. Smith to A. H. Rosenfeld, memorandum, 8 August 1960, 6, file “Louisiana,” box 6, SS, RG 453; Parish Scouting Report, West Feliciana, n.d. [1964], 4, file 20, box 1, CORE—SCDP; “V.R. Meeting, Masonic Temple, Laurel Hill, (West Feliciana), La.,” 24 September, 1 October 1963, file 3, box 2, CORE—SCDP; “Louisiana Man Top Sweetpotato Farmer,” Louisiana Weekly, 5 November 1960, 12; Ronnie Moore, “The West Feliciana Story,” Core-lator, November 1963, frames 00168–69, reel 49, COREP.
27. Bob Adelman, “Birth of a Voter,” n.d., frame 00193, reel 49, COREP; Ronnie Moore, “The West Feliciana Story,” Core-lator, November 1963, frames 00167–68, COREP; James Farmer, Louisiana Story 1963 (New York: CORE, 1963), frame 00251, COREP.
28. Ronnie Moore, “The West Feliciana Story,” Core-lator, November 1963, frames 00167–68, COREP; James Farmer, Louisiana Story 1963 (New York: CORE, 1963), frame 00251, COREP; “Four Negroes Register as CORE Drive Begins,” St. Francisville Democrat, 24 October 1963, 1; “Justice Department Files Suit against Registrar,” St. Francisville Democrat, 31 October 1963, 1; Mike Lesser to Terry Perlman, 4 November 1963, frame 00185, reel 5, COREP.
29. Useful summaries of these incidents are given in “Intimidations and Harassment against Negroes and CORE Workers Summer 1963 to Summer 1964,” n.d. [ca. July 1964], frames 00530–33, and Judy Rollins, “CORE's Chronological Listing of Intimidations and Harassments in Louisiana from December, 1961 to August 1, 1964,” n.d. [16 October 1964], frames 00534–39, reel 20, COREP.
30. Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 326, 373, 465; “The Citizens’ Council of East Feliciana,” St. Francisville Democrat, 28 March 1957, 3; E. C. Smith to A. H. Rosenfeld, memorandum, 16 March 1961, 8–9, file “Louisiana,” box 6, SS, RG 453; Parish Scouting Report, East Feliciana, n.d. [1963], 1, file 20, box 1, CORE—SCDP.
31. On 20 August 1963, at the request of some white citizens and without notice to civil rights workers or a court hearing, Judge Rarick issued a temporary restraining order against CORE that prohibited the group from operating in the parish. The order was supposed to last only ten days, until a hearing on a preliminary injunction could be held, but when CORE's attorneys attempted to have the case removed to federal court Rarick kept extending it while postponing setting a date for a trial. The day before the case was finally to be tried, CORE obtained a stay order from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that should have automatically stopped proceedings until a decision could be made about whether the hearing should be held in state or federal court. Ten days later Rarick went ahead with the trial anyway, denouncing the stay order as “officious intermeddling designed to obstruct justice.” Lawyers for the prosecution accused CORE of being a communist front that aimed to “foster and promote civil disturbances, racial tension, and lawlessness by mobs of emotionally aroused misled people.” More hearings followed, and Rarick continued to defy the ruling of the Fifth Circuit Court by renewing his restraining order every ten days for several months. Nils R. Douglas, “The United States Supreme Court and Clinton, Louisiana,” n.d., frames 01068–70, reel 20, COREP; Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 262.
32. See, e.g., Black and Black, Politics and Society in the South, 23–49; Greenberg, Race and State in Capitalist Development, 235–42; and Jacoway and Colburn, Southern Businessmen and Desegregation.
33. “Segregationists Meet Opposition in Opelousas,” Louisiana Weekly, 20 June 1959, 1–2; [Bill] Brown and [Brendan] Sexton, Parish Scouting Report, Opelousas, St. Landry Parish, 22 November 1963, 2, file 1, box 7, CORE—SROP; “Opelousas Group Issues Civil Rights Statement,” Louisiana Weekly, 11 July 1964, 9; Mimi Feingold, Field Report, St. Helena, East Feliciana, and West Feliciana Parishes, 6–12 July 1964, frame 00790, reel 25, COREP; Parish Scouting Report, East Feliciana, n.d. [1963], 1, file 20, box 1, CORE—SCDP; “Negroes Seated on Parish School Bd. at Tuesday Meet,” St. Francisville Democrat, 12 January 1967, 1, 4; East Feliciana Parish Sesquicentennial Committee, East Feliciana Parish, section on “The Kilbourne Family.”
