1
ARTICLES
RITUALS AND SECRECY IN THE SOUTHERN TENANT
FARMERS’ UNION1
GREGORY JOHN HALL
On a warm night in July 1934, eleven whites and seven blacks, most of
whom were sharecroppers or tenant farmers, gathered at the Sunnyside
Schoolhouse near Tyronza in northeast Arkansas to express their discontent
about the devastating effects that the local implementation of the
Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was having upon them and their
families. Many of these landless cotton farmers had been evicted from
Fairview Farms by Hiram Norcross, or faced imminent dislocation as
Norcross and other planters moved to reduce the acreage they held under
cultivation in order to receive a federal subsidy. Those who met at the
rundown schoolhouse openly discussed the merits and risks of forming an
interracial union or a separate organisation for whites and another for
blacks, ultimately deciding to form a single organisation for all. The union
that they formed – the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union – became an
outspoken critic of the Triple A; it adopted ‘land for the landless’ as its
slogan and strove through legal and non-violent means to win fair treatment
for its members and to end the exploitative practices of usurious landlords.
Despite the violent reprisals of planters and their allies, the Union grew
quickly and, within 18 months of its formation, boasted 25,000 members in
five Southern States.2
The emergence of the STFU in a land ‘once cursed by the Ku Klux Klan’3
challenged some of the most fundamental principles of Southern life. It is
perhaps not surprising then to find that the Union has attracted considerable
attention from historians.4 Indeed the rich and voluminous records of the
STFU have given rise to a considerable body of literature. Researchers have
told how H. L. Mitchell, a drycleaner, and Clay East, a gas station proprietor
and deputy sheriff, played important roles in organising the Union. How
Gardner Jackson, a Washington-based philanthropist, Norman Thomas,
other socialists, a variety of trade unions, and a host of religious and civic
reform bodies encouraged the STFU with financial and moral support.
Historians have also told how the violence against the Union was much
publicised and brought its aspirations and activities to national fame. They
have also traced not only the Union’s remarkable growth, but its waning
popularity following its decision in 1937 to affiliate with the CIO’s United
Cannery, Agricultural Processing and Allied Workers of America
(UCAPAWA). Some of the Union’s significant legacies have also been
documented. It has been noted, for example, that the struggles of the STFU
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gave rise to the formation of an Arkansas farm tenancy commission that was
important in the creation of the New Deal’s Farm Security Administration.
Certainly the substantial efforts of historians have also ensured the Union a
place in histories of Arkansas, 5 of Southern agriculture,6 of trade unionism,7
of African American protest,8 of socialism,9 and of the social manifestations
of Southern radical Protestantism.10 Yet, too little attention has been given
to exploring the lives of Union members themselves, their aspirations, hopes
and fears, and as a result historians have not adequately explained how and
why the Union came to occupy such a centrally important focus in their
lives. As well, historians have frequently overlooked the Union’s vibrant
movement culture, a rich, eclectic and accommodative culture that attracted
and sustained a membership not only of blacks and whites, but of Mexicans
and Native Americans, of men and women, of people of all ages.11 It is a
significant oversight, as the Union’s culture, especially its religiosity, its
secrecy and its rituals, help explain why so many landless farmers and their
families flocked to the Union and the strength of their commitment to its
cause despite the frequent violent reprisals that they faced.
The culture of the STFU, and a great deal of the Union’s appeal, owed much
to its extensive borrowing of the language and methods of the rural
evangelical church. Many vocal and influential Baptist preachers rallied to
the Union’s cause, organised locals, and recruited members; the
participation of preachers like E. B. McKinney and Owen Whitfield
invested the Union with legitimacy and their animated rhetoric imbued the
Union with the vibrant enthusiasm of a religious crusade. Sometimes, whole
congregations were recruited into the Union and the names assigned to
locals – such as Pilgrim’s Rest, Sisters of Right, Rose of Mary and New
Light12 - often reflected a religious inspiration. In the language used by
STFU officials and members, God was a ‘Union God’13; Jesus was a
radical14; and Union organisers were missionaries15 who taught the Union
gospel. H. L. Mitchell, the Union’s Executive Secretary, the proprietor of a
small Tyronza dry cleaning business, was apotheosised, described as a
‘Moses’,16 while Union members who betrayed the interests of the STFU
were branded ‘Judas Iscariots’ and expelled17. At the local level, Union
meetings were frequently held in church halls and followed protocols that
were familiar to churchgoers - Union meetings opened with prayer and
usually involved Bible readings and the singing of hymns adapted by STFU
troubadours into strident Union anthems. Meetings were usually held
secretly at night so the proceedings often took place behind drawn curtains
and in the flickering shadows generated by oil lamps and this could heighten
members’ awareness of the numinous dimensions of their activities. Those
present at such meetings were more than witnesses of events, they formed a
congregation and their coordinated utterances and physical movements
demonstrated their communion.18 The Union’s religiosity was so pervasive
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3
that when some sharecroppers first heard of the organisation they thought it
was a new church. For many members, the STFU was a sacred organisation
and this perception was reinforced when they took the Union’s solemn oath
‘before God and man’, participated in arcane Union rituals, and made use of
the STFU’s secret signs and code.
