Reel 4

Scope and Contents From the Collection: Consist of correspondence, reports, ledgers, legal documents, leaflets, printed material, photographs, and newspapers published by the union. These document the activities of the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union from its origins through its transformations into the National Farm Labor Union in 1946 and the National Agriculture Workers Union in 1952, and through its merger with the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union in 1960. The records also contain selected materials from the Socialist Party...

Scope and Contents The year began with public hearings of the President's Special Commission on Farm Tenancy at Dallas and Montgomery. The papers include the STFU statements at both hearings, as well as memoranda to the commission from Odis Sweeden and Fred Matthews, STFU leaders in Oklahoma and Texas, respectively (4 to 6). Virtually all of the papers near the middle of the month have to do with the Muskogee Convention, including the "Auditors' Preliminary Report to the Convention", the convention program,...

Scope and Contents The Mississippi River overflowed its banks at the beginning of the month, and much of the correspondence concerns flood relief for union members. Following the Muskogee convention, union activity in the Southwest accelerated, and there is a great amount of communication with such leaders as Odis Sweeden and John M. Denney in Oklahoma and Fred Matthews and J.R. Freeland in Texas. Much of the correspondence with Sweeden and Denney concerns the supposed Mitchell-Fowler-Jackson bargain at...

Scope and Contents The first week of March was National Sharecroppers Week, but there is virtually no information about it in the papers. The only other event of importance during this month was a meeting of the National Executive Committee on March 21; see Mitchell's detailed report to the Committee which appears on that date. Other items of interest include a 22-page report from Stephen C. Seys, Secretary of the Jasper (Ark.) local (18), an STFU press release on the AAA statement concerning planter...

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The papers include a circular letter to STFU members on a new WPA Workers Education Program planned for Arkansas (15), a letter from Mitchell to Jackson describing the organizing effort underway in the Southwest (17), a pamphlet of letters from sharecroppers to the union entitled "The Disinherited Speak" (filed at April 26), and a report by Mitchell on the Agricultural Workers Wage Conference held at Birmingham, Alabama on March 18, including the conference program (17 to 19).

Scope and Contents The major topics for the month include Mitchell's attempt to resign as STFU National Secretary on May 15 and the Wage Conference which the union held at the Memphis Labor Temple on May 23; both of these subjects are amply documented in the papers. Violence and legal troubles flared up again in May, including the arrest of organizer J.F. Hynds for calling a strike of 200 WPA workers on a highway project near Forrest City and the disruption of union meetings in Caruthersville, Mo. and...

Scope and Contents A possible invitation to join the CIO led to a flurry of correspondence among the friends and leaders of the STFU; see especially Gardner Jackson's reports on his negotiations in Washington with John L. Lewis and Donald Henderson (5,9,24) and two detailed letters from Socialist Party Labor Secretary Frank Trager on the situation (17,30), as well as the correspondence with Henderson himself. The CIO proposal was the main item on the agenda of an especially important NEC meeting held June 20;...