34. Weekly Report, [East Feliciana Parish], 5–11 August 1963, 6, file 14, box 1, CORE—SCDP; Miriam Feingold to Family, 19 August 1963, frame 0308, reel 1, MFP; “Intimidations and Harassment against Negroes and CORE Workers Summer 1963 to Summer 1964,” n.d. [ca. July 1964], frame 00530, reel 20, COREP; Notebook entry, 18 November 1963, frame 0780, reel 1, MFP; Ester Lee Daniel, Affidavit, 4 August 1963, file 13, box 4, CORE—SROP.
35. Miriam Feingold to Fay Bennett, 3 March 1964, file 12, box 11, ibid.; Joseph Carter, interview by Edward Hollander, SHSW; Ronnie M. Moore to National CORE, memorandum, n.d. [September 1964], 2, file 9, box 7, CORE—SROP.
36. Miriam Feingold, “The West Feliciana Sweet Potato Story,” 18 August 1964, 2–3, file 12, box 11, CORE—SROP; Princeville Canning Co. to CORE, 3 September 1964, file 12, box 11, CORE—SROP; J. Truitt to James Farmer, 7 September 1964, frames 01052–53, reel 20, COREP; Gordon R. Carey to Ronnie Moore, 9 September 1964, file 12, box 11, CORE—SROP; “Louisiana Canning Firm Relents—CORE Boycott Ended,” Core-lator, September–October 1964, frame 00182, reel 49, COREP.
37. Collins—Louisiana Civil Service, Request for Appeal, 1963, reel 2, MBP; “Jailed CORE Leader Wins Reinstatement,” Core-lator, February 1964, frame 00170, reel 49, COREP; Miriam Feingold, “East Feliciana Community Relief Fund,” 19 August 1964, frames 0412–13, reel 2, MFP; Feingold, Field Report, West Feliciana Parish, 1–31 March 1964, frame 00279, reel 36, COREP; “Assorted Papers Prepared for Use in Informal Discussion Workshops for Volunteers and Supporters of CORE's Southern Summer Projects,” 1965, frame 00479, reel 26, COREP; “CORE Sponsors Drive to Aid Evicted Families,” Louisiana Weekly, 8 January 1966, sec. 2, 5.
38. Gertru[d]e Felton, Complaint Information, n.d., frame 00866, and Carrie Robinson, Complaint Information, n.d., frame 00850, reel 25, “Louisiana Field Report for CORE,” 1 October–7 November 1963, frame 00542, reel 38, Miriam Feingold, Field Report, St. Helena, East Feliciana, and West Feliciana Parishes, 27 July–5 August 1964, frame 00788, reel 25—all in COREP.
39. Judy Rollins, “CORE's Chronological Listing of Intimidations and Harassments in Louisiana from December, 1961 to August 1, 1964,” [October] 1964, frame 00534–35, reel 20, COREP; Spiver Gordon to Burke Marshall, n.d. [ca. 28 February 1964], file 8, box 1, CORE—SCDP; Field Report, West Feliciana Parish, 10–29 February 1964, 2, file 15, box 1, CORE—SCDP; “Sheriff's Office Investigating Arson Attempt,” St. Francisville Democrat, 5 March 1964, 1; Statements by Nathaniel Smith, Mrs. Nathaniel Smith, and Vincent Smith, n.d. [December 1964], file 10, box 7, CORE—SROP.
40. Mike Lesser to Terry Perlman, 4 November 1963, frame 00185, reel 5, COREP (my emphasis).
41. Field Report, West Feliciana Parish, 13–26 January 1964, 2, file 15, and Parish Scouting Report, West Feliciana Parish, n.d. [1964], 4, file 20, box 1, CORE—SCDP; Meldon Acheson to Parents, 10 July 1965, 2, and 13 August 1965, 2, MAP.
