Sharecroppers' Union
The Sharecroppers' Union, also known as SCU or Alabama Sharecroppers’ Union, was a trade union of predominantly African American tenant farmers in the American South that operated from 1931 to 1936. Its aims were to improve wages and working conditions for sharecroppers.
Founded in 1931 in Tallapoosa County, Alabama, the Sharecroppers' Union had its origins in the Croppers’ and Farm Workers’ Union. It was founded with the support of the Communist Party USA and, although theoretically open to all races, its membership by 1933 was solely African-American. Among its first members was Ned Cobb, whose story was told in Theodore Rosengarten’s All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw.
SCU's initial demands included continuation of food advances, which had been suspended by landowners in an attempt to drive down wages; the ASU also demanded the right to sell surplus crops directly in the market rather than having to rely on brokerage by the landowners. They demanded also the right to cultivate small garden plots in order to minimize dependency on the landowners for food. In addition to the demand for payments to be made in cash rather than in goods, SCU membership also demanded nine-month public elementary schools for their children.
In 1935, the SCU turned its attention to the Federal government. Subsidies which were provided by the New Deals' 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act benefited only the landowners and the SCU sued the Federal government for direct payment to sharecroppers. The AAA was declared unconstitutional in 1936 and the case was subsequently dropped.
By 1935, membership had reached 5,000; by 1936, membership had nearly doubled to 10,000. However, in October of that year the Communist Party, desirous of promoting a more popular-frontist bloc with Democrats in the South, withdrew its support of SCU, resulting in the dissolution of the SCU as it merged first into the Farmers' Union of Alabama and then into the Alabama Agricultural Workers' Union.
Beginnings
In the late 1920s, the Communist Party USA played a pivotal role in the origins of the Sharecroppers Union.The Communist Party approached the area of the Black Belt South with preparations to connect and solidify the ideas of self-determination and the ongoing daily struggles of African American sharecroppers. The Communist Party also had plans of becoming the main organizer for their sharecroppers that later turned into the Sharecroppers union. There were notions that this organizational movement was not going to be demonstrated in public. In 1930, the Party was beginning its efforts to organize in Birmingham, Alabama. Over the next few months the members of the union was steadily rising with members by August. With the rise of members for the union, many were perplexed on what exactly they were a part of, these misunderstandings were of members who presumed they were a part of the Communist Party, instead of the sharecroppers union. The Communist Party sent Mack Coad to the south, a veteran African American organizer. The Sharecroppers union was officially established in 1931 and meetings of union members led by Coad began to take place. By the summer of 1931, in Birmingham, there were reported to be over 200 African American members in the union, and the attempts to halt these meetings had begun from the local sheriff or racially motivated mobs. These raids turned extremely violent when the local sheriff, J.K. Young, spotted and began to harass Ralph Gray, a leader of the sharecroppers at the time. After a heated exchange, gun shots were traded by both individuals, both of which who were wounded by this altercation. Later on, a lynch mob formed and stormed Gray's home, where he was mercilessly executed. The lynch mob dumped Gray's body in front of the courthouse, as a message to the African American community. A month later, over 50 croppers met to establish the first 5 locals of the union. In the later half of 1931, The Communist Party had a meeting that reflected over the incidents that occurred in the summer. Tom Johnson, the Communist Party's district organizer of the Black Belt South, stated in the meeting that the events that unfolded stemmed from the union's inability to practice effective organization. At this point, the Communist Party acknowledged the reality of African Americans daily struggle. A direct link was made from the daily struggles to the battle for self-determination. Afterwards, The Party proceeded to amplify their approach on the Black Belt, locals that consisted of 10 sharecroppers were created and organized appropriately in this secondary effort. These locals that consisted of 10 individuals were also each elected in different roles that consisted of a captain, secretary, etc. Amongst these locals the participants would often discuss subjects related on Marxism as well as Leninism, the issues that workers are faced with in the world, socialism and self-determination. Captains of these locals had their own meetings where goals were introduced as well as any tasks or action to promote. Each group of these 10 sharecroppers would be responsible for providing any aide to women and children.The Sharecroppers Union in less than a year had expanded to four counties that stretched over Black Belt. The number of members fluctuated between 100–150 for each individual county, locals were as well beginning to be formed in the outskirts of Macon and Chambers Counties. Within the growing phase of the Sharecroppers Union, concerns and questions started to rise on the teachings and the awareness of political education among the members. James Allen, a journalist who was writing for a news office based in Tennessee named the SW, reported that there was minimal reference to self-determination as an acknowledged goal, and that these discussions must be the topic of conversation in the training classes of the Party. The Party were users of printed propaganda in which they included articles of self-determination. Conflicts regarding self-determination in the communities were topics of conversations for the Party in their printed press. These printed articles were the primary source for political education for the locals. The Party's newspaper gave simplified political information in easier reading formats, illiteracy was rampant among the Sharecropper locals. There were criticisms among members that the press was not going to be sufficient in educational attempts. Party members who were closer towards the Sharecroppers made efforts for increased demand of materials for politically educational motives. Illiteracy was common among the majority of communities in the South. These illiteracy rates stemmed from minimal establishments of educational facilities from the local government. This led to plantation owners pressuring children to work. Members of the Party concluded that for political education to be effectively introduced than issues regarding illiteracy needed to be addressed primarily, this halted self-determination. Counties across the South each had no more than a couple of mailboxes which made literacy distribution an unrealistic idea. To combat this situation the Sharecroppers Union implemented an underground system for distributions of printed press within counties. Within the Sharecroppers Union the Party created unique units that were led by captains who were Party members, these captains were selected from exceptional demonstrations of loyalty to the Party. The Sharecroppers Union also introduced seven demands. These demands were paralleled with daily struggles that sharecroppers would centralize their organization along with the help of the Party. These demands were mainly about economic requests that would address control of the land, this would push sharecroppers to confronting landlords. There were no demands regarding voting or segregation.
