148 Dispatch from a Mississippi Colored Farmers’ Alliance

Dispatch from a Mississippi Colored Farmers’ Alliance (1889)

Introduction to Primary Source:

The Colored Farmers’ Alliance, an African American alternative to the whites-only Southern Farmers’ Alliance, organized as many as a million Black southerners against the injustices of the predominately cotton- based, southern agricultural economy. Black Populists, however, were always more vulnerable to the violence of white southern conservatives than their white counterparts. Here, the publication The Forum publishes an account of violence against Black Populists in Mississippi.

Document:

Some Knights of Labor in Louisiana ventured to ask their employers for a larger share of the plantation crops; they were called rioters, and shot down in cold blood. Such occurrences have taken place in various sections. Take, for instance, the case of the suppression of the Farmers’ Alliances at Minter City, Mississippi. Minter City is in the rich, cotton-growing region of Tallahatchie County. White lecturers of the Farmers’ Alliances went there and organized Alliance stores. Colored people joined the organizations. The Alliance at Durant, on the Illinois Central Railroad, advanced supplies. The farmers began to patronize these stores, instead of the local traders, who had charged them enormous profits, swallowing up their little earnings. These local traders determined that the Alliances should be broken up. The annexed extracts from the St. Louis “Globe-Democrat,” in a dispatch dated December 2, 1889, tell how it was done.

“Of all the’ Nigger killings’ charged up to Mississippi, the recent campaign in the Tallahatchie country was the worst. The smallest estimate of the number shot is 20. The largest return of casualties is 200 dead. Probably 40 Negroes were murdered before the work ceased. The sole offense which called for such a terrible lesson was the organization of a Colored Farmers’ Alliance, and the attempt to put in practice the plan of patronizing an Alliance store. Against the right of the Negro to enjoy the benefits of the Farmers’ Alliance organization, the white store-keepers and planters of the Tallahatchie country banded themselves together. They began by exiling Cromwell, the agent of the commercial company. The usual reports now went out that the Negroes were organizing and arming for a race conflict. Then the killing began. … There was no battle. There was no resistance by the Negroes. The white store-keepers and planters, armed with Winchesters, rode through the country picking out their victims. … The condemned man was made to stand facing a tree, and a volley was fired at his back. Then the white store-keepers and planters rode on to the next place. It is known that at least 20 Negroes were killed in this way. … The outline of facts comes from white men and Democrats. … When the white store-keepers and planters had concluded their work they met and adopted the following resolutions:

“Whereas, it is the sense of this meeting that the organization known here as the Colored Farmers’ Alliance is being diverted from its original or supposed purpose,

“Resolved, that we, the planters and citizens of Tallahatchie River, hereby request the Durant Commercial Company to desist from selling goods or loaning money to said organization … and we hereby serve notice that goods or other things shipped to the secretaries or managers of said Alliance shall not be delivered. …We do not intend to, and we will not submit to, a combination subversive of our fortunes, our lives, and our property.

“Resolved, that the secretary of this meeting be required to notify the editor of the Colored Farmers’ ‘Alliance Advocate,’ published at Valden, Miss., that the issuance of copies of his paper to subscribers at the Shell Mound, McNutt, Sunnyside, Minter City, Graball, and Sharkey post offices shall be stopped, and to notify him further that a disregard of this notice will be treated as it should deserve by a united and outraged community.

“Resolved, that the members of this meeting pledge themselves individually and collectively to carry out these resolutions in letter and spirit.

“Resolved, that the Secretary forward a copy of the proceedings of this meeting to said Durant Commercial Company and the editor of the Colored Farmers’ ‘Alliance Advocate,’ by mail.”

The local Tallahatchie county paper says:

“These resolutions look harsh and arbitrary, but when the fearful ignorance and prejudice of the Negroes are taken into account, it is indisputable that a combination of any kind among them is dangerous and needs more or less surveillance. They frequently prostitute their churches and benevolent orders to wrongful purposes.”

In view of the incidents and purposes of the foregoing brutal and bloody Minter City tragedy, well does the “Globe-Democrat” ask: “What will the National Farmers’ Alliance do about this?” On the other hand, what, may we ask, will not the southern Democrats do when the southern Farmers’ Alliances not only organize co-operative stores, but also undertake to elect members of the Farmers’ Alliances as State officers and congressmen?

