Shocking new allegations against Shirley Sherrod (the USDA employee recently embroiled in a controversy over a speech she gave to the NAACP) and the communal farm she ran with her husband Charles Sherrod have been confirmed by an article published 36 years ago in a farm workers’ newspaper.
Combined, the new 2010 allegations and the original 1974 allegations accuse Shirley and Charles Sherrod of:
• Paying farm workers as little as 67¢ per hour, far below minimum wage for the era.
• Employing underage children to perform hard labor.
• Compelling their employees to work in unsafe conditions, including getting sprayed with pesticides.
• Firing any workers who acted as whistleblowers.
• Forcing employees to work overtime in the fields at night with practically no advance notice.
• Having a capricious payscale under which employees doing the exact same jobs were paid different amounts according to the whims of the managers.
• Being unwilling to address the abuse even after it was raised by union representatives.
• Seriously mismanaging the farm to such an extent that it went bankrupt.
Let’s first look at the new allegations, and then at the original allegations.
Ron Wilkins accuses Sherrods of Exploitation and Mistreatment
On Monday, August 2, 2010, Ron Wilkins, who was a black Civil Rights activist and organizer in the ’70s and is now a professor specializing in African-American history, published an incendiary article in the magazine CounterPunch in which he describes how he infiltrated the Sherrods’ “New Communities” farm commune in 1974 and discovered horrifying circumstances where black farm workers labored in near-slavery conditions, often being paid as little as 67¢ per hour (far under the minimum wage at the time) and facing intolerable conditions:
Imagine farm workers doing back breaking labor in the sweltering sun, sprayed with pesticides and paid less than minimum wage. Imagine the United Farm Workers called in to defend these laborers against such exploitation by management. Now imagine that the farm workers are black children and adults and that the managers are Shirley Sherrod, her husband Rev. Charles Sherrod, and a host of others. But it’s no illusion; this is fact.
The swirling controversy over the racist dismissal of Shirley Sherrod from her USDA post has obscured her profoundly oppositional behavior toward black agricultural workers in the 1970s. What most of Mrs. Sherrod’s supporters are not aware of is the elitist and anti-black-labor role that she and fellow managers of New Communities Inc. (NCI) played. These individuals under-paid, mistreated and fired black laborers–many of them less than 16 years of age–in the same fields of southwest Georgia where their ancestors suffered under chattel slavery.
…Shirley Sherrod was New Communities Inc. store manager during the 1970s. As such, Mrs. Sherrod was a key member of the NCI administrative team, which exploited and abused the workforce in the field. The 6,000 acre New Communities Inc. in Lee County promoted itself during the latter part of the 1960s and throughout the 70s as a land trust committed to improving the lives of the rural black poor. Underneath this facade, the young and old worked long hours with few breaks, the pay averaged sixty-seven cents an hour, fieldwork behind equipment spraying pesticides was commonplace and workers expressing dissatisfaction were fired without recourse.
These accusations are not coming from conservatives like Andrew Breitbart: they’re coming from a respected left-leaning African-American professor with a long history as a Civil Rights activist, and were published in the far-left magazine CounterPunch.
United Farm Workers Slam the Sherrods in 1974 Exposé
But if these radical bona fides are not enough to convince you that this isn’t just a conservative hit-piece concocted out of thin air, Wilkins’ allegations (and more) are confirmed by a news story published at the time in the far-far-far-left-leaning United Farm Workers’ newspaper El Malcriado on September 28, 1974.
Below are two jpegs showing the article exactly as it appeared in El Malcriado. The image on the left is taken directly from a microfiche in a well-known Chicano Studies library. (To absolutely confirm the veracity of this article, I have appended to the bottom of this post three additional jpegs showing the article in context on the newspaper page and with adjacent El Malcriado pages.) The image on the right is taken from a photograph of the entire September 28, 1974 El Malcriado issue in its original paper format, preserved in pdf format (3.8mb) here at the UFW’s history archives. And as final confirmation, a close-up high-quality pdf of just the page 2 article itself can be seen here.
The El Malcriado article contains additional allegations on top of those made by Ron Wilkins in his recent essay, as you will see; an exact transcription follows the images:
On the left: jpeg of a microfiche version of El Malcriado (click to enlarge); on the right, jpeg of an original newsprint version of the same article.
