AGAINST ALL ODDS, SHARECROPPERS TRIKE

The roadside scenery of U.S. Highway 60 changed on the night of Jan. 9, 1939, as several families began congregating together with what little possessions they owned. They sat along the highway all night, and by noon the next day there were more than 1,000 people camped with them.

The homeless gathered together, black and white alike, with their furniture, household goods and livestock to protest the evictions of tenants and sharecroppers by local landlords. Homeless sharecropper Cleve Mattox told a reporter from Poplar Bluff's Daily American Republic in 1939, "This is the first time in my life I never had anywhere to go and had to sit my family down here on the side of the highway."

The hungry people were met with curious stares from motorists traveling along Highway 60 on their way to work that morning and from locals passing by to see what all the fuss was about that afternoon. All in all, more than 250 families moved to the roadsides between Sikeston and Hayti to show the people of Southeast Missouri that they had nowhere else to go.

The sharecroppers had a story to tell, one filled with few rights, little independence, horrible working conditions and an uncertain future. Most of these families had moved to the Bootheel to start a new life for their families by cultivating cotton. Unable to afford land of their own, the families agreed to become tenants and cultivate acreage for a landlord/landowner in exchange for a place to live and half of the gross proceeds from the crop just until they had saved enough money to purchase a small farm of their own. This soon became a money trap, however, because the sharecropper must repay his landlord with interest for use of the land and shelter. The remaining money was used to live off of until the next crop season. Unable to save enough money to buy his own land, the sharecropper was forced to rely on his landlord for work, food and money.

Under the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the government distributed parity payments to the landlords due to crop reductions. These payments were to be distributed to the sharecroppers and tenants in proportion to their share in the crop. To avoid sharing their payments, the landowners evicted their sharecroppers in favor of cheaper day labor. The landowners saw nothing wrong with evicting their tenants to save money. Landowner James Reeves told the Daily American Republic in 1939, "It's not fair to expect the landowner, who bears all the responsibility and expense and gets only his half of the crop, to scrape and deny himself to feed people who won't do something for themselves."

The eviction of the sharecroppers caught the attention of African-American preacher Owen Whitfield. A charismatic and confident union organizer, Whitfield was one of the organizers of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. The STFU was groundbreaking because it was interracial, something virtually unheard of in 1930s Southeast Missouri. Whitfield wanted to make the public aware of the unjust conditions that the sharecroppers had been subjected to. As dawn broke over the cold and weary homeless the morning of Jan. 10, 1939, their plight could no longer be ignored.

The initial reaction at the exposure of the dreadful conditions of the farm workers was one of shocked incredulity. The snow and ice on the ground did nothing to hurt the demonstration because it increased the difficulty of living for the sharecroppers. The public officials' first concern was to get the sharecroppers out of public view. It would take three days and the intervention of the state health commissioner to achieve that goal. The roadside camps were declared a menace to public health on Jan. 13, 1939, and the homeless were forced to disband and seek some sort of shelter.

The majority of the landowners refused to take their tenants back in, and the majority of the tenants expressed no interest in even trying to return. The main problem facing everyone now was where the evicted tenants and sharecroppers could go. Whitfield had earlier organized the St. Louis Committee for the Rehabilitation of the Sharecroppers to help with the situation. The committee purchased a 90-acre tract of land in Butler County to serve as a refuge for some of the families. An area behind the levee at New Madrid, later referred to as "Homeless Junction," was made available for 100 of the families. An abandoned dance hall in Charleston served as temporary shelter for 45 more families and the remaining 100 families were still left without anywhere to go.

The protest spurred government officials to build housing for the sharecroppers on land that they could buy and own. In February 1939, several STFU co-founders and officers came up with the idea of 10 villages being established in five of the seven Bootheel counties. The villages would be located near already established towns so that the individuals would be able to get jobs in industrial or agricultural areas. The Farm Security Administration labeled the settlements the Delmo Labor Homes Project and the FSA used the roadside demonstrators as the fundamental start to the villages.

Construction of the houses began in 1940, and by the end of the project in 1941, 595 houses had been constructed. The villages were racially segregated and composed of 30 to 80 houses per village. Each house was luxurious to the families in comparison to how they had been living. The four-room houses were furnished with closets, built-in cabinets and storage space for fruits and vegetables. Each house had a one-bedroom suite, a dining table, a coal-heating stove and a cooking stove. The houses were also wired for electricity and included a personal privy and a one-acre plot for the families to grow food.

Four of the villages were constructed for African-Americans, leaving six villages for the white sharecroppers. North Wyatt (Wilson City), North Lilbourn, Gobler and South Wardell were the villages reserved for the African-Americans. The movement that had begun so groundbreaking and peaceful ended with government-imposed racial segregation.

The villages were arranged in a circular pattern around a common area, which included a well and water tower, manager's office, clinic, showers, laundry facilities, demonstration kitchens and assembly rooms. A town near Grayridge called Circle City, in Stoddard County, is apparently named after the original circular shaped village. Rent for these houses was approximately $6 a month and the total cost for the house and its furnishings came to $800. The sharecroppers' monthly payments were raised to $10.80 in January 1948; all payments were completed by 1954.

The plight of the sharecroppers has not been forgotten. Many of the homes built for them still stand as testaments to their struggle for basic rights. Many of the houses are currently occupied, and in Lilbourn some of them have been determined eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

Although the immediate results of the roadside demonstration were small and localized, they were much needed and welcome changes. Uncertain of their futures, 250 brave families faced the cold, the racist and the uncaring in a desperate attempt to change their lives for the better. Against all odds, they succeeded.