All applicants for Union membership were required to take the Union’s
oath, to pledge publicly that they would abide by the Union’s rules and
guard its secrets even unto death. By taking the oath members invested their
commitment to their organisation with ‘the qualities of correctness,
propriety, legitimacy and morality’ and established criteria against which
their subsequent actions would be judged.19 Initiates understood that failure
to abide by the oath would be wrong - their oath taking was ‘not simply a
symbolic representation of social contract, but tacit social contract itself.’20
While the public declaration of the Union’s oath had an obvious binding
force on initiates, they must have found the accompanying ritual to be
particularly memorable. Prior to being led into a meeting hall to take the
oath, an initiate had his or her hands tied behind them. The right hand was
subsequently untied so it could be raised during the oath taking while the
left hand remained bound. After the members present formed a semi-circle
behind the initiate and said ‘Amen’, the left hand was also untied, and the
local President intoned: ‘He is now bound to us by a stronger tie than the
cord.’ At that point, Union members might cheer to welcome their new
brother or sister into the Union and celebrate the initiate’s transformation.
While a local’s President explained that the hands of each initiate were tied
before entering the meeting hall to teach an important lesson – ‘that no
outsider should ever be allowed to harm the union or any of its members’21 this ritual clearly had ‘many voices’ and conveyed other messages as well.22
The binding of initiates symbolised that they were mere slaves or prisoners23
who, by joining the Union, were subsequently liberated and set free. The
hymn ‘Blessed Be The Tie That Binds’, sometimes sung by Union
members,24 suggests that their tie to the Union had a special religious
significance – the hymn celebrates the tie that binds a congregation’s ‘hearts
in Christian love’, the fellowship of their kindred minds, the ardent prayers,
fears and hopes that they shared, and their mutual burdens. During the
ritual, the candidate’s right hand was untied first. Union members were told
of the symbolism of their hands – STFU officials told that the Bible ‘says
not to let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. That means
that you should not let people outside the union (the left hand) know what is
going on in the union…’25 As well, the performance of the ritual helped
enhance initiates’ appreciation of the significance of the Union oath, thereby
contributing to their readiness to abide by it.
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STFU members were informed of the Union’s many secrets in exchange for
the allegiance that they pledged, making Union meetings occasions of
revelation. Such secrets enabled them to covertly identify themselves and
others as Union members; seek assistance from fellow members when in
distress; and use a special password to obtain entry to Union meetings. The
STFU’s two-part passwords, such as ‘Strength Wins’, ‘New Spirit’, and
‘Have Courage’26, were varied by the Union’s National Executive Council
every two to three months. Arrangements put in place to advise local
members of passwords, and to test their knowledge of them at local
meetings, contributed to a perception among them that their Union was a
type of ‘secret society’. Initially, passwords were not mentioned in official
Union correspondence but, from late 1937, were communicated to locals in
a secret written code.27 The secrecy surrounding the code and password
underscored the exclusive nature of Union membership. This exclusivity
was reinforced when Union locals conducted secret ballots among members
to determine whether a new applicant could be admitted to their ranks.
Officials and members of the STFU used the Union’s code to transmit secret
messages among each other. Source: ‘Sign Manual and Ritual. Southern
Tenant Farmers Union’, p. 14, 7-10 January, 1942, STFU Papers, reel 20.
