In 1939, Rev. Owen Whitfield of Du Quoin led the storied Missouri sharecroppers protest; Family members to re-enact protest Saturday, Jan. 11
Little did presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt know that when he spoke of "the forgotten man" during his 1932 campaign--in the grips of the Great Depression--he would later meet such a man from Du Quoin, a reverend who championed the 1939 Sharecroppers' Protest in Southeast Missouri.
Rev. Owen Whitfield, and his life is being celebrated January 11, 2014 during a re-enactment of what history would remember as the Sharecroppers Protest.
It will be held on Highway 62, east of Charleston in the vicinity of Snow's Corner, Road No. 323. Members of the Whitfield Foundation, along with sharecroppers, historians, family and friends of former Southeast Missouri sharecroppers will stage a re-enactment of the Sharecroppers Strike of 1939.
Perhaps more than any other single Great Depression-era event, this southeast Missouri protest, where sharecroppers proudly stood amid their meager belongings along two federal highways, made America's dispossessed visible to the nation. Yet, while the demonstration helped make Whitfield a national figure, it marked only a single episode in a life of much broader work among the downtrodden.
A loophole in government policy allowed plantation owners to keep government money they owed the sharecroppers--if they fired their current sharecroppers and hired new ones to take their place.
Whitfield had 15 children and some survive and live in the St. Louis area.
Whitfield, also known as "Cotton Patch Moses" was both a sharecropper and vice-president of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, which was dedicated to creating better conditions for farm workers. McGee said he told workers, "Take your eyes out of the sky because somebody is stealing your bread." Whitfield would work as an activist for almost 10 years between 1936 and 1946, first in the cotton fields of southeast Missouri and later in southern cities, into concerted collective action in pursuit of social and economic justice.
According to many accounts that seem to agree, one wintry morning in January 1939, residents of southeastern Missouri awoke to a startling sight. More than 1,500 sharecroppers - mostly African American, but whites too - had camped out alongside two state highways with their families and a few meager belongings. They were taking a stand - against the planters, the federal government, and the desperate conditions of their lives.
Day after day, the protesters huddled in tents with little protection against the frigid cold. The American Red Cross refused to help, calling their struggle "a man-made" disaster. Rev. Whitfield was forced to flee because of threats against his life.
But as Rev. Whitfield had hoped, dramatic photos, newspaper stories, and newsreels brought their plight to the nation. An embarrassed state government sent troopers to haul the protesters away to sites far from public view. "Concentration camps," the protesters called them. But students from historically black Lincoln University and activists from St. Louis Committee for the Rehabilitation of the Sharecroppers were attracted to the cause. With their assistance, some sharecroppers, still led by Owen Whitfield, established a cooperative farming community called Cropperville. And the Farm Security Administration was pressured to create ten other communities for sharecroppers in the Missouri Bootheel. Government officials and even planters began to discuss ways to help the sharecroppers.
After the changes brought by WWII and mechanization, residents began moving away from Cropperville the other communities, many joining the migration north. So did the Whitfields. But their protest demonstrated that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. Despite the odds they organized themselves, shut down a highway, attracted national attention, and changed government policies. In the words of the song they sang, many sharecroppers finally did find "Freedom, Oh Freedom, Oh Freedom After While."
When Whitfield left Cropperville, he came to Du Quoin, then headed other churches in Southern Illinois. He and wife Zella are buried in Mounds, Ill., the home of his last church and residence.
His fight has since been the subject of articles, a book, even a DVD Video produced by Webster College.