42. Wats Line Report, Pointe Coupee Parish, 9 July 1965, 2, file 4, box 2, CORE—SCDP; Statement by Mary Boyd, n.d. [ca. 17 March 1966], file 12, box 1, FFMP.
43. Bob Adelman, “Birth of a Voter,” n.d., frame 00193, reel 49, COREP; [Wats Line Report], Concordia Parish (Ferriday), 21 July 1965, file 7, box 4, CORE—SROP; Statement of Robert Lewis, n.d. [ca. 20 November 1965], file 14, box 1, FFMP.
44. [Wats Line Report], Madison Parish (Tallulah), 18 July 1965, file “Tallulah (Madison),” Additions, CORE—SROP; Martin Williams, interview by author, THWC—LSU. Lance E. Hill (“Deacons for Defense and Justice,” 36, 134, 270) cites several instances when groups of armed African Americans mobilized quickly in response to threats to local activists in Louisiana.
45. Jim Peck, Louisiana—Summer, 1964: The Students Report to Their Home Towns (New York: CORE, 1964), frame 00465, reel 26, COREP; Redden interview.
46. “The Story of Plaquemine,” n.d., frames 00967–70, reel 20, COREP; Miriam Feingold to Danny, 5 September 1963, frame 0315, reel 1, MFP; Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart, 246–54.
47. Peck, Louisiana—Summer, 1964, frame 00459; Dittmer, Local People, 251; David Whatley, Field Report, Concordia Parish, n.d. [ca. February 1966], file 5, box 1, FFMP; Lewis interview; News-Gazette, 7 October 1965, 6, MAP.
48. Field Report, East Feliciana Parish, 13–26 January 1964, frame 00571, reel 38, COREP (fire chief); Wats Line Report, Concordia Parish, 3 July 1965, file 4, box 2, CORE—SCDP; Lewis interview; “Registration Drive in Rural Louisiana,” Core-lator, September 1963, frame 00166, reel 49, COREP; Field Report, East Feliciana Parish, 13–26 January 1964, frame 00570, reel 38, COREP (Bill Brown); “Assorted Papers Prepared for Use in Informal Discussion Workshops for Volunteers and Supporters of CORE's Southern Summer Projects,” 1965, frame 00480, reel 26, COREP.
49. Miriam Feingold to Family, 5 August 1963, frame 0296, reel 1, MFP. The federal government's failure to protect civil rights workers has been well documented by historians and participants in the movement. See, e.g., Carson, In Struggle, 83–89, 121–22; Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi, 367; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 93–94; Mills, This Little Light of Mine, 27, 67; Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart, 243; and Gitlin, The Sixties, 136–46.
50. Gayle Jenkins, interview by Miriam Feingold, SHSW.
51. Bims, “Deacons for Defense”; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 342–43, 357–58; Lewis interview; Minutes of Meeting of Legislative Campaign Steering Committee, 6 May 1967, 3, file 9, box 7, SEDFREP; Hill, “Deacons for Defense,” 264.
52. “Deacons Spread Forces to Combat Terrorism,” Louisiana Weekly, 19 June 1965, 4. It is difficult to say for sure how many people joined the Deacons because the organization was very secretive about its membership. But Lance Hill recently concluded that if informal groups as well as official chapters are counted, Earnest Thomas's claim to the Louisiana Weekly was not far off. Hill's research unearthed a total of sixty-four cities where Deacons chapters were reported or rumored to have been formed. Charles Sims, a founding member of the Deacons in Bogalusa who helped to organize chapters in other states, later said to an interviewer, “I won't tell you how many members we had, but I'll tell you this: if push hada come to shove, we were well covered.” See Strain, “ ‘We Walked Like Men,’” 48–49; Hill, “Deacons for Defense,” 263; and Raines, My Soul Is Rested, 421.
53. Minutes of Meetings, 23 and 25 October 1965, Minute Book 25 July–October 25, 1965, file 2, box 1, FFMP; Mike Lesser to Terry Perlman, 4 November 1963, frame 00185, reel 5, COREP.
54. “Louisiana Summer Task Force Staff Meeting,” 15 July 1964, frame 00052, reel 45, COREP; Miriam Feingold to Family, 14 July 1963, frame 0271, reel 1, MFP; Feingold, Notes on Staff Meeting, 24 November 1963, frame 0789, reel 1, MFP.
