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 significantaEURO"if not more soaEURO"as 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
voicesaEURO"sometimes in harmony, sometimes in discordaEURO"but
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. i?1/2While the white leaders may
have expressed a commitment to racial justice, white members often
did not,i?1/2 he writes. i?1/2While the union's socialist and
communist leaders may have hoped for cooperative land ownership,
the members often did not.i?1/2 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.
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