Children Farm Workers Strike Black Co-op
Albany, Georgia — The black eagle flag first flew over the fields of Georgia on August 19th, when 50 Black farm workers, most of them under 16 years of age, walked out on strike at New Communities, Inc., a farming cooperative near here.
As the strike enters its fourth week, only management and eight workers are gathering the harvest at this 6,000 acre farm.
The strikers walked out for a living wage and humane working conditions.
Not only must they work behind machines spraying lethal pesticides, but there is no definite pay scale.
Wages paid by New Communities vary from 67¢-$1.63 per hour, and management pays each worker whatever they please, according to personal preference.
Strikers say they must put in unnecessary overtime, on a half-hour’s notice, at ungodly hours because the farm is poorly managed.
The farm’s manager, for instance, would accept a large produce order late in the afternoon and then require people to work late into the night so that the order would be filled the next morning.
Management had convinced the workers that they should not expect better pay for hours because the entire cooperative was losing money.
Robert Johnson, one of the employees, finally organized the current strike but was promptly fired.
The day after the strike began, the workers called on the United Farm Workers (UFW) field office in Avon Park, Florida for assistance.
Mack Lyons, Florida field office director and UFW National Executive Board member, met with the strikers in Georgia.
The workers signed UFW authorization cards (cards which name the UFW as the bargaining agent of their choice) and voted to demand a UFW contract with the protections of the union’s Coca-Cola contract in Florida.
The union has already won back pay for workers who were not earning the minimum wage, sometimes amounting to as much as $500.
Though several of this Black cooperative’s funding organizations are pressuring Charles Sherrod, the farm’s manager, to reach a settlement with the strikers, he remains unwilling to negotiate.
With so few scabs left in New Community’s fields, the UFW’s first strike in the southeast area (outside of Florida) may also bring the first of many UFW contracts to these fields that were once harvested by slave labor.
Page 2 — September 28, 1974 — El Malcriado
(* The typo “Through” in the article’s second-to-last paragraph has been corrected in this transcription to “Though”.)
Remember when reading all this that the Sherrods’ New Communities Farm received $13 million from the USDA to compensate for the loss of their land as part of the “Pigford v. Glickman” settlement, and that Shirley and Charles Sherrod personally received $300,000 for “pain and suffering.”
The irony is that Shirley Sherrod baselessly accused Andrew Breitbart of wanting Blacks to get “stuck back in the times of slavery,” when in fact it was Sherrod herself who was practically enslaving poor Blacks on her farm.
Additional Links with More Info on This Story
Washington Examiner: Former Shirley Sherrod employee accuses her of exploiting black farm laborers
Riehl World View: Charles And Shirley Sherrod’s History Of Exploiting Black Children
Appendix:
Below are three additional images of the El Malcriado article, showing it in progressively greater context, to prove beyond any doubt that it is an authentic article published in 1974, and not a later invention concocted by her detractors, as some of Sherrod’s defenders might claim if not confronted with solid evidence:
Damn, I don’t think she should have her job back because of this anyway. The only reason she had it was because of that settlement, to begin with.
I would be interested in knowing who’s Breitbart’s source is on the video he received.
why?? he didn’t edit it, he took an excerpt……….. the racist black chick got caught redhanded after a lifetime of evil
as usual you are trying to change the subject…… the excerpt stands as it is
Calm down, ed. I’m not changing any subject. I know that the video that Breitbart ran was completely unedited by HIM. However, the video was given to him in edited form. If Sherrod sues it is entirely possible that Breitbart would have to produce the source and I agree with #11, Phineas.
You must not be too familiar with me on this board. I completely agree with you that Sherrod transformed from a racist to a racialist, but kept some of her racist roots. Anyone who called her speech “redemptive” ought to be made to write the definition of the word a million times until their hands bleed.
Breitbart was set up like a bowling pin.
Andrew Breitbart is the big winner. He is being vindicated. Shirley and Charles Sherrod are increasingly looking more like scoundrels. This disgusting couple is causing enormous damage to Obama and the Democrats. It’s likely only going to get a lot worse.