STFU officials repeatedly emphasised the importance of maintaining the
secrecy of the Union’s signs and signals; members were told that a booklet
which outlined the Union’s signs and signals was indispensable to their
protection from ‘intruders’ and that avoiding ‘careful observance’ of its
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5
principles ‘may result in serious disaster’ to the cause.28 STFU ‘recognition
signs’ included a secret handshake, a salute, and a word challenge. To salute
their fellows, STFU members were instructed to raise either hand with the
first and second fingers extended and the other fingers held down by the
thumb. A Union man would respond in the same way. The wedge formed
by the two extended fingers represented the Union’s goal of ‘a fair split of
the wealth’ they produced. STFU members were told to signal distress by
raising the right hand above their heads with the palm open and the thumb
in his palm, to do so for about three seconds, repeating this three times,
bringing their arm full length down their sides each time. Union members
would respond by drawing their index finger slowly across their throat three
times, then offer their right hand to their fellow member, with thumb in
palm.29 Members were also instructed to ‘call a Union man’ by extending
their right hand, palm up, and closing their fist slowly, repeating this three
times at intervals of about one minute. An STFU member recognising this
sign would respond by extending his arm fully, and offering his hand with
his thumb in the palm of his hand, saying ‘I am for a Worker’s World’. This
handshake was later replaced with another: When shaking another’s hand,
an STFU member would ‘extend his right forefinger straight out laying it
firmly flat against the inside of the person’s wrist.’ A member could use a
word challenge to determine whether another person he was speaking to
was also a Union member. He would ask ‘What is the time?’ and a Union
member would reply: ‘It’s not too late.’ Alternatively, a member could rub
his left eye with the tip of his right forefinger; a fellow Union member
would reply in the same way. Members signalled that their life was in
danger by yelling out ‘K.O’ as often as required. It was explained that ‘K.O.
is O.K. turned around and instead of meaning all right it means all wrong. It
also means a knock-out.’ 30
The STFU’s emphasis on maintaining the secrecy and exclusivity of the
brotherhood meant that the benefits of Union membership were not
available to all tenants, sharecroppers and their families. Eligibility for
membership was contestable and applicants were sometimes excluded if
they failed to meet locally determined standards of morality or behaviour.
Yet, the secrecy and exclusivity of the Union meant that membership
offered those who joined a unique and special experience. Secrecy offered
members access to a second world alongside the ‘obvious world’ and
secrets could give them a ‘feeling of personal possession’, enabling them to
derive a sense of power from resisting the ever-present temptation to reveal
what they knew. In this way, secrecy could foster the growth of members’
sense of identity.31 It also underscored that the STFU was a sacred
institution, separate from the outside world. As Norman Mackenzie has
noted: it ‘is not possible to grasp the nature of membership in a secret
society unless we appreciate that essentially, it is a form of religious
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experience.’32 Complicated procedures designed to restrict entry to meetings
and the presence of a doorkeeper at the entrance to each venue pointed to a
sacred-profane demarcation between the STFU and the outside world.33
Doorways to meeting rooms marked a threshold to a sacred realm, and to
cross the threshold marked a ‘transition from the everyday natural order’ to
a ‘place of divine power and presence.’34 Through ‘the politics of
exclusion’35 and the performance of ritual within, those present helped set
meeting rooms apart from the ‘ordinary’ environment and helped give
rituals ‘their very character as a type of highly charged symbolic
performance.’36
While Union records suggest that rituals were first performed by members
of the STFU in the Spring of 1936, shortly after the Union had conducted a
cotton choppers’ strike,37 it is difficult to trace the origins of all of the
Union’s rituals with much certainty. However, it seems clear that a number
of the Union’s rituals followed a model well established in Freemasonry38.
As in Freemasonry, STFU initiation rituals educated, entertained and
progressively transformed Union members. And like the Freemasons, STFU
members performed three initiation ‘degrees’, reflecting a notion that while
‘the sacred’ was accessible to them, it was ‘not exhausted in its first
revelations.’39 The STFU’s first degree, the Degree of Duty, involved a test
of endurance and courage, with a candidate sitting on a tin seat under which
a lit kerosene lamp was placed. To pass this degree a candidate needed to
show the nerve to protest and stand up and object when the seat became too
hot. Although this ritual could involve some ‘good natured laughter’, it
clearly celebrated independent action in the face of personal difficulty.
