The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1932-12-06
Negro Farmers Fight!
National Farm Conference Is Indication of
Rising Struggle of the Farmers
By MOE RRAGIN


The following article is especial
ly timely in view of the National
Farm Conference which opens
tomorrow in Washington.
THREE-FOURTHS Of the Negroes
L in the Black Belt live in the
farm regions. The blood and sweat
of millions Of these men. women,
and children fattens the land which
grows cane. cotton. rice, tobacco.
John L. Spivak's Georgia Niger"
shows this clearly.
Turpenttne clippers make forty
cents day. Dipping lasts five
months a year. The rest of the
time the colored worker is told to
root like hog or die. Harvesting
tobacco, he's lucky to get as much
as a mule-fifty cents a day. For
thirteen hours a day peach pickers
were making seventy cents while
the grower was getting four dollars
a bushel last season. Where he used
TO make three dollars harvesting
rice, he gets now a dollar. Seventy
cents day is all the wages for cut
ting cane. Under a sun like ter
rible leech, cotton pickets are lucky
to make fifty cents working from
dawn TO dark. There are places
IN the Black Belt where pickers
work out under the moon to make
ten cents more.
Conditions Grow Worse
AS the crisis deepens, conditions
become worse. Cotton falls below
six cents pound. Rice cane, to-
bacco sell below cost. Share Crop
pers, tenants and small farmers are
forced off the land. Hunting work,
they are forced to pit themselves
against the hosts of unemployed. If
they are able TO hold on by the
skin of their teeth, the shadow of
the contemplating machine begins
to darken their days. Experts say
1t will be on the market soon. 1t
will be able to pick bale at one
fifth what handpicking costs. 1t
will drive more farmers out into
the road.
Negro workers and farmers are
rousing themselves against such
Sayagery and exploitation. They
are beginning to fight the landlords
and buyers who cheat them at the
scales and sugar mill and lynch
them when they protest. They are
beginning TO understand that or
ganization and resistance are two
barrels of a shotgun more to be
trusted than even such kindly"
whites like Ramsay in Georgia
Niger" In Elaine, Arkansas, Oct,
1918, Negro sharecroppers organized
the Progressive Farmers and House
hold Union and fought bitterly
against the plantation owners.
When Coney marched down TO the
town of England, Ark, TO demand
food, Negro farmers marched with
him. What happened In Camp Hill,
Alabama, will go down in the his
tory of the American working class
as one Of the most militant of its
struggles. In this district during
the crisis the larger landlords be-
gan to steal the holdings Of the
Negro farmers. One landlord in
creased his holdings from $50 acres
to $4,000 in two years. This drove
thousands of Negroes off the land
to beg or fight for the little work
left to do. To protect themselves
the Negro farmers formed the
Sharecroppers' Union. BY July,
1881 there were eight hundred
farmers in it.
The Union demanded relief, cash
settlement for the season at cot
ton picking, right of cropper to
have his own garden, right Of crop
per TO sell his produce for cash
where and when he pleased instead
of turning it over to the landlord
for division, nine months Negro
school with free school bus. The
sharecroppers we're attacked. Ralph
Grey, one Of their leaders, was
killed. -Four other choppers dis
appeared" When the sheriff was
asked by the newspapers what had
happened to those four troopers.
- satA 'zssn vent off to cut