Hammer and Hoe by Robin D. G. Kelley

Author:Robin D. G. Kelley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 1990-04-04T04:00:00+00:00

The NFU's radical shift, the Farm Holiday Association's decline in the Midwest, and strained relations between Communists and STFU leaders convinced Johnson that the Party should further alter its current farm policy. After two days of meetings during the ninth CPUSA convention in 1936, Johnson argued convincingly before the Central Committee that the future of rural radicalism lay in the NFU. Having won the support of Earl Browder, James Ford, and Comintern officials, Johnson was asked to work on the Agrarian Commission to implement the new policy nationally, a task he accepted reluctantly. Although he was allowed to return south to tie up loose ends and begin merger negotiations between state organizers of the NFU and the SCU, Johnson spent much of his time organizing NFU locals in the Northeast and Midwest.33

The Party's new policy was announced three weeks later during the SCU's first national convention held in New Orleans. The executive board strongly appealed for a united front with the AFU on a number of agricultural and civil rights issues and proposed the creation of joint committees to discuss the possibility of merging the two organizations. The merger proposal divided the Farmers’ Union and touched off a power struggle between the conservative leadership and the radical caucus that had been simmering for some time. The radicals, backed by strong labor supporters from Winston and Walker counties, won in the end, the AFU enthusiastically endorsing the merger proposal at its state convention in October 1936. Incensed by this development, R. H. Sartain resigned as president, and a handful of his loyalists left the convention in disgust.34

In addition to bringing a few thousand black tenants and small farmers into the hitherto all-white organization, the radicals pressed the Farmers’ Union even further to the left. A movement once dominated by staunch racists, the AFU now adopted a civil rights plank, ardently supported the newly created CIO, and accepted the SCU's slogan of “40 Acres and a Mule” as its own. It also developed marketing and purchasing cooperatives and sought to secure low-interest government loans, land grants, and federal assistance for purchasing materials. More importantly, the AFU promoted the Sharecrop Contract, a uniform agreement drafted by Johnson that was intended to clarify the terms of settlement between tenants and landlords. The contract required that all advances and wages be paid in cash, stated the tenant's right to sell his or her own crop, obliged landlords to furnish a written monthly statement of accounts, and listed the specific duties of both the tenant and the landlord with respect to crops and harvesting.35

The AFU's radical shift and incorporation of its poor black constituency, however, was neither smooth nor swift. Critical of the AFU's willingness to accept wealthy landlords into its ranks, Johnson realized a few months later that union leadership did not “understand sharecropper problems and . . . they are not proposing anything to suit their conditions.” In terms of day-to-day organizing in the black belt, the AFU contributed very little at first, especially in the way of financial support.

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