Pellagra and Sharecroppers’ Food Activism in the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union

In 1934, sharecroppers in Arkansas established the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, which became a powerful labor organization dedicated to sharecropper advocacy. Since residency requirements and the threat of violence prevented many sharecroppers from unencumbered access to the franchise, joining the STFU became a critical form of sharecropper political engagement. This paper proposes an examination of the health surveys created by the STFU as a lens into the prevalence of food scarcity across the plantation South. The health surveys became a cornerstone of legal challenges launched by the STFU against the Department of Agriculture. Yet by the late 1930s, congressional conservatives’ mounting political backlash against the New Deal foreclosed the possibility that federal agricultural programs might effectively serve sharecroppers through structural interventions into health, agriculture, and labor policies.