The Rise and Fall of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in Arkansas (eBook)

James D. Ross (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2024 | 1
166 Seiten
University of Tennessee Press (Verlag)
978-1-62190-353-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Founded in eastern Arkansas during the Great Depression, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU) has long fascinated historians, who have emphasized its biracial membership and the socialist convictions of its leaders, while attributing its demise to external factors, such as the mechanization of agriculture, the repression of wealthy planters, and the indifference of New Dealers. However, as James Ross notes in this compelling revisionist history, such accounts have largely ignored the perspective of the actual sharecroppers and other tenant farmers who made up the union's rank and file. Drawing on a rich trove of letters that STFU members wrote to union leaders, government officials, and others, Ross shows that internal divisions were just as significantif not more soas outside causes in the union's ultimate failure. Most important, the STFU's fatal flaw was the yawning gap between the worldviews of its leadership and those of its members. Ross describes how, early on, STFU secretary H. L. Mitchell promoted the union as one involving many voicessometimes in harmony, sometimes in discordbut later pushed a more simplified narrative of a few people doing most of the union's work. Struck by this significant change, Ross explores what the actual goals of the rank and file were and what union membership meant to them. ';While the white leaders may have expressed a commitment to racial justice, white members often did not,' he writes. ';While the union's socialist and communist leaders may have hoped for cooperative land ownership, the members often did not.' Above all, the poor farmers who made up the membership wanted their immediate needs for food and shelter met, and they wanted to own their own land and thus determine their own futures. Moreover, while the leadership often took its inspiration from Marx, the membership's worldview was shaped by fundamentalist, Pentecostal Christianity. In portraying such tensions and how they factored into the union's implosion, Ross not only offers a more nuanced view of the STFU, he also makes a powerful new contribution to our understanding of the Depression-era South.James D. Ross Jr. is an associate professor of history at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He is a specialist in the interaction of race, class, and religion in twentieth-century United States history.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 12.1.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 150 x 150 mm
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Makrosoziologie
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Volkswirtschaftslehre ► Makroökonomie
• Schlagworte: 1930s unions • agrarian struggles • Agricultural Labor • American labor history • biracial membership • class divisions • cooperative land ownership • Depression-era South • Eastern Arkansas • external factors • food and shelter • fundamentalist Christianity • Great Depression • historical perspective • historical revisionism • H. L. Mitchell • immediate needs • internal divisions • James Ross • labor movements • Land ownership • Marxist inspiration • mechanization of agriculture • member goals • New Dealers • New Deal indifference • Pentecostal Christianity • Poverty • Racial Justice • racial tensions • rank and file perspectives • repression by wealthy planters • revisionist history • rural south • sharecroppers • sharecropping • Social History • Socialist convictions • socialist leadership • Social Movements • Southern Tenant Farmers Union • stfu • STFU goals • STFU internal tensions • STFU rank and file • tenant farmers • tenant farming • Union activism • union demise • union failure • union implosion • union leadership • union letters • union narrative
• ISBN-10: 1-62190-353-2 / 1621903532
• ISBN-13: 978-1-62190-353-6 / 9781621903536