Southern Tenant Farmers' Union

The Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU), later known as the National Farm Labor Union, the National Agricultural Workers Union, and the Agricultural and Allied Workers Union, was founded as a civil farmer's union to organize tenant farmers in the Southern United States. Many such tenant farmer sharecroppers were Black descendants of former slaves. Originally set up in July 1934 during the Great Depression, the STFU was founded to help sharecroppers and tenant farmers get better arrangements from landowners. They were eager to improve their share of profit or subsidies and working conditions. The STFU was established as a response to policies of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). Part of the New Deal, the AAA was a program to reduce production in order to increase prices of commodities; landowners were paid subsidies, which they were supposed to pass on to their tenants. The program was designed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to help revive the United States' agricultural industry and to recharge the depressed economy. The AAA called for a reduction in food production, which would, through a controlled shortage of food, raise the price for any given food item through supply and demand. The desired effect was that the agricultural industry would prosper due to the increased value and produce more income for farmers. In order to decrease food production, the AAA paid farmers to hold some of their land out of production; the money was paid to the landowners. The landowners were expected to share this money with the tenant farmers. While a small percentage of the landowners did share the income, the majority did not. The Southern Tenant Farmers Union was one of few unions in the 1930s that was open to all races. They promoted non-violent protest to gain their fair share of the AAA money. They also promoted the goal of blacks and whites working efficiently together. The Farmers Union met with harsh resistance from the landowners and local public officials. The Southern Tenant Farmers Union leaders were often harassed, attacked and many were killed. In the 1930s the union was active in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas. It later spread into the southeastern states and to California, sometimes affiliating with larger national labor federations. Its headquarters was mainly at Memphis, Tennessee. From 1948 to 1960, when it was dissolved, the STFU was based at Washington, D.C.