Candidates and witnesses were reminded that protest was a Union duty. For
the second degree, a candidate was escorted around a meeting room by the
local Conductor ‘in an inspection of the local’ to ‘learn things’ that the
Union claimed would be of value to a member as long as he or she lived. On
a symbolic journey a candidate was brought face to face with adverse
situations in which a planter attempted to deceive him. Candidates were
shown how using a distress call in fearful circumstances would prompt the
immediate assistance of their fellows, thus fostering group identity. Spatial
passage during the ritual marked a change in the candidate's social position;
each stage of his travels brought him or her to a deeper understanding of the
Union’s truths. Through these experiences the candidate was transformed.
The third degree was a small play in which a candidate played the role of a
hungry and tired STFU member who received assistance from other
members after asking ‘What is the time?’, thereby signalling his
membership of the Union. This degree sought to impress on members the
duty they owed each other as well as the Christian principle that ‘It is more
blessed to give than to receive.’ 40 The performance of these degrees not
only integrated outsiders into the union, they also reminded those witnesses
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7
who were already members that they belonged to a special and sacred
organisation. The degrees taught ‘lessons in Unionism to new members and
old’41; their performance bolstered members’ commitment, engendered
community spirit, and aroused enthusiasm.42 Candidates were empowered
through their participation and transformation. Through joint participation,
members re-affirmed their allegiance to the STFU and to each other.
The STFU's burial ritual, a loyal member’s final ‘rite of passage’, involved
performances at two locations. For three successive meetings following a
member’s death, a local’s charter was draped in black crepe. This was a
significant tribute as a local’s charter was its ‘sine qua non’; often
ceremoniously installed, each local’s charter demonstrated that official
sanction for its activities had been obtained from STFU headquarters. As
well, at the graveside, STFU officials took prescribed positions around the
casket and consigned the body of the deceased, ‘armed with the word’, to
ascend to ‘that great union meeting’ that was heaven. As officials and
members gathered around the grave, the local’s Doorkeeper permanently
closed ‘the door’ on the deceased in a symbolic way by turning a shovel of
dirt reverently onto the casket.43 Thus, at both the meeting hall and at the
graveside, the burial ritual provided opportunities for survivors to show
their respect to the deceased and to demonstrate their sense of
brotherhood.44 At the graveside, officials and members articulated a cultural
understanding of death as a transition, as a journey of the human spirit. This
reflected both Christian understandings45 and fundamental Union principles
about the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God46. The President
referred to the sorrow that had called members together to pay a final sad
tribute of brotherly love to the deceased, suggesting that the ritual provided
a formal, prescriptive framework for the orderly public expression of
emotion following the death of a ‘significant other’. The ritual may have
assisted individual and community adjustment to death by refocusing the
negative emotions associated with loss toward the positive emotions
flowing from awareness of the deceased’s spiritual salvation. Group
participation could support some members through a period of grieving by
emphasising that the Union would endure despite the experience of loss. In
addition, performance of the burial ritual served political ends by providing
an opportunity for Union officials to promote the Union and its activities by
openly praising the deceased for loyal membership in the Union and
devotion to its cause, by encouraging others to carry on ‘the burden dropped
by the deceased’, and by urging others to join the Union in its striving for
better conditions. In this way, the dead became ‘martyrs, trophies of the
cause, proof of its strength’ and death was turned into a victory and grief
‘converted into political enthusiasm.’47 Members’ high regard for the
performance of the burial ritual was evidenced by the numerous tombstones
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that appeared in the Arkansas delta inscribed with the message that the
deceased had died a faithful member of the STFU.48
The STFU’s burial ritual, oath taking ritual and three degrees were the
organisation’s key ‘rites of passage’, and their performance was an
important means by which new members could be informed of, and existing
members reminded of, the sacred dimensions of their organisation. The
performance of these rituals could be dramatic and entertaining and they
sometimes involved role-play, humour and laughter. On occasions, too,
Union rituals were adapted at short notice and as circumstances demanded.
One memorable adaptation of the burial ritual was made at a special
convention of the STFU in Memphis on 19 March, 1939. The meeting had
been called so that delegates could vote on a proposal that the union
disaffiliate from the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied
Workers Union of America (UCAPAWA), led by Donald Henderson.
Members of the STFU had expressed dissatisfaction with UCAPAWA and
the decision was taken to disaffiliate. Then, on the spur of the moment,
Howard Kester, the STFU's Chaplain, preached a funeral sermon over the
corpse of UCAPAWA, which was represented by a blackened cigar-box. ‘I
can't think of a good thing to say of the deceased’, declared Kester.
