Abstract
A MONG the many factors affecting the process of historical change within the United States today, one, more than any other, seems to stand out. This is the increasing use of the protest demonstration, both as a means of calling public attention to social ills and as a way of prodding government to take the necessary action to correct those ills. The effectiveness of the demonstrations of the 1950s and 1960s cannot yet, of course, be accurately measured. At least one earlier group protest, however-a sharecropper roadside demonstration in Southeast Missouri in 1939-does provide an excellent case study of how this device was successfully used during the depression as a peaceful weapon for social change. The 1939 sharecropper demonstration bears remarkable similarity to the contemporary protest movement. It was in the public view; it attracted national attention; it exposed conditions that shocked the public conscience; it was mostly composed of Negroes; it was charged with being inspired by outside agitators and Communists; it fomented cries of police terrorism; it brought about an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and it aroused considerable activity on the part of local citizens and state government. Finally, although the demonstration caused a stir in the upper echelons of the federal government, it apparently failed to bring about any fundamental change in the attitude of the New Deal toward the sharecropper and the tenant.' The 1939 demonstration occurred in the region of Missouri popularly re
Published Version
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