Press Photo of Owen Whitfield During the 1939 Sharecroppers Protest
- Single photograph measuring 5 x 8 inches with typed caption affixed verso
- Chicago, Illinois: International News Photos, 1939
Chicago, Illinois: International News Photos, 1939. Single photograph measuring 5 x 8 inches with typed caption affixed verso. Some wear; excellent.. A portrait of activist preacher Owen Whitfield (1891–1965), taken during the 1939 Missouri sharecropper protest. The caption reads in part:
“Preacher Owen H. Whitfield, of La Forge, MO., negro preacher who is the leader of the sharecroppers in southeast Missouri, in their controversy with their landlord plantation owners. It is reported that more than one thousand seven hundred cotton pickers and their families have been evicted from their homes.”
Whitfield was from a sharecropping family; he became a preacher in the 1920s and joined the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in 1936, using his position as a preacher to promote the STFU and advocate for sharecroppers. During the Great Depression, landowning planters replaced sharecroppers with cheaper day laborers, leading to mass evictions. Whitfield, with the STFU, CIO, and NAACP, organized a protest wherein evicted sharecroppers, Black and white, camped alongside highways 60 and 61 in the Missouri bootheel. The protest started on January 10 and was broken up by state police within a few days. Several years later, some of the sharecroppers who protested would receive affordable housing in areas where they could work as day laborers.
“Preacher Owen H. Whitfield, of La Forge, MO., negro preacher who is the leader of the sharecroppers in southeast Missouri, in their controversy with their landlord plantation owners. It is reported that more than one thousand seven hundred cotton pickers and their families have been evicted from their homes.”
Whitfield was from a sharecropping family; he became a preacher in the 1920s and joined the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in 1936, using his position as a preacher to promote the STFU and advocate for sharecroppers. During the Great Depression, landowning planters replaced sharecroppers with cheaper day laborers, leading to mass evictions. Whitfield, with the STFU, CIO, and NAACP, organized a protest wherein evicted sharecroppers, Black and white, camped alongside highways 60 and 61 in the Missouri bootheel. The protest started on January 10 and was broken up by state police within a few days. Several years later, some of the sharecroppers who protested would receive affordable housing in areas where they could work as day laborers.