Shirley Sherrod was probably just shooting her mouth off. A lawsuit against Breitbart would probably be thrown out of court. Moreover, he hopes the case will go forward! There is such a thing as the discovery process.
Sherrod doesn’t have much of a case. She’s a public figure and it doesn’t look like Breitbart acted with any malice. What was done to Charleton Heston by Michael Moore was far, far, far, far worse.
That history should be quite interesting. My take is that it was a setup to trip Andrew Breitbart and almost certainly would have involved Shirley Sherrod and the subsequent reaction in the planning. I am keeping a close eye on developments and they are wide ranging. Keep your eyes open. There is a lot more to this than has surfaced so far.
WHIT,
Great posting. You’ve done a great job on the Sherrod case. Keep going!! Take care.
Delores Smith
Delores109@cox.net
WHIT,
You’ve done a great job on the Sherrod case. Keep going. Thank you for bringing so much to light. Take care.
Delores Smith
Delores109@cox.net
A set up would have been giving him a false tape…this one was , as we see it, a partial tape. He NEVERNEVErNEVEr should have run with it until he saw the whole tape.. he’s much smarter than that, sooooo, why did he do it?
It’s good to see some light shed on this woman. She plays so shocked and an innocent lil darlin…
Hmmmm. Why does Orwell’s Animal Farm at once spring to mind?!
Good job, Zombie.
The same thought sprung to mind.
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
this is sad sad sad!!
As a fellow PJM blogger, I have only this to say:
I Ain’t Gonna Work on Maggie’s Farm No More
The CHICOMMS don’t pay that much, so what is the problem? In the New World Order of Globalism, you better keep your pie hole shut, and be happy you have a job.
Get those illegal aliens in there to help futher the North American Union.
Memo to Shirley Sherrod: You still want to sue? Bring. It. On.
With apologies to Bob Dylan but hey, fair use!
Shirley’s Farm
I ain’t gonna work on Shirley’s farm no more
No, I ain’t gonna work on Shirley’s farm no more
Well, I wake in the morning
Fold my hands and pray for rain
I got a head full of ideas
That are drivin’ me insane
It’s a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor
I ain’t gonna work on Shirley’s farm no more
I ain’t gonna work for Shirley’s brother no more
No, I ain’t gonna work for Shirley’s brother no more
Well, he hands you a nickel
Then he he takes a dime
He asks you with a grin
If you’re havin’ a good time
Then he calls you names when you ask what for
I ain’t gonna work for Shirley’s brother no more
I ain’t gonna work for Shirley’s pa no more
No, I ain’t gonna work for Shirley’s pa no more
Well, he puts his cigarette
Out in your face just for kicks
From his bedroom window
All he sees are hicks
The New Black Panthers stand around his door
Ah, I ain’t gonna work for Shirley’s pa no more
I ain’t gonna work for Shirley’s ma no more
No, I ain’t gonna work for Shirley’s ma no more
Well, she talks to all the servants
About man and God and law
Everybody says
She’s the brains behind pa
She’s sixty-eight, but she says she’s twenty-four
I ain’t gonna work for Shirley’s ma no more
I ain’t gonna work on Shirley’s farm no more
No, I ain’t gonna work on Shirley’s farm no more
Well, I try my best
To be just like I am
But everybody wants you
To be just like them
They sing while you slave and I just get bored
I ain’t gonna work on Shirley’s farm no more
Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music
Zombie: what is your point here?
I don’t speak for zombie but I will answer that ————-
the point is that she (sherrod) is an evil racist……. with her fellow blacks she’s only evil
I think she could better be described as a money grub. Racist? Not in the context of operating that farm. In the context of not bringing the full weight of her appointed office to help a white farmer? Yeah.
Why not racist? She meets and exceeds EVERY criteria used by the left. Yes, more properly, she is an exploiter every bit as bad as the southern plantation owner of yore. The only reason she (they) paid anything was to show costs on tax filings, if they indeed paid taxes.
What point is needed? This woman committed abuses that would have been the end to the careers of most people — if not jail time.