55. Field Report, East and West Feliciana Parishes, 30 December 1963–12 January 1964, frames 00565–66, reel 38, COREP; Catherine Patterson, quoted in Hill, “Deacons for Defense,” 106.
56. Mike Lesser to Terry Perlman, 4 November 1963, frame 00185, reel 5, COREP.
57. Fred Lacey and Chuck Lawson, Field Report, St. Helena Parish, 17–28 August [1965], 3, CORE—SHPP. Parents of the black students who integrated the schools in St. Helena Parish instructed them not to start any trouble and not to respond to name-calling, but to fight back if they were physically attacked. Eunice Hall Harris recalled that her father's philosophy “was different from Martin Luther King's in that area. Defend yourself, that's what he told us.” Eunice Hall Harris, Lorin Hall, Clifton and Eual Hall, and Eunice Paddio-Johnson and Clarence Reed, interviews by author, all at Baton Rouge.
58. Charles Sims quoted in Strain, “ ‘We Walked Like Men,’” 60.
59. F. J. Baumgardner to W. C. Sullivan, 22 September 1964, file 157–9, Disruption of White Hate Groups, Records of the COINTELPRO Program, FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C.; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 371–74; Bims, “Deacons for Defense,” 26; Royan Burris, Robert Hicks, and Gayle Jenkins, interviews by Miriam Feingold, Madison; “‘Police Brutality Creates Deacons’—LCLU Pres.,” Louisiana Weekly, 29 January 1966, 2 (Steven Rubin).
60. Johnson interview.
61. Watters and Cleghorn, Climbing Jacob's Ladder, 50 (quotation); Civil Rights Act, U.S. Code, vol. 21, secs. 2000a–2000e-17 (1964); Voting Rights Act, U.S. Code, vol. 21, secs. 1973–1974e (1965).
62. Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 353; Bernice [Noflin] to Miriam Feingold, 20 October 1965, frame 0494–95, reel 1, MFP; “Negroes Evicted from Plantations for Registering to Vote in West Feliciana, La.,” news release, 20 December 1965, file 6, box 1, FFMP; James Bell and Laura Spears, interview by Miriam Feingold, SHSW; Untitled document, n.d., file 2, box 4, CORE—SROP.
63. Southern Regional Council, press release, 5 August 1966, file 10, box 18, SEDFREP; Miriam Feingold to Family, 23 July 1963, frame 0278, reel 1, MFP; CORE Freedom News, 29 May 1965, 1, 13 June 1965, 2, and 14 July 1965, 1, file “Tallulah (Madison) 1965,” Additions, CORE—SROP.
64. Miriam Feingold to Parents, 3 December 1963, frame 00738, reel 25, COREP; Feingold to Family, 1 January 1964, frame 0377, and 10 March 1964, frame 0412, reel 1, MFP.
65. Ben Garris, “Hooks and Shells,” St. Francisville Democrat, 14 July 1960, 1 (first quotation); Lewis interview; Draft of notice, n.d. [ca. November–December 1965], 3, file 8, box 1, FFMP.
66. Ronnie Moore, “Louisiana Citizenship Program,” September 1964, frame 00542, reel 20, COREP; “Assorted Papers Prepared for Use in Informal Discussion Workshops for Volunteers and Supporters of CORE's Southern Summer Projects,” 1965, frame 00479, reel 26, COREP.
67. Wats Line Report, Madison Parish, 10 July 1965, 1–2, file 4, box 2, CORE—SCDP; [Wats Line Report], 15 and 17 July 1965, file “Tallulah (Madison) 1965,” Additions, CORE—SROP; “CORE Worker Beaten Handing Out Leaflets,” Louisiana Weekly, 24 July 1965, 2.
68. [Draft of flyer], n.d. [November 1965], file 19, box 1, FFMP; Moses Williams interview; Harrison and Earnestine Brown, interview by author, THWC—LSU; Zelma Wyche, Harrison H. Brown, T. I. Israel, F. W. Wilson, and Moses Williams, interview by Miriam Feingold, SHSW.
