About
The Southern Tenant Farmers Museum opened in 2006 in the historic Mitchell-East Building in Tyronza, Arkansas.
During the 1930s, this building housed the dry cleaning business of H. L. Mitchell and the service station of Clay East, two of the organizers of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in 1934, serving as the unofficial headquarters for the union until offices were moved to Memphis for safety.
Museum exhibits, located in the Mitchell-East Building, focus on the farm labor movement in the South and the tenant farming and sharecropping system of agriculture.
Elvin Lawrence and unnamed man load cotton on a nearly-full wagon.
The museum also includes the adjacent historic Tyronza Bank building. Facades of the bank and the Mitchell-East Building have been restored to their 1930s appearance, while the bank interior has been modified to include a reception area, gift shop, office and classroom.
Man holds a child at an outdoor Southern Tenant Farmers Union meeting.
Stories are told through historic photographs, artifacts related to tenant farming, oral history excerpts, 1930s news reel footage, and interactive exhibits featuring STFU songs, poems, and interviews with former union leaders.