Jer 22:13 Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour’s service without wages, and giveth him not for his work;
There is covetousness involved, aided and abetted by our Socialistic government farm program and its own promotion of covetousness which is not conducive to prosperity and integrity. Making illegal activities legal is not the same as making them right. Robbing Peter to pay Paul cannot be made legal so Paul would reject that method. See what he says about the strengh and weakness of the law in Romans. The law sets things in order but we are free to disregard the law. When we disregard the law it then has power over us but not over our thoughts of disregarding the law. If we regard the law in our heart we will keep the law in our actions. That is the power of our Constitution.
You get three guesses and the first two don’t count…
LOL!
Shirley’s Farm
—apologies to Bob Dylan, and “Maggie’s Farm”
Oh, I ain’t gonna work on Shirley’s farm no more
No, I ain’t gonna work on Shirley’s farm no more
With those working conditions
Might as well be in a cage
She pays her help less than the going minimum wage
And won’t permit them to organize for more
No, I ain’t gonna work on Shirley’s farm no more
I ain’t gonna work for Shirley’s husband no more
No, I ain’t gonna work for Shirley’s husband no more
In SNCC he used to declare
The black man must be free
But it appears that he meant that’s what black labor should be
So that he himself could stack up a few bucks more
No, I ain’t gonna work for Shirley’s husband no more
I ain’t gonna work for Shirley’s ideology no more
No, I ain’t gonna work for Shirley’s ideology no more
With no proof she claims whites want blacks
Back in slavery times
But she holds blacks in bondage so she can pile up the dimes
Which her ideological allies all ignore
No, I ain’t gonna work for Shirley’s ideology no more
Tiny’s version may have beat yours by 8 minutes, but that’s because Tiny’s version seems not much changed from the original, and so took less time to post.
Your version: Bravo!
Seeing the phrase “pile up the dimes” makes me think of these appropriate lyrics from a classic song decades even further in the past:
“She’s got a million dollars worth of nickels and dimes
and she sits around and counts them all a million times.”
“Let me tell you the story of Shirley the Moocher
She cites the past to hijack the future…”
…anyone up to flesh it out?
Shirley the Moocher
—apologies to Cab Calloway and “Minnie the Moocher”
Folks, now here’s a story ’bout Shirley the Moocher
She cites the past so she can hijack the future
She claims she’s moved past prejudices based on race
But Shirley makes accusations all over the place
Hi de hi de hi Hi de hi de hi
Ho de ho de ho Ho de ho de ho
He de he de he de he de He de he de he de he de
Ho de ho
She had a husband whose name was Charley
And with the white man he would never parley
He said black people should vote on the basis of race
And if they didn’t they were Uncle Toms and a disgrace
Hey de hey de hey Hey de hey de hey
Wa de wa de wa Wa de wa de wa
My my my my my my My my my my my my
Ho de ho
Shirley claimed that black farmers faced discrimination
Collected for more than there were in the nation
Shirley picked at the public purse like a hungry vulture
And got hired by the Department of Agriculture
Waddy woody wey Waddy woody wey
Oh, Shirley Oh, Shirley
Yadda yadda yadda yadda Yadda yadda yadda yadda
Ho de ho
Shirley was accused by Ron Wilkins
That her workers’ wages she’d been milkin’
The New Communities she said would turn the page
Paid its employees far less than the minimum wage
Hi de hi de hi Hi de hi de hi
Ho de ho de ho Ho de ho de ho
Poor Shirley, poor Shirley, poor Shirley…
Sort of makes you wonder is the employee is scamming the employer or if the employer is exploiting the employee. Can either be called honest?
I was reluctant to tweak it at all and I avoid race (like a conservative) but bowdlerization is a game all can play!
Y’know, I kind of hope she does sue Breitbart; the discovery phase should be very entertaining.
This is where many threatened lawsuits stop dead.
As the well-known legal scholar, Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
Zombie. Going where no journalists have gone before–to the truth.
Que Sherrod Sherrod,
Whatever will be will be,
racism for you not me.
Que Sherrod Sherrod.
Que Sherrod Sherrod,
whatever wil be will be
racial payoff for me for me,
Que Sherrod Sherrod.
Now accepting wagers on how long before some lefty troll cries “raaaaaaaaaaaaaciiiiiiiiiiiist!”