The Communist Party USA assisted the Sharecroppers Union to focus on problems between sharecroppers and landowners. The Party elaborated to the sharecroppers that obtainment of self-determination meant the control of landowner's properties. Contrary to movements on going in the North, demands for social equality were uncommon to take place in meetings. Sharecroppers were brought to open conflict with landowners in 1931. Demands from the Sharecroppers Union were supposed to bring together the ideas of daily issues in the South for sharecroppers and self-determination. Within the first year of the Sharecroppers Union establishment, the union was successful in obtaining several victories against landlords. The sharecroppers then formed a committee that ordered landlords to provide clothing and shoes to families of sharecroppers.
Violence against the union
The landlords accepted these terms. By 1932, the Sharecroppers Union began to face adversities regarding actual violence, the distribution of mail among counties for any attempts of organization and also the threatening presence and an outcome of physical violence from possible organized terrorist groups or from the local government, which most of the time were the same entity. Sharecroppers began to attend meetings armed to protect themselves, they also carried out cautious measures to purchase grand quantities of ammunition. Tensions among the Sharecroppers and law enforcement began to dangerously rise. On December 19, 1932, in Reeltown, Alabama, a deadly situation broke out regarding the sharecroppers and law enforcement. The local sheriff, Clifford Elder, arrived at the home of Cliff James, a sharecropper who was a leading member in the Sharecroppers Union. Sheriff Elder was making an attempt to seize the property of James, who had a previous altercation with a local merchant landowner who made claims of James owing him money. This merchant, W.S. Parker, contacted the sheriff when no agreement was made over the money that was owed. The sheriff was tasked with the confiscation of James's mules and cows. Members of the Sharecroppers Union that resided in Reeltown heard about the altercation on going at James's residence and decided to intervene and thwart attempts made by Sheriff Elder. The sharecroppers at the scene reported Sheriff Elder arriving with three additional deputies and immediately opening fire, in the retaliation of the sharecroppers, four deputies were wounded. Multiple sharecroppers were wounded, among the wounded was Cliff James who died from his injuries, another sharecropper was also killed at the scene of the confrontation.The reaction from the white locals was drastic and Southern white presses included concerning titles in their newspapers. African American press was of course more sympathetic to the sharecroppers who were involved. In 1933, the funeral for Cliff James and the other murdered sharecropper, Milo Bentley, was attended by more than 3,000 attendees, with thousands more who witnessed the event, Law enforcement were enforcing Jim Crow laws, they ejected any whites who attempted to participate. Four sharecroppers were charged for attempted murder, these sentences ranged from five to 12 years. The Party had criticisms that were internally acknowledged towards the incident that occurred in Reeltown. Members of the Party feared that more incidents like this were going to be reoccurring throughout other counties in the South. The Sharecroppers Union continued to organize and operate well into 1935. Several strikes ere called in by the Sharecroppers Union across counties that had larger numbers of support. These counties included, Tallapoosa, Lee, Chambers, Randolph, Montgomery, Lowndes, and Dallas. The demand for these strikes were payments of one dollar per day per ten hours of work. After extensive struggles, the Sharecroppers Union was successful in 35 plantations. In instances when the full dollar could not be met, sharecroppers were met with 75 cents a day and served meals and along with aid in transportation. These strikes included thousands of sharecroppers on several numbers of large plantations. By 1935, there were reported 12,000 sharecroppers in the Union. A major issue that the Sharecroppers Union also faced was being unable to gain any traction regarding their relationships with white sharecroppers. This was due to the fact that social equality began to be main topics of conversation, which then halted recruiting of white sharecroppers. Social equality wasn't a priority for the Party, but still insisted that all members should acknowledge its idea. They couldn't bring whites into the union because of this issue, which would unquestionably be devastating if they hesitated. The Party occasionally had a propensity to minimize the demands for racial equality and self-determination to appeal to white membership and participation. This was a result of opportunism, the conciliation of racism, and white chauvinism. Nat Ross, the district organizer for Alabama, made mention of a problem in the North Carolina District where pamphlets distributed by the Party had omitted requests that related to the concerns of African Americans in a letter to the Central Committee. After this episode, the district leader was abruptly fired, and it was alleged that he said: "The trouble with our Party is that we have too damned many negro demands." It took more than just a few committed, hard-working organizers to successfully unite many rural sharecroppers.
