Tags
About three and a half years ago, I wrote on this blog about the 1939 tenant farmers’ strike in the Missouri Bootheel, an event that I had not heard about until that moment. It reminded me just how much history is lost or overlooked, especially history that the dominant social group finds unpleasant. Since that time, I’ve learned a bit more.
One thing that I knew then, but didn’t fully grasp, was the extent to which the tenant farmers’ dispossession was the result of Federal policy. The Roosevelt administration was trying to prop up agricultural prices to rescue farmers, who had been going broke by the hundreds of thousands for many years by then. One of the tools they were using in this effort was direct support payments, paying farmers to take land out of production in order to increase prices. But a side-effect of this policy was that once farmers took their land out of production, they no longer needed workers. This doesn’t make the farmers any less culpable or racist in their attitudes, but it does help explain their motivation.
My friend Trevor Harris, who creates the Mo’ Curious podcast sponsored by Missouri Life, got interested in this topic and has been down in the Bootheel making recordings. I’m eager to find out what he obtained, and to hear the podcast that will surely come out of it.
In the meantime, I’ve learned that a documentary film was made in 1999 about the strike, entitled Oh Freedom After While. If your library allows you access to Kanopy, you can view it on that platform. It’s also viewable on Vimeo.
stevewiegenstein 
Thanks for the mention, Steve.
Yes, I was in Charleston, Missouri last week recording memories of long-time Bootheel residents. None of these folks are old enough to have experienced the strike personally. Their stories however did touch on how the strike fits into the local history. The strike is part of the Depression economy. It influenced construction of federally funded affordable housing, As you note, as area farming practices changed, so did the livelihood of these farm workers. I was unaware of how much history is in Missouri’s Bootheel.
I worked with local educators and their high school students to conduct last week’s interviews. I aim to have these interviews edited into a new Mo’ Curious podcast episode with a target release date of March 1, 2022.