Working in the shade: agriculture, race, and recreational landscapes in Connecticut, 1940–1950

Abstract

During the middle decades of the twentieth century, shade tobacco growers in the state of Connecticut employed white high school students from Florida and Pennsylvania, as well as African Americans from southern black colleges and high schools to harvest and process their crop. This paper traces the history of these workers as a means for examining overlooked processes of racialization in rural New England, and for expanding on discussions of race, agriculture, and rural landscapes through the context of leisure. I argue that racialization among student workers unfolded according to the structure, management, and representation of leisure and the recreational landscapes that were opened (or closed) to them. Additional contexts bearing on this process included gender, class, and status as resident or non-resident, each of which informed race-based discussions about leisure and recreational landscapes. This empirical study infuses cultural geographic studies of race and agriculture, whether in New England or beyond, with a depth of perspective not normally associated with rural landscapes. It argues for the extension of cultural geographic inquiry on leisure and racialization into the contexts of agricultural and rural landscapes.