We are hard wired for racism for it has a valid reason to exist and we should accept that. There are other considerations that keep racism in check so that when we stay within the bounds of truth we can be racist and still not offend. No one thinks favoring your immediate family is out of order because that is the responsibility of the head of the household. Yet that head is expected to be peaceful and to honor the liberty of others.
1Ti 5:8 But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.
We should not be ashamed of our race nor think of it more highly that it deserves. There is good and bad in all races, including the Children of Abraham. The Sherrods needed the collusion of a corrupt government to pull their scam and it may well be that the Lord has chosen this method to bring that to light.
I grew up in a heavy agricultural area in New England. When I was a teen everyone worked in the fields during the summer. Even then, a full decade +, before 1974, the federal minimum wage for agricultural workers of any age was $1.10 an hour.
Old Sherrod is going to have to move to CA next to Nancy bug eyes P’s vineyard, and get some workers from there.
That way, she will not have to pay healthcare costs, but the tax payers will. See, there is always a way around the system for a fellow Globalist.
I wish some of those children she exploited would come forward now and tell their stories about working in Charles and Shirley’s fields. These people are worse than despicable-to act like victims themselves and as if everyone else is racist when they were making slaves of little children- I would love Breitbart to meet her in court one day-do you think the judge would allow cameras?
Excellent suggestion for some investigating reporter to hunt these people up. One caveat, some of them will be contaminated with far left ideology so the truth may be somewhat colored.
Don’t expect any form of discovery unless the czars determine that their media can use it to promote more destructive legislation. It is too early yet for flooding their biased court system to cloud eventual discovery involving their chosen one’s citizenship. Ask “Just where are the investigative reporters, government agencies and comities that pursued the Joe McCarthy with a brush full of sewer conspiracy?” Take a clue. Nearly all have diversified to damage control status with a wide brush for whitewashing while reserving their former methods for anything associated with the Tea Party. Take heart. The stuff can only be stacked so high before it collapses onto its creators shoes and they can’t even hide the odor with a record oil spill.
I WAS ONE OF THE STRIKING CHILDREN OF 1974, AND WOULD LIKE TO TELL MY STORY AS TO SOME OF THE THINGS GOING ON AT NEW COMMUNITIES DURING THAT TIME. Never thought that the actions of a few couragious people would bring attention 35yrs later. I AM PROUD THAT WE FINALLY WILL BE ACCOMPLISHING WHAT WE INTENDED TO DO DURING THAT SUMMER, WHICH IS EXPOSING MISTREATMENT OF HARDWORKING,LOYAL,AND RESPONSIBLE FARMWORKERS.IN HONOR OF MY GRANDMOTHER, MRS. ANNIE L. HAWKINS, ALONG WITH RON WILKINS ,THE STRIKING CHILDREN MADE SACRIFICES TO HELP ALL THAT ARE DISCRIMINATED IN THE WORKPLACES.WE WOULD LOVE TO TELL OUR STORY
Why am I not surprised, historically democrats were pro slavery in antebellum days.
Strange fruit comes to mind, for all the most awful of reasons. In the history of racial oppression, I hope that soon, and very soon, the twisted truth about black oppression of blacks will finally be told.
That has been par for the course in Africa. There is as much racism among tribes as you will find anywhere else but it is not at all limited to the black race. It is part of our nature that is not being modified by training. Since black have been somewhat kept in ignorance that training would be less but we have let our education system lead us into the darkness of ignorance where prejudice can play havoc. This is aided and abetted by avarice which we find in all of our race hustlers.
The first legal owner of another human being in the American Colonies was a black man who had himself come to Virginia as one of the first black indentured servants. There is nothing new or unusual about black exploitation and abuse of other blacks in America or anywhere else in the world.
Whoa! Inconvenient fact there. Does not go with the narrative. Someone must censor this fact, immediately .
I apologize to any college aged children who may have had their entire historical indoctrina-….err..narrative-….ummm- education, knocked on it’s ear.
Whew! I need some tofu, STAT!
Most excellent work! Thank you
Geez, it’s not like it was slavery slavery. I mean, black folks can’t be guilty of such things just like Hollywood folk can’t be guilty of rape. Did you miss the memo?
That might explain why she disappeared from the media, and probably explains why her threats to sue Breitbart are empty. Discovery might be a bitch for her.