69. H[enry] Brown, M[iriam] Feingold, M[arty] Goldstein, and C[hristine] White, Field Report, West Feliciana Parish, 14–21 July [1965], 1, file 15, box 1, CORE—SCDP; “School Desegregation Suit Hearing Slated Friday,” St. Francisville Democrat, 29 July 1965, 1; “Judge Orders West Feliciana to Desegregate Schools,” Louisiana Weekly, 7 August 1965, sec. 1, 4; “School Suit Won by CORE,” news release, 13 September 1965, frame 00235, reel 31, COREP.
70. Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 318, 334; “Federal Court Orders Grades 1 & 12 Mixed,” St. Francisville Democrat, 5 August 1965, 1.
71. Freedom Day Action Committee of St Helena Parish circular, n.d. [January 1966], SAFE, “Refuse to Pay!” 22 March 1966, and Fred Lacey, “Student Movement on the Schools,” 15 February 1966, 5—all in CORE—SHPP; Lacey, Field Report, St. Helena Parish, 22 April 1966, 1, file “Reports—‘65—St. Helena,” Additions, CORE—SROP.
72. “Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service: A Report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights,” 1965, 1–2, file 5, box 1, CORE—SCDP (quotation); National Sharecroppers’ Fund, “Statement on Discriminatory Practices Affecting Programs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture,” 29 August 1963, frames 01228–31, reel 38, COREP; Wilbert Guillory, interview by author, THWC—LSU; Zippert interview.
73. H[enry] Brown, M[iriam] Feingold, M[arty] Goldstein, and C[hristine] White, Field Report, West Feliciana Parish, 14–21 July [1965], 1, file 15, box 1, CORE—SCDP; Henry Brown, Mimi [Miriam] Feingold, Marty Goldstein, and Christine Wright, Field Report, West Feliciana Parish, 28 July–3 August [1965], ibid.; Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 351.
74. Wats Line Report, Pointe Coupee Parish, 4 July 1965, file 4, box 2, CORE—SCDP; [Wats Line Report], Pointe Coupee Parish, 3 and 6 August 1965, file 24, box 52, SEDFREP; Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 351.
75. Zippert interview; Guillory interview.
76. Zippert interview; “History of Grand Marie Co-op,” n.d., file 3, box 1, JZP; John Zippert to Marvin Rich, 2 August 1966, file 11, box 23, SEDFREP; Sweet Potato Alert Proposal, Progress Report, 30 May–3 July 1966, 2, file 3, box 1, JZP.
77. OEO, “The War on Poverty—A Hometown Fight,” n.d., frames 00453–55, reel 26, COREP.
78. Notes on Meeting, n.d. [ca. July 1965], frame 0878, reel 1, MFP; [Notes on Interparish Antipoverty Meeting], n.d., [August 1965], frame 0923, ibid.
79. Notre Nouveau Jour A Commence, Inc., “Rural Community Visitors Proposal,” n.d. [1966], 1, 4, 8–9, file 6, box 1, JZP.
80. “Parish Anti-Poverty Underway,” clipping, Clinton Watchman, 11 June 1965, file 11, box 1, CORE—SCDP; “Community Action Program (CAP) Committee,” n.d., [ca. June 1965], ibid.; Farrell M. Roberts, Annual Narrative Report, County Agent, East Feliciana Parish, 1965, 4, vol. 470, AESP; Statements by George Perry, 5 December 1963, and J. C. Sanders, 7 December 1963, file 18, box 1, CORE—SCDP; “The Citizens’ Council of East Feliciana,” St. Francisville Democrat, 28 March 1957, 3; “Dissolution of the Citizens’ Council of East Feliciana,” clipping, Clinton Watchman, 11 June 1965, 7, file 7, box 1, CORE—SCDP; “East Feliciana Parish,” n.d. [ca. July 1965], file 7, box 1, CORE—SROP; Parish Scouting Report, East Feliciana Parish, n.d. [1963], 5, file 20, box 1, CORE—SCDP; Notebook entries for 19, 21 November 1963, frames 0781–82, reel 1, MFP.