We give the answer: they will not be allowed a free canvass or an honest count. They will be trampled under foot by reckless southern Democrats. Free politics does not exist at the South. Freedom is there a mockery to the black man; suffrage is a sham to all Republicans. All that a national law can accomplish toward fair elections at the South, both for the Republican and Farmers’ Alliance candidates, should be done. But more than that is needed. When southern Democrats like Senator Pugh openly proclaim that national laws, constitutionally enacted, are to be resisted at the South unto bloodshed, there should be aroused everywhere at the North a sentiment of indignation; and this, growing stronger each day, should at last resemble that northern uprising of former days, which, overcoming commercial cowardice and dough-faced subserviency, first thrust slavery back to its gloomy lair, and next, on due provocation, invaded its precincts and destroyed the monster forever.’

Source: The Forum, vol. 9 (New York: Forum Publishing Company, 1889), 716-717. Available online via Google Books (https://books.google.com/books?id=S3cXAQAAIAAJ).

Lucy Parsons on Women and Revolutionary Socialism (1905)

Lucy Parsons was born into slavery in Texas, married a white radical, Albert Parsons, and moved to Chicago where they both worked on behalf of radical causes. After Albert Parsons was executed for conspiracy in the aftermath of the Haymarket bombing, Lucy Parsons emerged as a major American radical and vocal advocate of anarchism. In 1905, she spoke before the founding convention of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

I wish to state to you that I have taken the floor because no other woman has responded, and I feel that it would not be out of place for me to say in my poor way a few words about this movement. We, the women of this country, have no ballot even if we wished to use it, and the only way that we can be represented is to take a man to represent us. You men have made such a mess of it in representing us that we have not much confidence in asking you; and I for one feel very backward in asking the men to represent me. We have no ballot, but we have our labor. I think it is August Bebel, in his Woman in the Past, Present and Future—a book that should be read by every woman that works for wages—Bebel says that men have been slaves throughout all the ages, but that woman’s condition has been worse, for she has been the slave of a slave.

There was never a greater truth uttered. We are the slaves of the slaves. We are exploited more ruthlessly than men. Wherever wages are to be reduced the capitalist class use women to reduce them …

… It is a bread and butter question, an economic issue, upon which the fight must be made. Now, what do we mean when we say revolutionary Socialist? We mean that the land shall belong to the landless, the tools to the toiler, and the products to the producers. Now, let us analyze that for just a moment, before you applaud me. First, the land belongs to the landless. Is there a single land owner in this country who owns his land by the constitutional rights given by the constitution of the United States who will allow you to vote it away from him? I am not such a fool as to believe it. We say, “The tools belong to the toiler.” They are owned by the capitalist class. Do you believe they will allow you to go into the halls of the legislature and simply say, “Be it enacted that on and after a certain day the capitalist shall no longer own the tools and the factories and the places of industry, the ships that plow the ocean and our lakes?”

Do you believe that they will submit? I do not. We say, “The product belongs to the producers.” It belongs to the capitalist class as their legal property. Do you think that they will allow you to vote them away from them by passing a law and saying, “Be it enacted that on and after a certain day Mr. Capitalist shall be dispossessed?” You may, but I do not believe it. Hence, when you roll under your tongue the expression that you are revolutionists, remember what that word means. It means a revolution that shall turn all these things over where they belong—to the wealth producers.

Now, how shall the wealth-producers come into possession of them? I believe that if every man and every woman who works, or who toils in the mines, the mills, the workshops, the fields, the factories and the farms in our broad America should decide in their minds that

they shall have that which of right belongs to them, and that no idler shall live upon their toil, and when your new organization, your economic organization, shall declare as man to man and woman to woman, as brothers and sisters, that you are determined that you will possess these things, then there is no army that is large enough to overcome you, for you yourselves constitute the army. Now, when you have decided that you will take possession of these things, there will not need to be one gun fired or one scaffold erected.

You will simply come into your own, by your own independence and your own manhood, and by asserting your own individuality, and not sending any man to any legislature in any State of the American Union to enact a law that you shall have what is your own; yours by nature and by your manhood and by your very presence upon this Earth. Nature has been lavish to her children. She has placed in this Earth all the material of wealth that is necessary to make men and women happy. She has given us brains to go into her storehouse and bring from its recesses all that is necessary. She has given us these two hands and these brains to manufacture them on a parallel with all other civilizations.

… Now, I thank you for the time that I have taken up of yours. I hope that we will meet again some time, you and I, in some hall where we can meet and organize the wage workers of America, the men and women, so that the children may not go into the factories, nor the women into the factories, unless they go under proper conditions.

I hope even now to live to see the day when the first dawn of the new era will have arisen, when capitalism will be a thing of the past, and the new industrial republic, the commonwealth of labor, shall be in operation. I thank you.

Source:International Workers of the World, Proceedings of The First Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World (New York: New York Labor News Company, 1905), 167-172. Available online via Google Books (https://books.google.com/books?id=ifRQAQAAMAAJ).