St. Louis and the Sharecroppers: Urban Connections to a Rural Protest

Abstract

Scholars have paid a great deal of attention to the Sharecroppers' Roadside Demonstration by evicted farmworkers, who camped out along rural high ways in Missouri's southeastern Bootheel in January 1939. This article differs from previous works by focusing on Fannie Cook and Marcus Al Murphy and their interactions with the sharecroppers. Cook, an affluent Jewish woman, and Murphy, an African-American member of the Com munist Party, both participated in the St. Louis Committee for the Reha bilitation of the Sharecroppers. After state officials removed the demonstra tors from the highways, Cook traveled to the Bootheel to observe conditions there and wrote a novel about what she saw. She also helped support the Sharecroppers' Camp, or Cropperville, a privately funded refuge for dis placed farmworkers. Murphy came to St. Louis in the mid-1930s to teach farmworkers how to organize. When the demonstrators went out onto the roadsides, he worked with labor organizations to collect and deliver sup plies. Ultimately, the connections between these urban supporters and rural protesters were personal, not ideological, reminding us that history is not about abstractions, but people.