Showers of Blessing

An illustrated history of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union and one of its organizers, Myrtle Lawrence

In 1937, at the invitation of Myrtle Lawrence, a white sharecropper and organizer for the biracial Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU), two Vassar graduates visited St. Francis County, Arkansas, to document the lives of sharecroppers and tenant farmers.

In 1937, at the invitation of Myrtle Lawrence—a white sharecropper and organizer for the biracial Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU)—two Vassar graduates visited St. Francis County, Arkansas, to document the lives of sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Louise Boyle, photographer, and Priscilla Robertson, scribe, lived with the Lawrences for ten days and photographed the Lawrence family in their sharecropper shack, at STFU meetings, and in their jobs as cotton pickers. The pair took side trips to document two cooperative farming communities in the Mississippi delta: Dyess and the Delta Cooperative Farm.

Unlike the famous photographers who emerged from the New Deal’s Farm Security Administration, Louise Boyle was not a government employee. Far from serving as propaganda for the New Deal, Boyle’s images demonstrate a social conscience aimed at raising public awareness of the catastrophic effects of New Deal farm programs on Black and white sharecroppers and tenant farmers. In the eighty images reproduced here, Boyle represented Arkansas sharecroppers as dynamic, multifaceted, eager for upward mobility, and curious about the outside world. Boyle and Robertson created a body of work based on a woman-centered feminist ethic that forms the core of this book. Authors Elizabeth Payne and Janet Allured use STFU records, letters of and interviews with the three women, correspondence and interviews with STFU organizers, and newspaper accounts to provide the context and interpretation for Myrtle Lawrence’s stint as an agricultural labor organizer and Boyle’s remarkable photography.