American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta

289 Pages·2003·1.17 MB·English

by  Nan Elizabeth Woodruff

AMERICAN CONGO

AMERICAN CONGO
The African American
Freedom Struggle in the Delta
Nan Elizabeth Woodruff
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge,Massachusetts,andLondon,England 2003
ForIreneSilverblatt
Copyright©2003bythePresidentandFellowsofHarvardCollege
Allrightsreserved
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Woodruff,NanElizabeth,1949–
AmericanCongo:theAfricanAmericanfreedomstruggleintheDelta/
NanElizabethWoodruff.
p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN0-674-01047-7
1.AfricanAmericans—Civilrights—Mississippi—Delta(Region)—
History—20thcentury. 2.AfricanAmericans—Civilrights—Arkansas—
ArkansasDelta—History—20thcentury. 3.Sharecroppers—Mississippi—
Delta(Region)—Socialconditions—20thcentury. 4.Sharecroppers—
Arkansas—ArkansasDelta—Socialconditions—20thcentury. 5.Civil
rightsmovements—Mississippi—Delta(Region)—History—20thcentury.
6.Civilrightsmovements—Arkansas—ArkansasDelta—History—20th
century. 7.Plantationlife—Mississippi—Delta(Region)—History—20th
century. 8.Plantationlife—Arkansas—ArkansasDelta—History—20th
century. 9.Delta(Miss.:Region)—Racerelations. 10.Arkansas
Delta(Ark.)—Racerelations. I.Title.
F347.M6W6672003
976.2′400496073—dc21 2002191341
Contents
Introduction 1
1 TheForgingoftheAlluvialEmpire 8
2 TensionsofEmpire 38
3 TheKillingFields 74
4 TheBlackPeople’sBurden 110
5 RevoltagainstMeanThings 152
6 AWarwithinaWar 191
Notes 229
Acknowledgments 269
Index 273

