Andrew Baker from Texas A&M University Commerce will give the audience “The History of Cotton.”
On Saturday morning, April 28, the Audie Murphy/American Cotton Museum in association with the History Department at Collin County Community College will present the 22nd Annual Cotton and Rural History Conference at the museum located at 600 Interstate 30. Three great speakers are scheduled, all basically addressing the issue of farm labor in the late 19th and early 20th century throughout the South.
The program begins with Andrew Baker presenting background of the cotton industry, “The History of Cotton.” From what little I know and from what I have been told cotton farming was not all that wonderful if you worked in the fields or planned to make a fortune at it. Baker, who received his PhD from Rice in 2014, is on the faculty at Texas A&M University Commerce where he teaches some pretty neat classes.
Paul E. Sturdevant shares his research of women on cotton farms in his presentation of “Not Farm Women, But Farmer Women.”
Next in line is Paul E. Sturdevant who teaches American History at Paris Junior College here in Greenville. Paul will lead a discussion he calls “Not Farm Women, But Farmer Women.” In his presentation he will examine the roles of women on Texas cotton farms and elsewhere. Greenville and Hunt County were in the center of such scandalous ideas at the beginning of the 20th century.
The keynote speaker comes to us from University of Mississippi via Columbia University in New York City. Dr. Jarod Roll’s paper, “Striking Cotton: UCAPAWA’s Campaign to Organize Workers From Field to Factory in the Great Depression” examines Southern working people, black and white, their politics and faith. By the way, UCAPAWA is the anachronism for United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America. From 1910 through the next several years, there was a very concentrated effort to raise living and working standards in all blue collar fields. You may be surprised how successful the movements were here in Northeast Texas during that time.
Keynote Speaker Jarod Roll will speak on Striking Cotton: UCAPAWA’s Campaign to Organize Workers from Field to Factory in the Great Depression.
Dr. Roll is the author of Spirit of Rebellion: Labor and Religion in the New Cotton South (2010). His most recent contribution is a chapter on black and white radical farmer in the early twentieth century South in Populism in the South Revisited: New Interpretations and New Departures (2016). He is currently on leave from the University of Mississippi serving as Visiting Professor at Columbia University.
Later Dr. Jim Conrad, former archivist at Gee Library on the campus of Texas A&M University Commerce will lead a session known as “Eyewitness to History.” It is the time when the audience learns about cotton farming from those who lived it.
Registration begins at 9:00 with sessions from 10:00 to 1:30. Barbeque lunch will be served for $12.00. Deadline to register is April 25. For more information see www.collin.edu/history/cotton.htm or call (903)-454-1990 or (903)-450-4502. I hope to see you there; it should be a great conference.