Reel 13

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 Most of the correspondence this month deals with fund-raising, especially NSW, and with the attempt to reactivate locals. Items of special interest include: "An Open Letter to Friends of the STFU", an 8-page mimeographed statement on the split with UCAPAWA (1); F.R. Betton to the Chicago Defender and the Pittsburg Courier, asking for help in fund-raising and publicity (11, 12); a letter from Butler to inactive locals (20); Butler to J.B. Nathan on the NEC's decision concerning the Farm...

Scope and Contents Butler, in a mimeographed letter to all union members dated October 26, gave instructions for a campaign to get STFU representatives elected to AAA county committees. When George Mayberry, a black organizer at Mashulaville, Miss., tried to obtain information about the elections from Noxubee County officials, he was kidnapped, beaten, and run out of town. The papers concerning the case, which run from Nov. 22 onward, include a letter from Mayberry to the union, asking for help (23),...

Scope and Contents Further items relating to the Poplar Bluff camp include a letter from Butler to Josephine Smoot, detailing the efforts being made for the refugees (11) and an STFU press release on the projected FSA program (20). There are replies from two Department of Agriculture officials to union complaints in the Mayberry case, both promising that all AAA county elections will be well-publicized in the future (6, 13). There is an especially important exchange of letters between Mitchell and James E....

Scope and Contents

Correspondence and telegrams concerning the Missouri highway demonstration and the battle with UCAPAWA; telegram to FSA Administrator Will. W. Alexander on the Poplar Bluff encampment; Report on the "Status of Negro Schools in Mississippi, 1939"; letters from Kester and Frank W. McCulloch