81. “Parish Anti-Poverty Underway,” clipping, Clinton Watchman, 11 June 1965, “272 Children Will Participate in First Head Start Program,” clipping, Clinton Watchman, n.d. [11 June 1965], and “Additional Notes on Operation Head Start in East Feliciana,” n.d. [June 1965]—all in file 11, box 1, CORE—SCDP; Notebook entry, [22] June [1965], frames 0096–0100, reel 2, MFP.
82. Marion Overton White to Gregory Coronado, 12 May 1966, 1, file “Lafayette, Louisiana (Acadiana-Neuf),” box 31, Records Relating to the Administration of the Civil Rights Program in the Regions, 1965–66, Records of the Special Assistant to the Director for Civil Rights, Records of the Office of the Director, Records of the OEO, RG 381, NA; Samuel F. Yette to Theodore Berry, 13 April 1965, file “Lafayette, Louisiana (Acadiana-Neuf),” ibid. (Father McKnight).
83. Sargent Shriver to Gordain Sibille, 30 August 1965, 1–2, file “Lafayette, Louisiana (Acadiana-Neuf),” Hamah R. King to W. Astor Kirk, n.d. [ca. May 1966], 1–5, file “Louisiana—CAP,” “Governor Explains Reason for Veto,” newspaper clipping, no source, n.d., consolidated with Bill Crook to [Sargent Shriver], telegram, 23 March 1966, all in ibid.; Louis Berry to Derrick Bell, 18 April 1966, 1–2, file “Admin. Confidential,” box 34A, Local Problem Areas File, 1966, Records of the Special Assistant to the Director for Civil Rights, Records of the Office of the Director, Records of the OEO, RG 381, NA.
84. “Summary Report of the Investigative Task Force of the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on the War on Poverty Program,” 1 March 1966, 29, enclosed in Adam C. Powell to [David] Squire, 19 September 1966, file “Congressional,” box 800, SFDS, RG 381. For accounts of attacks on antipoverty programs in other states, see Dittmer, Local People, 363–88; Aiken, Cotton Plantation South, 229–56; and Kiffmeyer, “From Self-Help to Sedition.”
85. John C. Satterfield, “The Worker Looks to His Rights,” Pointe Coupee Banner, 16 January 1964, 6; Rieder, “Rise of the ‘Silent Majority’”; Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom, 376–80; Goldfield, Black, White, and Southern, 223–24; Bouma interview.
86. CORE worker Verla Bell provided an indication of the problems presented by insufficient finances when she signed a field report from West Feliciana, “P.S. Could have gotten MUCH MORE work done, but without a car BOSS I was HELPLESS.” Verla Bell, East Feliciana Field Report, September–October 1964, file 13, box 4, CORE—SROP. See also Shirley Thompson, Weekly Report, n.d. [October/ November 1963], 2, file 3, box 6, ibid.; Field Report, Pointe Coupee Parish, January 1964, frame 00578, reel 38, COREP; Notes on Staff Meeting, 30 April 1964, frame 0028, reel 2, MFP; Ronnie Moore to Barbara Whitaker, 21 May 1964, 1, file 6, box 2, CORE—SROP; and Judy Rollins, “Report on Attempted Purge in St. Francisville,” n.d. [October–November 1964], file 9, box 7, CORE—SROP.
87. Ronnie Moore to Louisiana Staff, memorandum, 1 April 1965, file 16, box 1, CORE—SCDP; “Report of the Convention Fund Raising Committee,” n.d. [1965], 4, file 1, ibid.; Geraldine Maddocks to Miriam Feingold, 11 May 1965, frame 0470, reel 1, MFP (quotation). See also Meldon Acheson to Mother and Dad, 22 July [1965], 2, MAP.
88. Bouma interview; Clipping, New York Times, 24 July 1966, reprinted on NAACP flyer, file 9, box 1, NAACP Louisiana Field Director Papers, ARC; Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 407–8, 419–20; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 381–82.
89. Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 338.
90. Lewis interview; Wyche et al. interview; Moses Williams interview.
91. Wyche et al. interview; Martin Williams interview.
92. Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom, 180–206.
1. See, e.g., Sitkoff, Struggle for Black Equality, 210–35; Morris, Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 286–90; Dittmer, Local People, 427–30; Eskew, But for Birmingham, 326–31; Lolis Elie, interview by Kim Lacy Rogers, ARC; Rudy Lombard, interview by Kim Lacy Rogers, ARC; and Clifton and Eual Hall, interview by author, THWC—LSU.
2. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Political Participation, 240–43; Eng-strom et al., “Louisiana,” 109.
3. Miriam Feingold to Russell [Gilmore], 12 August [1966], frames 0532–33, reel 1, MFP; Scholarship, Education and Defense Fund for Racial Equality, “Fact Sheet: Civil Rights Breakthrough in the Deep South,” October 1967, file 9, box 7, SEDFREP.
4. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Political Participation, 217–18.
5. Ibid., 64–66, 79–80; 115–17; Engstrom et al., “Louisiana,” 109–12; Eunice Paddio-Johnson and Clarence Reed, interview by author, THWC—LSU; Lorin Hall, interview by author, THWC—LSU; Clifton and Eual Hall interview.
6. The evolution of voting rights law after 1965 in response to efforts to dilute black votes is discussed in Lawson, In Pursuit of Power; Parker, Black Votes Count; and Davidson, “Recent Evolution of Voting Rights Law.”
7. Engstrom et al., “Louisiana,” 109; Fairclough, Race and Democracy, 466.
8. Robert and Essie Mae Lewis, interview by author, THWC—LSU; Spiver Gordon, interviewer unknown, ARC.
9. Ben Garris, “Hooks and Shells,” St. Francisville Democrat, 5 June 1969, 1; Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, “Citizens of Concordia Parish!,” n.d., file 24, box 34, NAACP Louisiana Field Director Papers, ARC.
10. Ellis Howard, Percy Gordon, and Charles Hall to John Doar, 19 January 1965, file 8, box 1, CORE—SCDP; Gerald Moses, “La. Civil Rights Arm Opens 2-day Hearing,” news clipping, source unknown, n.d. [ca. 1965–66], CORE—SHPP; Daniel Byrd, Special Report, 24 March 1973, 2, file 9, box 4, DEBP; “The Louisiana Education Association's Legal Plan of Action,” n.d., 2, file 6, box 6, DEBP.
11. Eunice Hall Harris to Mary L. Landrieu, 22 April 1998, vertical file, THWC—LSU.
12. Paddio-Johnson interview; Lorin Hall interview; Lawrence Hall, interview by author, THWC—LSU.
13. Lolis Elie, interview by Langston Reid, FCC—NOPL; Lombard interview; Lorin Hall interview; Clifton and Eual Hall interview. See also Chestnut and Cass, Black in Selma, 375–76; Dittmer, Local People, 426–28; and Couto, Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round, 76.
14. Ronnie M. Moore, “Evaluation of the Citizenship Education Workshop, Plaquemine, Louisiana, December 16–18th, 1966,” 17 February 196[7], 4, file 4, box 23, SEDFREP; Elie interview (Rogers).
15. “Negroes Seated on Parish School Bd. at Tuesday Meet,” St. Francisville Democrat, 12 January 1967, 1, 4; “Periodic Voter Registration Wins by 6–3 PJ Vote,” ibid., 12 December 1968, 1, 4.
16. Berman, America's Right Turn, 18, 92, 95; Walton, African American Power and Politics, 131, 337–39; Naples, Grassroots Warriors, 20, 60–61; Martin Williams, interview by author, THWC—LSU.
17. Wilbert Guillory, interview by author, THWC—LSU; Clifton and Eual Hall interview. See also Woods, Development Arrested, 183–84, 203–4, 269–70. According to Woods, white civic leaders’ preferred solution to the problems caused by the demise of the plantation system was to encourage black people to leave. Thus, in the decades after the civil rights movement, state and local governments in the South kept welfare benefits low, cut back or eliminated social services, and rejected job creation efforts to provide African Americans with few reasons for staying in the region.
18. Bureau of the Census, 1990 Census of Population, Social and Economic Characteristics, Louisiana, Section 1, 93; Lombard interview; Clifton and Eual Hall interview.
19. Martin Williams interview; Paddio-Johnson and Reed interview; Lewis interview; Guillory interview; Lorin Hall interview; Eunice Hall Harris interview; Lola Stallworth and Moses Williams, interviews by author, THWC—LSU; Clifton and Eual Hall interview.