‘UCAPAWA has been only an irritation and a vexation. It has done us no
good. It is dead beyond resurrection.’ Then, as the STFU News reported,
while a piano player ‘banged out sharecropper rhythm on an unsympathetic
piano’, the 116 delegates and forty visitors marched down to the cigar-box
and poured handsful of dirt over it. ‘Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust’, they
said, ‘Here Lies a Union We Never Could Trust ... Ashes to Ashes and Dust
to Dust. Back to a Union We can Trust.’49
While Kester’s mock funeral ‘enlivened the session and made the whole
meeting quite dramatic’50, its humorous and entertaining aspects did not
detract from the ritual’s significance. The funeral ceremony to bury
UCAPAWA enabled everybody to show how ‘strongly’ they felt about
getting out of that organisation.51 Members were aware that rituals had a
serious purpose. The mock funeral also suggests that in the STFU
ritualisation was ‘never simply or solely a matter of routine, habit, or the
“dead weight of tradition”’, but was situational, strategic, and embedded in
‘the interaction of the social body with a symbolically constituted spatial
and temporal environment.’52
The Ceremony of the Land, perhaps the STFU’s ‘most important ritual’,53
was performed at the Union’s annual conventions. These conventions were
like religious revival meetings. The walls were donned with placards
bearing Biblical quotations – ‘What mean you that crush my people?’, ‘Let
justice roll down as water and righteousness as a mighty stream’, ‘To the
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9
disinherited belongs the future’.54 Preachers delivered emotional and
inspirational sermons and members joined in the religious fervour with call
and response, declaring their faith in the STFU and in its religious values.
At conventions, Christian imagery and rhetoric were interwoven with the
language of the labour movement. Speakers encouraged members to
identify themselves with God’s chosen people and told them that the Union
fight was a battle for light over darkness.55 At the Union's third annual
convention, held in Muskogee, Oklahoma in January 1937, about 150
delegates from seven Southern states gathered not only to discuss the
important matters faced by their organisation, but to pray and sing and
declare their faith in the cause of the STFU.
The Ceremony of the Land climaxed the Convention. Howard Kester, a
socialist preacher, led the Ceremony, reciting biblical verses and poetry and
extracts from various publications that lamented the evils of the tenant
system.
Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
The audience responded:
Who made him dead to rapture and despair ...
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Kester spoke then of the power that landlords exerted over tenants in crop
control, cultivation, record keeping, the provision of credit, diet, education,
law enforcement and the courts. The status of tenancy, he declared,
‘demands complete dependence’. The audience’s response was from the
book of Isaiah:
It is you who have eaten up the land; the spoil of the poor
is in your houses; what mean ye that you crush my people
and grind the face of the poor? (Isa 3-14,15)
The Ceremony continued through call and response, ‘with black and white
workers chanting … eloquent periods’.56 ‘Yesterday we begged for mercy’,
they cried, ‘today we demand justice ... All power to the Southern Tenant
Farmers' Union ... Land and Justice! Justice and Land!’ Through such
performances, STFU members acted out the drama of their faith. In a
moving piece of theatre, all present had a role to play. On a table at the front
of the hall were heaps of earth which delegates had brought from their home
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States. Members of the congregation, black and white, walked to the table,
took a handful of soil and mixed it with the soil from other States as a
symbol of the unity that they shared. The Ceremony ended dramatically
with the following recitation, which had been derived from a prayer by
Walter Rauschenbush, the ‘great prophet’ of America's social gospel
movement:
Speed now the day when the plains and the hills and the
wealth thereof shall be the people's own, and thy free men
shall not live as tenants of men on the earth which thou
hast given to all.57
The Ceremony of the Land differed from the STFU’s ‘rites of passage’
described previously. More lengthy and more complex, performed less
frequently and involving more participants, its performance signalled a rare
and special occasion. Both inspirational and very moving, its performance
communicated a strong and resounding message to participants about the
size, diversity, density, strength and endurance of their group58. Certainly,
the Ceremony provided a unique way of saying something – it was ‘without
communicational equivalents.’59 Yet, like the Union’s other rituals, it
worked to heighten participants’ awareness of the numinous dimensions of
human experience, elevated and transformed individuals, restored their
spiritual resources and affirmed the principles upon which the group
functioned.60 In all STFU rituals, the communion that participants attained
together and demonstrated to each other through performance added
substance, contributed drama, and helped make ritual performance more
memorable, thereby contributing something that the liturgy alone could not
express.
