Abstract
In January, 1936, when the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU) met in convention in Little Rock, union leaders had pledged to increase membership to 100,000. Six fiery working-class preachers helped to lead the union’s 14-member executive council. The movement remained strongest in John Handcox’s St. Francis County, where nearly 7,000 STFU members reportedly belonged to 81 locals; predominantly black locals in St. Francis and in nearby Crittenden County had strong women leaders. The new year seemed to herald the onset of a new era.1 However, John Handcox’s song, “There is mean things happening in this land,” explained how events burst STFU optimism in the winter and spring of 1936.
On the 18th day of May, the union called a strike
But planters and their bosses throwed the people outa their shacks.
There is mean things happening in this land.
There is mean things happening in this land.
But the unions going on and the unions growing strong.
There is mean things happening in this land.
The planters throwed the people off the land where many years they had spent,
And in the cold hard winter they had to live in tents.
There is mean things happening in this land…
The planters throwed their people out without a bite to eat.
They cursed them and kicked them and some with axe handles beat.
There is mean things happening in this land…
Their people got tired of working and that from sun to sun,
But the planters forced them to work at the point of their gun.
There is mean things happening in this land.
There is mean things happening in this land.
But the unions going on and the unions growing strong.
There is mean things happening in this land.
—-John Handcox
I was doing pretty well until a fiend of mine was up at the store and said some men had a rope and the limb and all they needed was me!
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Notes
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© 2013 Michael K. Honey
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Honey, M.K. (2013). There Is Mean Things Happening in This Land: Terror in Arkansas. In: Sharecropper’s Troubadour. Palgrave Studies in Oral History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137088369_5
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