The amount of violence and intimidation that surrounds their organizational attempts cannot be understated. Both the Communist Party and union organizing were hampered by this degree of illegality. In an attempt to explain the situation in Alabama, recently arrived Ohioan and Party organizer Tom Johnson wrote to the Party leadership in New York in 1930. Even while the shootings in Dadeville and Reeltown were notable, there remained a level of daily violence that is hard to fathom. The state and the landowners have attacked the Sharecroppers Union violently and relentlessly, according to news reports and field reports. According to a 1933 Daily Worker story, deputy sheriffs had dispatched "lynch parties" to search Chambers County for the nine African American Sharecroppers Union members. "Landlords in Tallapoosa County are trying to have a law passed forcing Negroes to apply to the Mayor for passports to travel around the County," according to a report from the field. According to a 1932 Chicago Defender story, a Sharecroppers Union member was imprisoned for passing out union flyers. A District 17 Party committee meeting was discussing the 1935 strike when it was revealed that 15 Sharecroppers Union members who were African Americans had been killed in Lowndes County and that one Union organizer had spent four months in jail without being charged. It would have been practically difficult for any political force to successfully organize in Alabama during the 1930s due to the extent of state-sanctioned violence. The Party ultimately failed to bring about a broad-scale confrontation with the landowners and establish a balance of forces that would make the raising of self-determination an organizing demand. The Sharecroppers Union would go on expanding despite the persecution for a few more years, finally adding a few members in Louisiana, North Carolina, and Georgia. They did, however, eventually combine to form the Alabama Farmers Union. This was primarily due to the Party's new "Popular Front" stance, which saw them dissolve many mass groups with ties to the Party to unite with larger democratic movements. Ironically, the Party saw an irreparable collapse in the South throughout the Popular Front era while flourishing in the North. While the Party could form partnerships with a sizable progressive or non-communist left in the North, such social forces were seldom in the rural South. It is extremely improbable that the Party would have invested as much time and money in organizing sharecroppers in the South without the self-determination stance and the acknowledgment of African American oppression as a national issue. Its motivation to carry out these organizational operations came from the way it treated the persecution of African Americans as a national issue. But in addition to being used to inspire the Party leadership, the self-determination stance was also communicated to the Party and the Sharecroppers Union memberships through different Party publications and organizational sessions. Although there is little direct evidence of sharecroppers discussing self-determination, there is a lot of indirect evidence. Unfortunately, no sharecroppers' memoirs have survived to explicitly support this claim, which is unsurprising considering that the majority were illiterate or very somewhat literate.
Finally, the Party and the Sharecroppers Union were directly following the logic of self-determination by focusing on issues and demands that would exacerbate the tense relationship between the sharecroppers and the landlords. This created a situation in which the confiscation of the landlord's property would be the logical outcome of this protracted struggle. The Party proved that African American sharecroppers could be organized around a progressive political agenda during this small time frame. The aim of making self-determination a widespread desire among African Americans in the South was never achieved. However, they did contribute to the radicalization of the rural South. Recently, American historians have begun to refer to this time as a part of the "long civil rights movement." An essential and sometimes overlooked link in that movement is the Party's battle to organize the Sharecroppers Union in Alabama. Additionally, it should not go unmentioned that Lowndes County, Alabama, the scene of the most heinous violence during the 1935 SCU strike, would, just 31 years later, give rise to the cry for "Black power." The Communist Party and the SCU may have played a vital role in establishing a link in the ongoing fight for democracy in this crucial region of the United States if there are such things as traditions of struggle and historical recollections among communities. The Sharecroppers' Union and the Communist Party both faced significant challenges in the South during the mid-1930s, and by 1936, both organizations were largely in decline. The Sharecroppers' Union, also known as the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, had grown rapidly in the early 1930s, organizing tens of thousands of sharecroppers and tenant farmers across the South. However, the union faced opposition from landlords, law enforcement officials, and other powerful interests, who saw the union as a threat to their control over the agricultural system. Many union leaders were arrested or harassed, and the organization struggled to maintain its momentum. Meanwhile, the Communist Party USA, which had made significant inroads among Southern sharecroppers and African Americans in the early 1930s, faced a backlash in the mid-1930s as the party's leadership became more closely aligned with the Soviet Union.
This shift alienated many Southern activists, who were suspicious of Soviet influence and hostile to Communist ideology. In addition, the party's leaders were often targeted by law enforcement officials and vigilante groups, leading to arrests and violent attacks. By 1936, both the Sharecroppers' Union and the Communist Party were in a state of decline, with many of their leaders either jailed, driven underground, or forced into exile. However, the legacy of these organizations lived on, as they had both played a significant role in advancing the cause of social and economic justice for Southern sharecroppers and African Americans. Many of the activists who had been involved with these organizations went on to play important roles in the Civil Rights Movement and other struggles for social justice in the decades to come.