The Secretary of the Alabama Share Croppers Union, a wanted man, describes the reign of terror unleashed against striking farmers in 1935.

“You Can Kill Me—But You Can Never Scare Me” by Albert Jackson from Labor Defender. Vol. 11 No. 10. October, 1935.

As I write this I am the most hunted man in Alabama. In the city of Montgomery the police have arrested Charles Tasker and James Jackson for “investigation.” The investigation consists of trying to make these men reveal the whereabouts of Albert Jackson, secretary of the Share Croppers Union. But their efforts are in vain. This is only one chapter of the terror facing the striking share croppers today.

On Monday, August 19, when the strike of the cotton pickers started in Lowndes County against the J.R. Bell plantation, demanding $1.00 a hundred pounds cotton picked, instead of the 40c which share croppers are receiving today, Sheriff Woodruff was right on the job. Sheriff Woodruff talked “sense” to the men, arguing with them, pointing out why they ought to go back and continue under the old terms of starvation. But nobody went back. He cornered one striker, Willie Witcher.

“I don’t care to listen to strike-breaking talk,” was the answer he got and Witcher walked away. Sheriff Woodruff was standing in front of Bell’s Store watching Witcher go his way home. Woodruff shouted at the top of his voice ordering Willie Witcher to stop. Willie stopped, asking, “What do you want?” Sheriff Woodruff’s gun barked five times in answer. The deputy who stood beside him fired too. Willie sprawled in the dust of the road, his fingers clawing the dirt. But Sheriff Woodruff hadn’t had enough. He sprang into his car, rushed it to Witcher’s side and smashing him over the head with his pistol butt, yelled, “I’ll kill you, you black son of a bitch!”

And Witcher replied, “You can kill me—but you can’t scare me.” He was carried to the Haynesville jail instead of the hospital.

In desperation Sheriff Woodruff personally organized a band of vigilantes. All are deputies or landlords from the vicinity of Calhoun and Haynesville. They raided six strikers’ homes, pulled them out of bed, rode them miles away and beat them unconscious leaving them to die. The gang waited at the home of Ed Knight, a union member, all night. Before daybreak they broke into the house, smashed his furniture and left a note telling him they would kill him when they found him. The same gang killed Jim Press Meriwether in cold blood, deliberately, without a word exchanged between them. They saw him walking down the road alone, un- armed him and shot him dead.

For having a membership card in the Share Croppers Union, Willie Grove and two other Negro workers were arrested early this week. They were released only because the charge was too bold-faced. But for Willie Grove a charge was trumped up the charge of breaking into a store the store of one of Sheriff Woodruff’s gang, Calhoun.

The Montgomery Advertiser lined itself up with its keeper–the bosses. It screamed lynch-inciting editorials of “terror,” of “Communist rebellion,” appealing to landlords and police for protection, written by the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for anti-lynching editorials, one Grover C. Hall.

But still the strike goes on. We ask the support of every justice loving person who believes in and wants to guard his own civil rights. We need the support of all who are opposed to Hitler’s tactics, of all who believe in the right of the worker to a decent living.

Please send protest telegrams, letters and resolutions to Governor Bibb Graves, Montgomery, Alabama, President Roosevelt, and Sheriff R. E. Woodruff, insisting that all workers arrested in connection with the strike of the Share Croppers Union be freed at once, that all terror against the strike cease at once, and that the workers be given their constitutional rights to organize, meet and strike and picket.

In the protest to Governor Graves and President Roosevelt insist that Sheriff R. E. Woodruff and all Deputies involved in terror against the workers be removed from office at once.

These protests cannot be delayed. The officials and the government must be made to see that the strikers have the sympathy and support of every class conscious worker in the United States. Every letter is a vote that the strike go on till every demand is won.

Labor Defender was published monthly from 1926 until 1937 by the International Labor Defense (ILD), a Workers Party of America, and later Communist Party-led, non-partisan defense organization founded by James Cannon and William Haywood while in Moscow, 1925 to support prisoners of the class war, victims of racism and imperialism, and the struggle against fascism. It included, poetry, letters from prisoners, and was heavily illustrated with photos, images, and cartoons. Labor Defender was the central organ of the Scottsboro and Sacco and Vanzetti defense campaigns. Not only were these among the most successful campaigns by Communists, they were among the most important of the period and the urgency and activity is duly reflected in its pages. Editors included T. J. O’ Flaherty, Max Shactman, Karl Reeve, J. Louis Engdahl, William L. Patterson, Sasha Small, and Sender Garlin.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1935/v11n10-oct-1935-orig-LD.pdf