July, 1941, 1941

The NEC met on July 11 and 12; the papers include the agenda, minutes, proposed budget, and a report by Mitchell on "Cooperation with the FSA" (11). In addition, there are reports to the NEC on the STFU organizing drive from Odis Sweeden in Oklahoma (3), Noah P. Graham in Missouri (8), W.M. Tanner in Missouri (9), John Alford in Arkansas (11), and from J.E. Clayton in Texas and Missouri (12). Plans for cooperation with the FSA continued to develop; see FSA Administrator C. B. Baldwin to his Regional Directors on the subject (2), as well as Mitchell's letters to Alabama FSA officials (18) and to Clayton and Betton (31). Other items of special interest include: correspondence with J.D. Overholt, who decided to donate $5,000 to the union (6,19,31); a speech by Hugh L. Gray, President of the planters-oriented Delta Council, replying to a recent radio address by Mitchell (18), and Butler to Walter White of the NAACP, asking him to join the union in its attempt to save Edmondson, Ark., an all-black town threatened with destruction by the surrounding white planters (18). For further information on the Edmondson case, see the correspondence of lawyer K.T. Sutton throughout 1941.