Government Cannot Solve Our Problems

This chapter examines connections between reponses to labor displacement in the 1960s rural South and the mass layoffs that afflicted industrial workers later in the twentieth century. Antigovernment sentiment and extreme individualism of the type promoted by those who opposed government intervention to address the southern agricultural crisis made their way into mainstream thinking after the 1960s. Despite rising unemployment rates resulting from deindustrialization and globalization, economic policy in the 1980s and 1990s emphasized spending cuts, deregulation of businesses, and evisceration of the social safety net. These decisions generated increasing economic inequality throughout the United States. When the global financial crisis of 2008 threw millions of people out of work, opposition to government intervention in the economy prevented Congress from adopting the kinds of creative solutions to poverty and unemployment that had been advocated by social justice activists in the 1960s.

They Could Make Some Decisions

This chapter examines the impact of the War on Poverty in rural southern plantation counties and the threat that it posed to the people in power. Direct access to the Office of Economic Opportunity’s grant-making divisions enabled black residents to bypass racist local officials who had previously controlled access to federal assistance, bringing millions of dollars into impoverished areas. Antipoverty initiatives such as the North Bolivar County Farm Cooperative and the Tufts-Delta Health Center provided services and job opportunities for poor people, encouraging displaced laborers to stay in the South and work to improve conditions in their communities. The OEO’s mandate to include representatives of the poor in program planning enabled rural black southerners to directly influence the distribution of resources in their communities for the first time in their lives, threatening the interests of regional elites. Opponents attacked antipoverty programs, using exaggerated charges of corruption and mismanagement to paint the War on Poverty as a waste of taxpayer money and undermine public support for the effort.

Introduction

This chapter briefly outlines the history of racial discrimination in the rural South and the ways social justice activists continued the struggle for equality in the decades following the civil rights movement. Civil rights legislation failed to adequately address the economic legacies of past discrimintation, which were compounded by the mass displacement of agricultural workers from the land in the mid-twentieth century. Activists’ calls for government intervention to provide employment, income, education, housing, and health care for displaced workers generated strong resistance from regional elites whose preferred solution to the crisis was for displaced workers to leave. The ideological and political struggles that ensued had consequences for all Americans, not just African Americans, and helped shape national responses to labor displacement during the transition from industrial capitalism to finance capitalism in the late twentieth century.

A World of Despair

This chapter describes the impact of free market economic policies on rural development in the 1980s and 1990s. Seeking to end excessive government interference in the economy, President Ronald Reagan cut taxes, weakened civil rights enforcement, and reduced funding for social programs that served low-income Americans. Reagan believed that private enterprise and market forces were the most efficient mechanisms for creating wealth and distributing resources. Such policies failed to address the problems facing unemployed and poor people in the rural South. At the turn of the twentieth century, the region was still plagued by unemployment, poverty, inadequate health care, substandard housing, and out-migration.

The Man Don’t Need Me Anymore

This chapter describes the extreme hardships facing plantation workers as a result of agricultural mechanization and economic reprisals against people who were involved in civil rights activism in the 1960s. Southern welfare and economic development policies were designed to encourage black out-migration from the region, enabling wealthy white families whose fortunes were built on exploiting black labor to avoid responsibility for those workers once they were no longer needed. At the same time, reducing the number of African Americans living in the plantation counties helped minimize the threat posed by black political empowerment. By the mid-1960s, these policies had forced hundreds of thousands of African Americans to leave the region and generated rising unemployment and poverty rates for those who remained.

To Build Something, Where They Are

This chapter examines the efforts of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives to encourage cooperative enterprises and other economic development initiatives in rural southern communities. The services it provided to cooperatives ensured the survival of many black-owned businesses and encouraged African Americans to remain in the South instead of migrating away. The FSC’s activist staff continued the struggles for civil rights and social justice by working to increase black representation in economic development initiatives, encouraging black political participation, and organizing local communities to fight persistent racism. These efforts generated resistance from powerful white southerners. In 1979, accusations that the FSC was misusing government grants to fund political activities sparked an eighteen-month-long investigation that disrupted and weakened the organization, despite finding no evidence of wrongdoing.

OEO Is Finished

This chapter describes how the conservative political discourse of the 1970s echoed the sentiments expressed by southern opponents of the civil rights movement and the War on Poverty in the 1960s, tracing changes in federal policy that reflected the growing acceptance of these ideas among government officials and the population at large. Citing the need to halt the trend toward federal intervention in the economy and other areas of American life, President Richard Nixon proclaimed an era of “New Federalism” that reduced funding for antipoverty programs and restored control over economic development to state and local governments. These moves neutralized the transformative potential of the War on Poverty and left existing power relations intact, leaving poor people without strong advocates in government or adequate assistance during a decade of rising unemployment and economic distress.

This Is Home

This chapter describes how social justice activists responded to the economic crisis in the rural South by publicizing widespread hunger and poverty and pressuring the federal government to act. African Americans who had lived and worked in the plantation counties for generations made it clear that they did not want to leave and argued that they had a right to remain in their home communities instead of being forced to move elsewhere to look for jobs. They proposed alternatives to out-migration that called for increased public expenditures on education, job training, and improved social programs for displaced workers. Their lobbying and clear evidence of the misery that resulted from the policies pursued by state and local governments in the plantation regions convinced the federal government to step up antipoverty efforts.

Conclusion

This chapter summarizes how responses to the mass displacement of agricultural workers in the 1960s rural South established precedents for the treatment of workers who lost their jobs to deindustrialization and globalization in later decades. It also highlights connections between the southern cooperative movement and later efforts to restore local food systems and support small family farms, suggesting that the activsts involved in that movement left lasting legacies that are worth remembering in the context of rapid technological change and unstable employment that characterizes many sectors of the economy in the twenty-first century.

Okra Is a Threat

This chapter examines the rise of the low-income cooperative movement and the opportunities it offered for rural poor people to take charge of their economic destiny. In response to layoffs and evictions, activists formed cooperative enterprises that provided employment to displaced workers. Cooperatives represented an attempt to establish a measure of economic independence for rural poor people and thus facilitate political participation in a region where many African Americans still feared losing their homes or livelihoods if they tried to challenge the social order. Creating black-owned businesses founded on cooperative principles also demonstrated that alternatives existed to capitalist economic structures that exploited and then discarded black labor. Despite some internal weaknesses and hostility from white supremacists that hindered their effectiveness, cooperatives showed significant promise as a model for alleviating rural poverty.