Introduction
In 1921, freedom fighter William Pickens, a native Arkansan, described
the Mississippi River Valley as the “American Congo.” As field secretary
for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
Pickens and his organization had recently investigated in the region nu-
merous lynchings, cases of coerced labor, and a major massacre that had
followedWorldWarI.ItisnotsurprisingthathechosetheCongoashis
metaphor for the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta. Planters in the region
had forged an “alluvial empire” in the early twentieth century that, like
BelgianKingLeopoldII’sAfricanCongointhelatenineteenthandearly
twentieth centuries, wore the face of science and progressivism, yet was
underwritten by labor conditions that were anything but progressive.
KingLeopoldusedtherhetoricofupliftandbenevolencetomaskhisre-
lentlesssearchforivoryandrubberintheCongo.Leopold’smenburned
villages and their inhabitants, raped the women, cut off the hands and
heads of thousands of Congolese, and worked them in chain gains until
they dropped from hunger and exhaustion. The horrors of Leopold’s
CongoweresogreatthatleadingAfricanAmericansinthelatenineteenth
andearlytwentiethcenturiesdemandedanendtosuchpractices.Thehis-
torian George Washington Williams and the leading black political figure
oftheday,BookerT.Washington,joinedwithleadersoftheBlackBaptist
Church to lobby President Theodore Roosevelt on behalf of the Congo-
lesepeople.1
Atlanticworldslaveryhadbeenabolishedinthelatenineteenthcentury,
butallofthewesternpowersengaged,inthefollowingcentury,invarious
forms of coerced labor as they sought to extract the natural riches from
their colonies. Delta planters were no different in their corner of the
world. They may not have cut off the heads and hands of their African
Americanworkers,buttheyengagedinpeonage,murder,theft,andother
1
22 AMERICAN CONGO
forms of terror to retain their labor. Some of the meanest corners of the
“heart of darkness” were found in the Delta during the first half of the
twentieth century. And yet the imperialism and the human carnage it
wrought did not go unchallenged by those whose lives were being trans-
formedordestroyed.Slaves,peasants,plantationworkers,andthosewho
laboredinotherextractiveindustries,suchasmining,timber,andrubber,
fought their oppression in numerous ways, seeking to protect their land
andfamiliesagainsttheintrusionofcapitalismandwhiteracism.2
The Delta plantation economy emerged when U.S. and European cap-
italistswereestablishingthemselvesthroughouttheworld.Onsomelevel,
the Delta was part of this larger expansion of capitalism in the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries as U.S. capitalists joined with the
Dutch,British,andFrenchindiversifyingtheirholdings,lookingfornew
markets and sources for raw materials in the colonial world.3 Within the
context of United States and southern history, the Delta represented a
“NewSouth”plantationeconomyandsocietythatgrewoutoftheclaim-
ingandclearingofthevastswamplandsoftheMississippiRiver.Lumber-
menfromtheNortheast,Midwest,andEnglandinvadedtheserichforests
inthelatenineteenthandearlytwentiethcenturies,clearingthelandand
pavingthewayforwhatHaroldWoodmanhascalledtheriseofthe“busi-
ness plantations.” Delta plantations in the twentieth century were orga-
nizedalongcorporatelinesandtheyoperatedaccordingtotheprinciples
of scientific management, which required the close supervision of a rou-
tinized and disciplined labor force—in this case, African American share-
croppersanddaylaborers.4
PromotersoftheregionsoldtheDeltaasan“alluvialempire”ofuntold
riches, a land of progressive farmers who had left behind the Old South
past of slavery, racism, ignorance, poverty, and defeat. A wealthy planter
class soon emerged in the Delta, many of whose members came from
other parts of the country and just as many others claiming southern
roots. Like imperialists at the time, the progressive empire these planters
createdrestedonthesweatandlaborofalargely“coloured”laborforce.
AmericahaditsCongo.5
UnderneaththedeclaredprogressivismofthenewDeltaeconomylaya
labor system underwritten by segregation and disfranchisement that kept
black people poor and stripped of the basic civil and human rights ac-
corded to other Americans in the twentieth century. A web of peonage
and vagrancy laws sent to convict labor camps on the New South planta-
Introduction 33
tionsuntoldnumbersofmen,women,andchildren—manyofwhomdis-
appeared forever, while others managed to survive the harsh conditions
andeventuallyreturntotheirfamilies.Countysheriffs,judges,andjustices
ofthepeace,oftenlandownersthemselves,workedwithplanterstoensure
thatnoidleblackpeopleexisted.6
Thosewhoescapedthelaborcampsandworkedassharecroppersfound
aworldcompletelydefinedbytheplanters’needforcheaplabor.Asshare-
croppers, they sold their labor for wages paid in the form of a portion of
the cotton crop. They brought only their labor to the contract, receiving
fromthelandlordtheirhousing,food,clothing,toolsofproduction,live-
stock, seed, and feed—all charged to a credit system that kept them in
debt. Planters also built the schools and churches of their workers, often
payingthepreachersandtheteachers,andtheycontrolledthemail,seek-
ingtosupervisewhatcroppersreadandwithwhomtheycorresponded.7
Inthealluvialempire,planterscontrolledalllevelsofgovernment:fed-
eral, state, and local. This modern empire was characterized by a polity
that defined citizenship in terms of race and that drew a weak distinction
between the functions of the various levels of government and those of
civil society.8 What is worse, this was not all a matter of local or regional
state jurisdiction—legal disfranchisement of black people was sanctioned
by the U.S. Supreme Court, forcing African Americans to enter into an
unequal bargain with employers for whatever social space they could ob-
tain in civil society. In the political arena, planters controlled the political
officesthathadadirectbearingonblackpeoples’interests.WhereverAfri-
canAmericansturned,theyencounteredaworldcircumscribedbyconsta-
bles and justices of the peace who harassed them by arbitrarily enforcing
vagrancy laws, by sheriffs who either ignored or engaged in peonage, by
planters who had the power to protect their workers from arrests or to
send them to the state penitentiary, and, as if that were not enough, by
white mobs who resorted to the extralegal terror of lynching to remind
them of the costs involved in defying planter authority. Planters may not
havepostedtheheadsoftheirlaborersatopspikesinfrontoftheirdwell-
ingsasdidLeopold’ssoldiersintheCongo,buttheydidrape,burn,and
torture them. Some even took photographs of the lynchings and sent
themaspostcardstotheirfriendsandrelatives,andotherscutofftheirvic-
tim’s remaining parts and saved them as souvenirs, to be passed down as
familyrelicsalongwiththesilverorConfederatememorabilia.9
As horrible as this world seemed, black people found ways of fighting
back.Attimestheydidsoasindividuals;inotherinstances,theirstruggle