In the mid-1930's many sharecroppers in the South were being forced off of their lands by a changing economic climate. Efforts by the government to assist them, such as the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, often did them more harm than good. The AAA, one of Roosevelt's first New Deal programs, paid farmers to reduce the amount of crops that they produced by letting some of their land lie fallow. The landowners were supposed to divide their AAA checks with their tenant farmers. In reality, however, the landowners tended to reduce the number of acres planted by evicting their tenant farmers and did not share the AAA subsidy.
A group of Southern tenant farmers who were outraged by this situation organized the interracial Southern Tenant Farmers' Union. Although segregated in most work and social situations, African American and white tenant farmers joined forces to fight the landowners who had unjustly evicted them. First organized in Arkansas in 1934, the STFU's goals were a fair share of the government payments, higherwages for hired hands, and a better deal for tenants. The Union was despised, harassed, and accused of being led by Communists. Landowners worked with law-enforcement agents to threaten and harass the union members and break up their meetings.
Desperate for help, the STFU appealed to Roosevelt for aid. He responded with promises but no action. One disappointed STFU leader wrote, "Too often he has talked like a cropper and acted like a planter (land-owner).
Nevertheless, the actions of the STFU caused the nation to focus on the plight of the sharecropper. The very idea of a mixed black and white union caused a great stir. (Paraphrased from the textbook American Odyssey: McGraw/Hill pub. 1997. )
At times, gentlemen, poor Blacks and Whites carried the same piano in that race.
Regards, Shuckins