Cotton pickers' strike of 1891

v t e Agricultural strikes
1800s Thibodaux sugar 1887 Cotton pickers 1891 1900s–1920s Oxnard 1903 Seattle fishermen 1912 Grabow lumber 1912 Wheatland hops 1913 northern Minnesota lumber 1916–1917 Hanapepe sugar 1924 Imperial cantaloupe 1928 1930s Imperial lettuce 1930 Santa Clara cannery 1931 Vacaville tree pruners 1932 Wisconsin milk 1933 Yakima hops 1933 California agricultural (Santa Clara cherry, El Monte berry) 1933 Great lumber 1935 Stockton cannery 1937 1940s–present Hawaiian sugar 1946 Puget Sound fishermen 1949 Delano grape (1965–1970) Salad Bowl 1970 Watsonville Cannery (1985–1987) Frito-Lay 2021

Agricultural strikes

1800s

Thibodaux sugar 1887
Cotton pickers 1891

1900s–1920s

1930s

Imperial lettuce 1930
Santa Clara cannery 1931
Vacaville tree pruners 1932
Wisconsin milk 1933
Yakima hops 1933
California agricultural (Santa Clara cherry, El Monte berry) 1933
Great lumber 1935
Stockton cannery 1937

1940s–present

Hawaiian sugar 1946
Puget Sound fishermen 1949

Delano grape (1965–1970)
Salad Bowl 1970
Watsonville Cannery (1985–1987)
Frito-Lay 2021

The cotton pickers' strike of 1891 was a labor action of African-American sharecroppers in Lee County, Arkansas in September, 1891. The strike led to open conflict between strikers and plantation owners, racially-motivated violence, and both a sheriff's posse and a lynching party. One plantation manager, two non-striking workers, and some twelve strikers were killed during the incident. Nine of those strikers were hung in a mass lynching on the evening of September 29.

Background

In 1886 the Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union had been founded by R.M. Humphrey, a white Baptist minister, reformer, and member of the parallel white Farmers' Alliance organization. Early in September 1891, Humphrey called for a national African-American strike of sharecroppers against planters, in response to the planters setting 50-cent-per-100-pound prices at their summer conventions.

Despite its extensive claimed membership of millions, and despite Humphrey's announcement of 600,000 members firmly committed to strike for $1 per 100 pounds, the strike promoted for September 12 took hold nowhere. Additionally, many landowners who became aware of the planned strike took steps to suppress or outright prevent the strike through increased police presence and pacification tactics such as smaller raises. Its failure was noted and documented with some satisfaction in newspapers across the cotton-growing south. The one exception was in Lee County, a location with its own history of conflict, on the Mississippi River and across from Memphis, Tennessee. Ben Patterson, a Black labor organizer from Memphis, traveled to Lee County at the beginning of September 1891 and began to organize a strike among local cotton pickers. Patterson's efforts were significantly more successful than those of Humphrey, garnering the support of at least twenty-five pickers in Lee County.

The strike

Workers for planter Colonel H.P. Rodgers struck on September 20, demanding higher wages, and began traveling through the county looking for support. These workers were from Memphis, led by a Ben Patterson. Among other workers in the county they found no support. A brawl between striking and non-striking workers killed two on September 25. On the 28th the strikers killed a notorious plantation manager named Miller and burned a cotton gin.

A posse, with some black members, was organized under Sheriff Derrick of Marianna to track down the remaining strikers and Patterson, partly on the grounds that Miller the plantation manager had been deputized. On September 29 the search led north to an island near Horseshoe Lake in Crittenden County. The strikers had been trying to work north, back to President's Island and then to Memphis. In an open battle the posse killed two strikers and captured nine. At more or less the same time, Patterson alone escaped to the steamboat James Lee and admitted his story, but was extracted from the boat, taken ashore, and shot. The nine prisoners under guard by the sheriff's men were intercepted on the road by a masked lynching party, greatly outnumbering them, that took the prisoners and hung them one by one.

The Arkansas Gazette ran coverage under the title "Lee County Trouble Settled with Rope". The incident directly led to the collapse of the Colored Farmers' Alliance.

References

Lancaster, Guy. "Cotton Pickers Strike of 1891". Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
"untitled". New York Times. 2 October 1891. Retrieved 29 November 2018., as quoted in "Crime and Criminal Law in the United States", the Edinburgh Review or Critical Journal, July 1892, pgs. 12-13
Hild, Matthew (25 May 2010). Greenbackers, Knights of Labor, and Populists: Farmer-Labor Insurgency in the Late-Nineteenth-Century South. University of Georgia Press. p. 143. ISBN 9780820336565. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
"Colored Farmers' Alliance and Laborers' Union, Tennessee". Tennessee Encyclopedia. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
"Colored cotton pickers strike". New Orleans Times-Picayune. 7 September 1891. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
^ Biegert, M. L. (1998-09-01). "Legacy of Resistance: Uncovering the History of Collective Action by Black Agricultural Workers in Central East Arkansas from the 1860s to the 1930s". Journal of Social History. 32 (1): 73–99. doi:10.1353/jsh/32.1.73. ISSN 0022-4529.
Lancaster, Guy. "Cotton Pickers Strike of 1891". Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
Wyman, Mark (27 April 2010). Hoboes: Bindlestiffs, Fruit Tramps, and the Harvesting of the West. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 121. ISBN 9781429945905. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
"Wiping Out the Negroes". Indianapolis Journal. 2 October 1891. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
Lancaster, Guy (31 December 2017). Bullets and Fire: Lynching and Authority in Arkansas, 1840-1950. University of Arkansas Press. p. 82. ISBN 9781610756228. Retrieved 29 November 2018.
Holmes, William F. (1973). "The Arkansas Cotton Pickers Strike of 1891 and the Demise of the Colored Farmers's Alliance". The Arkansas Historical Quarterly. 32 (2): 107–119. doi:10.2307/40030730. JSTOR 40030730.

v t e Major armed conflicts in American labor union history
19th century	Great Railroad Strike, 1877 Rock Springs massacre, 1885 Bay View massacre, 1886 Haymarket affair, 1886 Thibodaux massacre, 1887 Morewood massacre, 1891 Cotton pickers' strike of 1891 Homestead Strike, 1892 Coeur d'Alene, Idaho labor strike of 1892 Pullman Strike, 1894 Streetcar strikes in the United States, 1895–1929 Lattimer massacre, 1897 Illinois coal wars, 1898–1899
20th century	Streetcar strikes in the United States, 1895–1929 Colorado Labor Wars, 1903–1904 1905 Chicago teamsters' strike 1907 San Francisco streetcar strike Pressed Steel Car strike of 1909 Westmoreland County coal strike of 1910–1911 Paint Creek–Cabin Creek strike of 1912 1913 Ipswich Mills strike Colorado Coalfield War, including the Ludlow Massacre, 1913–1914 Copper Country strike of 1913–1914 Everett massacre, 1916 1920 Alabama coal strike Battle of Matewan, 1920 Battle of Blair Mountain, 1921 Herrin massacre, 1922 Hanapepe massacre, 1924 Columbine Mine massacre, 1927 Harlan County War, 1931–1932 Auto-Lite strike, 1934 West Coast waterfront strike, 1934 Gulf Coast longshoremen's strike, 1935 Memorial Day massacre, 1937 Hilo massacre, 1938 1959 United Mine Workers strike, 1959
Related articles	List of incidents of civil unrest in the United States Union violence in the United States Anti-union violence in the United States List of worker deaths in United States labor disputes
Portal:Organized Labour

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