Equal Footing: Women in the Arkansas Labor Movement

Between 1944 and 1946, College students from all over the South became members of the STFU. During WWII, this group flew to Bridgeton, N.J., for the summer months to work at a processing plant defying the southern plantation system. (Image P-3472/57, in the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.)

Women in the Arkansas Labor Movement

Left to right: Union workers and activists Carrie Dilworth, Fannie Booker, and Elisabeth Davies reunite at the 48th Anniversary of the STFU in Little Rock in the spring of 1982. (Image Folder PF-372/128: Scan 101, in the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.)

The history of women in the Arkansas Labor Movement is an underrepresented aspect of the state’s progress toward fair labor practices and in agricultural studies. The Southern Tenant Farmers Union provides an exceptional case study on the impact of women in such movements during the years of the Depression and beyond.

After its founding in 1934, women were actively involved in the early stages of the union even though only men were considered official members. The auxiliary activities and fundraising abilities of the women helped grow membership and grounded the organization’s communication networks. Soon these women began to voice their discontentment as quasi-members of the union. If the union could deny the racial social strata of the Arkansas Delta with an integrated organization, then the women could and should be recognized as full members with all the rights and privileges that entailed.

Change Within the Union

According to the Convention Proceedings for the STFU Second Annual Convention, on December 1, 1935, a committee composed mainly of women drafted a resolution to address their official role in the union. The resolution called for full membership with all its privileges. After the resolution was passed, female members immediately began to assert their rights within the organization. As Luella McDonald stated in a letter to STFU president, H. L. Mitchell, “now I am a woman but as I understand we are to go on equal footing with the men.”

A Lasting Legacy

Women, black, white, and brown, worked for the rights of the laborer and wage worker in Arkansas and throughout the country. The work of women in the STFU and other labor unions in Arkansas served as a guidepost for many who came later to labor on behalf of the disenfranchised. Additionally, the shared experiences of union leaders like Carrie Dilworth and Mary L. Moore inspired other civil rights activism, ushering in what historians call the Long Civil Rights Movement – a continued, everchanging, multifaceted movement that has helped improve the lives of the disenfranchised and disinherited. 

Carrie Dillworth of Gould, Ark., welcomes guests to the 1947 National Farm Labor Union in Washington D.C. Photograph by Harris and Ewing, Washington, D.C. Dilworth later became a staunch supporter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). (UNC – Image P-3472/79, in the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Records #3472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.)