STFU members performed rituals not simply because they found them
diverting, but because their performance served important functions. Rituals
appealed to Union members, communicated important lessons and shared
values, bolstered hopes, fostered solidarity and contributed to community
spirit. The powerful impact that rituals wielded in members’ lives helps
explain the deep commitment many had to each other and to their Union
despite their racial differences and the violent reprisals they faced. H. L.
Mitchell noted that while he thought the Union’s rituals were a lot of
rigmarole, rituals held members together and ‘created between the races a
very strong fraternal bond. One couldn't take an oath and refuse to live up
to it, just because the other member happened to be of a different color.’61
Rituals were thus sources of cultural glue and provided opportunities for
Union members, their families and their friends to bond, affirm their
common values, consolidate their personal relationships, and give testimony
to the sacred nature of their connections with the soil.
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11
The pervasive use of secrecy and ritualism in the STFU suggests that the
Union was a more culturally rich and complex organisation than the
institutional approach taken by some historians of the Union might suggest.
For many members, the organisation was not simply a trade union, but a
vibrant ‘religious’ movement which, at the same time as it adopted the
language and protocols of the church, and operated as a popular alternative
or supplement to the evangelical mainstream, adopted many of the trappings
of a secret society. The Union’s culture was eclectic, enabling it to model
some of its rituals on those of Freemasonry. Thus while Freemasonry may
have had a largely middle class constituency, as some historians have
suggested, in the 1930s at least, its ritual model also appealed to a
significant number of those who were far less well off. The STFU
experience may also provide an important counterpoint to the suggestion
that the appeal of quasi-Masonic fraternalism waned in the United States in
the early decades of the twentieth century. Certainly during the 1930s STFU
members held their Union’s rituals in high regard. Finally, the STFU’s
secret signs and rituals, used and performed by both male and female
members of the organisation, suggests that a more flexible definition of
gender roles may have prevailed among Union members, and perhaps the
South’s landless poor more generally, than among, say, the middle classes
where the membership of secret societies and the performance of rituals
within them was often a male dominated affair.
ENDNOTES
1
The author wishes to thank Professor Elizabeth Payne, Dr Graham White, Dr Douglas
Craig and Dr Paul Taillon for comments and questions in response to an earlier version of the
paper. The author is responsible for any blemishes that remain. He can be contacted at
[email protected]
2
H. L. Mitchell to Francisco Uribe, President, Mexican Agricultural Workers’ Union,
Laredo, Texas, 19 November 1935, Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Papers, microfilm
edition (hereinafter STFU Papers), reel 1.
3
Norman Thomas, ‘The Sharecropper and the A.A.A.’, radio address on the NBC network, 3
April 1935, STFU Papers, reel 1.
4
For background on the STFU see Donald H. Grubbs, Cry From the Cotton. The Southern
Tenant Farmers’ Union and the New Deal, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill,
1971; H. L. Mitchell, ‘The Founding and Early History of the Southern Tenant Farmers
Union’, Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. XXXIII, 1973, pp. 342-369; H. L. Mitchell,
Mean Things Happening in this Land, Allenheld, Osmun and Company, Montclair, N. J,
1979.
5
Jeannie M. Whayne, A New Plantation South: Land, Labor, and Federal Favor in
Twentieth-Century Arkansas, University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville and London, 1996.
6
David E Conrad, The Forgotten Farmers. The Story of Sharecroppers in the New Deal,
University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1965; Pete Daniel, Breaking the Land. The
Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures Since 1880, University of Illinois
Press, Urbana, 1985; Gilbert Fite, Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture 1865-1980,
12
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University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, 1984; Jack Temple Kirby, Rural World’s Lost. The
American South, 1920-1960, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge. 1987.
7
Stuart Jamieson (ed.), Labor Unionism in American Agriculture, Washington: Government
Printing Office, 1945; F. Ray Marshall, Labor in the South, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
University Press, 1967; Dick Meister and Anne Loftis, A Long Time Coming. The Struggle to
Unionize America’s Farm Workers, New York: Macmillan, 1977; Mark D. Naison, ‘The
Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union and the CIO’ in Staughton Lynd (ed.), American Labor
Radicalism. Testimonies and Interpretations, Wiley, New York, 1973.
