MEAN THINGS HAPPENING IN THIS LAND: The Life and Times of H. L. Mitchell, Cofounder of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union

by H. L. Mitchell ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 18, 1979

Mitchell's account of his career as a union organizer of the unorganizable--Southern sharecroppers, farmers, ""pogy"" fishermen, and more--is too impersonal to be a memoir and too fragmented to be a history of the times. Yet his experiences form stepping stones from the Civil War to the civil rights movement. The plantation system of his boyhood Arkansas rested on the discipline of the ""riding bosses"" who were armed deputy sheriffs and on itinerant preachers who were paid by owners to convince the sharecroppers that ""their troubles came from their sinful ways rather than economic conditions."" In the face of these conditions, and inspired by Norman Thomas, Mitchell became a socialist. Although his portrait of radical rural socialism is familiar, it is still impressive. The Southern Tenant Farmers Union, which he helped organize, ""proposed the most revolutionary idea ever advanced in American agriculture. . . the collectivization of cotton production""; and this idea held its own against traditional unionism, communism, and the primitive agrarianism of Nashville intellectuals like Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, and Robert Penn Warren. But it could not survive technological progress and the growing power of ""privately owned collectivized corporate farm operations."" Along the way, the STFU struggled to find an identity in the labor movement, and much of the book is taken up with the squabbles of the AFL, the CIO, and the government. Unfortunately, Mitchell never clarifies the endless changes of names and affiliations. There are too many potted biographies besides, and too many narrative gaps--we are told about a fund drive that would have succeeded but for a ""life and death struggle"" which is only introduced several pages later. Still, there are many ""Mean Things"" (taken from an STFU song) to appeal to the partisan: when Mitchell tried to organize the Choctaw Indians, the chief replied that when the poor whites and blacks were ready to take back their lands, ""We will get our guns and we will come too. We do not need a union. We are already organized.

Pub Date: July 18, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Allanheld, Osmun

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1979

Categories: NONFICTION