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Southern Tenant Farmers Union. The Green Rising, 1910-1977

Collection Number: 5204B

Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University Library

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The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union (STFU), a multi-racial union of sharecroppers, tenant farmers and small landowners, was founded in Arkansas in 1934 by a group of socialists. Its operations extended throughout the South, the Southwest, and California and came to include migrant farm workers, cannery workers, rice and sugar mill workers and fishermen.

Harry Leland Mitchell was a founding member and first executive secretary of the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union from 1934 to 1939. During this time, he was also an officer of the Socialist Party of Arkansas. After serving as a consultant and special assistant to the National Youth Administration and as an organizer for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, Mitchell was re-elected secretary of the STFU from 1941 to 1944 and served as president of its successor, the National Farm Labor Union. During the 1950's, Mitchell served on Dept. of Labor Committees and participated in various international labor activities, as well as helping to form the AFL-CIO's Agricultural Workers' Organizing Committee. During the 1960's, Mitchell continued to organize southern agricultural workers, as well as rice and sugar mill workers and fishermen. He also helped to found the Southern Mutual Help Association, Inc. of Louisiana (1969) and the Southern Rural Welfare Association (1971).

Thomas H. Gibbins was employed for many years by Western Union Telegraph Company and other concerns in Kansas City. In the early 1930's, he turned to farming and continued in that occupation until drought conditions forced him to move to California, where he held various jobs. From 1950 until 1965, he served as caretaker at the Children's Home Society of California.

During the Depression, Clyde L. Johnson was an activist in the National Student League. In Georgia, he organized unemployed and WPA workers, as well as farmers. As a member of the Communist Party, Johnson organized workers in the steel and coal industries of Alabama. In 1935, he became secretary of the Alabama Share Croppers Union and later served on the Southern Organizing Committee of the National Farmers' Union. He also held various posts in the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America, the Oil Workers Organizing Committee, the Newspaper Guild, the United Electrical Workers, and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. Since 1966, he has worked as a consultant and writer on labor.

During the 1940's, David S. Burgess served as Minister to Agricultural Labor for the United Church of Christ and worked with the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union among agricultural migrants, tenant farmers and small farmers in the South. In 1947, Burgess worked as an organizer for the Textile Workers' Union of America. In 1949, he became southern representative for the CIO Political Action Committee and, during the 1950's, served as executive secretary of the Georgia CIO Council. From 1955 to 1960, Burgess was the American labor attache in India. In the 1960's and '70's, he held various administrative posts in the Peace Corps and UNICEF.

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