8
M. Langley Biegert, ‘Legacy of Resistance: Uncovering the History of Collective Action by
Black Agricultural Workers in Central East Arkansas from the 1860s to the 1930s’, Journal
of Social History, Vol 32, No 1, 1998, pp. 73-99; Mark D. Naison, ‘Black Radicalism in the
Great Depression: The Threads of a Lost Tradition’, Journal of Ethnic Studies, Vol 1, No. 3,
1973, 47-65.
9
Jerold S. Auerbach, ‘Southern Tenant Farmers: Socialist Critics of the New Deal’, Labor
History, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1966, pp. 3-18; James R. Green, Grass-Roots Socialism. Radical
Movements in the Southwest 1895-1943, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge.
1978; M. S. Venkataramani, ‘Norman Thomas, Arkansas Sharecroppers and the Roosevelt
Agricultural Policies, 1933-1937’, Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 47, September,
1960, pp. 225-246
10
Anthony P. Dunbar, Against the Grain. Southern Radicals and Prophets, 1929-1959,
University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va, 1981; Robert F. Martin, ‘A Prophet’s
Pilgrimage: The Religious Radicalism of Howard Anderson Kester, 1921-1941’, Journal of
Southern History, Vol. XLVIII, 1982, pp. 511-530.
11
Alexander Yard has noted how member’s objections to injustice by planters sustained their
commitment to the Union in ‘“They don’t regard my Rights at all”: Arkansas Farm Workers
Economic Modernization, and the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union’, Arkansas Historical
Quarterly, Vol XLVII, Autumn, 1988, pp. 201-229. More recently, Elizabeth Anne Payne
has focussed attention on Myrtle Lawrence, a white female member of the STFU. See ‘The
Lady Was a Sharecropper: Myrtle Lawrence and the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union’,
Southern Cultures, Vol. 4, No. 2, Summer, 1998, pp. 5-27.
12
‘Locals of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union’, n.d., 1937, STFU papers, reel 6.
13
See Owen Whitfield’s address in the Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention of the
STFU, Muskogee, Oklahoma, 14-17 January, 1937, STFU Papers, reel 4.
14
See E. B. McKinney’s address in the Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention of the
STFU, Muskogee, Oklahoma, 14-17 January 1937, STFU Papers, reel 4.
15
Stephen Seys, Jasper, Arkansas to ‘Dear Sir’, n. d. (July 1937?), STFU Papers, reel 5.
16
A. T. Williams, Madison, Arkansas to STFU, 5 February 1937, STFU Papers, reel 4.
17
STFU Bulletin: ‘Judas Iscariots Exposed’, n.d. (1935), STFU Papers, reel 1.
18
Roy A Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 1999, pp. 39, 41, 135, 220.
19
Rappaport, pp. 132, 134.
20
Rappaport, p. 137.
21
The ritual is included in ‘Manual. STFU’, STFU Papers, reel 58.
22
For a discussion of the ‘multivocality’ of ritual see Rappaport, pp. 236ff.
23
Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols. Studies in Religious Symbolism, Search Book edition,
1969, p. 104.
24
The words to ‘Blessed Be the Tie that Binds’ were distributed to Union members
following the disappearance of Frank Weems, an STFU member alleged to have been beaten
to death by a mob. 16 June 1936, STFU Papers, reel 2.
25
J. R. Butler to Mr Pleas Branigan, Mashulaville, Miss, 25 March 1940, STFU Papers, reel
14.
26
See J. R Butler to all local secretaries, n.d., 1940, STFU Papers, reel 16.
AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES
27
13
See ‘Manual STFU’, p. 10, STFU Papers, reel 58; H. L. Mitchell to S. L. Shelton,
Wabbaseka, Arkansas, 15 July, 1937, STFU Papers, reel 6; H. L. Mitchell to Finley
Williams, Gould, Arkansas, 18 August, 1937, STFU Papers, reel 6; H. L. Mitchell to all local
secretaries, n.d., 1937, STFU Papers, reel 6; H. L. Mitchell to Forest Johnson, Bell City,
Missouri, 29 May, 1939, STFU Papers, reel 11.
28
‘Southern Tenant Farmers Union. Ritual’, p. 1,. 25 February 1938, STFU Papers, reel 7.
29
‘Southern Tenant Farmers Union. Ritual’, p. 3.
30
‘Sign Manual and Ritual. Southern Tenant Farmers Union’, p. 4.
31
Georg Simmel, ‘The Secret Society’ in Kurt H. Wolff (ed and transl), The Sociology of
Georg Simmel, Free Press, New York, 1950. See also Norman Mackenzie, (ed.), Secret
Societies, Albus, London, 1967, pp. 300, 301.
32
Mackenzie, p. 18.
33
See Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane. The Nature of Religion (Translated by
Willard R. Trask), Harcourt Brace, New York, 1959 and Larry E. Shiner, ‘Sacred Space,
Profane Space, Human Space’, Journal of American Academy of Religion, Vol. 40, 1972, pp.
425-436.
34
David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal, American Sacred Space,: Indiana University
Press, Bloomington and Indiana, 1995, pp 22-23.
35
Ibid.,p. 8.
36
Ibid.,pp. 9,10.
37
When wage increases, attributed to the Union’s strike, triggered an influx of membership
applications, new comers to the all-black Edmondson local were required to ‘run the
gauntlet’ – applicants formed a queue and passed by existing members, each of whom hit
them with a belt strap. See Mitchell, Mean Things, p. 93; Mitchell, interview, p. 59,
Columbia Oral History Collection; H. L. Mitchell, ‘John A. Gamill’, filenote, 31 October,
1939, STFU Papers, reel 13.
38
J. R. Butler, who was the President of the STFU, was a member of the Freemasons. He
was also the
co-author of one of the Union’s ritual manuals. See J. R. Butler to Daniel Hill, Mashulaville,
Miss, 3 June 1939, STFU Papers, reel 11.
39
Mircea Eliade, Birth and Rebirth. The Religious Meanings of Initiation in Human Culture
(Translated by Willard R. Trask), Harper and Brothers, New York, 1958, p.38.
40
‘Sign Manual and Ritual. Southern Tenant Farmers Union’, pp. 6-7, 7-10 January 1942,
STFU Papers, reel 20.
41
J. R. Butler to Daniel Hill, Mashulaville, Mississippi, 7 September 1939, STFU Papers, reel
12.
42
J. R. Butler to J. H. Reed, Boyle, Mississippi, 7 June 1939, STFU Papers, reel 11.
43
‘Sign Manual and Ritual. Southern Tenant Farmers Union’, p. 11.
44
J. R. Butler to Major McNeal, Helm, Mississippi, 14 August, 1939, STFU Papers, reel 12.
45
Making the STFU burial ritual available for performance only when the family of the
deceased desired and regardless of whether preceding rituals were also performed at the
gravesite suggests that the ritual was intended to supplement rather than replace other burial
rituals.
46
J. R. Butler to Herbert J. Taylor, President, Chicago Rotary Club, 4 October 1939, STFU
Papers, reel 13.
47
Nigel Barley, Dancing on the Grave. Encounters with Death, Abacus, London, 1997, pp.
116-117.
48
Howard Kester, ‘An Open letter to the American Labor Movement and the Friends of the
Southern Tenant Farmers Union’, p. 5, March, 1939, STFU Papers, reel 11.
49
J. R. Butler and H. L. Mitchell to all STFU locals, 23 March, 1939, STFU Papers, reel 11;
STFU News, 21 March, 1939, p. 3, STFU Papers, reel 58.
50
Howard Kester to Alice Kester, 20 March 1939, Howard A. Kester Papers, microfilm
edition, reel 3.
14
51
AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES
J. R. Butler and H. L. Mitchell to all STFU locals, 23 March 1939, STFU Papers, reel 11.
Bell, Ritual Theory. Ritual Practice, pp. 92,93.
53
H. L. Mitchell to Greg Hall, 9 February 1989, in author’s possession.
54
Aaron Levenstein, Summary of Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention, Muskogee,
Oklahoma, 13-16 January 1937, STFU Papers, reel 4.
55
Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention, Muskogee, Oklahoma, 14-17 January 1937,
STFU Papers, reel 4.
56
Aaron Levenstein to Sidney Hertzberg, NYC, 15 December 1936, STFU Papers, reel 3.
57
A copy of ‘Ceremony of the Land’ is included in the papers for the STFU's third annual
convention, 13-16 January, 1937, STFU Papers, reel 4 and in the Howard Kester Papers, reel
11.
58
For a discussion of ritual’s ‘epideictic’ qualities see Rappaport, p. 83.
59
Rappaport, p. 137.
60
Annemarie De Waal Malefjit, Religion and Culture. An Introduction to the Anthropology
of Religion, Macmillan, New York, 1968, pp. 192-193.
61
Mitchell, Mean Things, p. 94.
52