The left did not get the reaction they expected and discovery would likely reveal what they expected and how they intended to achieve it. What I have seen so far looks like Shirley was involved from the very beginning of this maneuver. Was that firing planned? Since it was completely our of order and the tape was an edited tape its looks that way to me. This opened the door for faux apology and reinstatement consistent with the history that has been unfolding. The firing overreaction looks like a PR ploy to get our attention so Andrew Breitbart could be smeared. It backfired and our government got its fingers scorched. Now we all learn about Pigford. More needs to come to the surface and most likely will regardless of how much effort is used to quash it. If the Lord is in this it will prevail. Check our the downfall of Haman in the book of Esther.
This is exactly what has been going on for years in AZ with migrant Mexican workers. It is a dirty little secret that the workers are exploited by their own people.
Yawn. Yet, another story of leftist hypocrisy, with one exception: this one is comedy gold.
Skeletons in the Sherrod barn? Imagine. . . one set of rules for me, another for thee – something liberals know: [pick one] a. Everything about; b. Something about; c. Nothing about; or d. a and b.
Right, rashputin, it’s not racism if a black American abuses another black American – racism there is impossible. I mean, come on, it’s not like they weren’t being paid . . . something.
The Sherrods have started a new organization: the NAECP, the National Association for the Exploitation of Colored People.
I wonder what kind of health care plan the Sherrods offered the workers. Health care is a right, right?
Moral: Those who live in glass plantations shouldn’t throw. . . . well, you know.
‘Ol MacSherrod had a farm, e i e i o. And on this farm he had some kids, e i e i o. With a exploitation here, an exploitation there, here an exploitation, there an exploitation, ‘Ol MacSherrod had a farm, e i e i o.
The Sherrod farm motto: Our workers are 3/5 of a person; thus, we only pay them 3/5 of minimum wage.
Just when we need Jesse Jackson, he’s nowhere to be found. Perhaps somewhere over the rainbow.
I don’t have all the facts, but the Sherrods acted ‘stupidly.’ Maybe a beer summit at the White House will smooth things out.
I demand to see the Sherrods’ birth certificates! How do we know they’re U.S. Citizens?
Quick . . . get Kathy Lee Gifford on the phone! She’ll know what to do!
Joe Biden held a press conference today on the Sherrod farm story. He asked one worker to stand up to be recognized as a patriot, apparently not realizing the worker was in a wheel chair.
Shirley, should your attorneys use the full force of what they can do to defend you?
THIS is exactly the sort of thing that needs doing.
The Sherrods of the world are not without their own scandals. It would be quite interesting to see this hit, in some ways far more damning than the video.
Zombie that cannot be said enough — you are a national treasure and a great, truly great, American!
Agreed. Nice to read something friendly and cogent from you, Whisk-ol’ pal.
Pot…kettle.
Kettle…Shirley.
The SDherrod’s need to be investigated. Tehy won a lawsuit; exactly how, and for what? It appears that fraud was involved with this so-called ‘lawsuit’ which needs answering. Is there someone with some cojones out there?
Sherrod need’s a bit of jail time
First let me make it clear that I am a conservative and most of what I have to say is . . .”These Times They Are A-changin” . . . another thing . . . I worked the farms in Texas and Arkansas in the 1960′s . . . we were truly “Po’White Trash” . . . we lived in a house without running water or an indoor toilet . . . I was 9 years old in 1960 . . . you can do the rest of the math . . . we picked green beans for 25 cents a bushel . . . we chopped weeds all day for 4 dollars a day . . . we picked blackberries for 25 cents a gallon (we got rich picking berries . . . you could pick 6 gallons an hour!!!) . . . we picked tomatoes on my grandfathers farm (want to guess what that paid?) . . . why did we do this . . . it was do it or starve.
So I guess what I am saying is . . . If you were not THERE . . . you don’t understand!
Now for my perspectives on the Sherrods: I am sorry that they got caught . . . but they did . . . and now they are going to pay the social costs. . . society now demands it due . . . where they made the big mistake is they did not rise of their own volition . . . they road the backs of humanity . . . now they are at the mercy of the souls whom they abused.
They are going to be torn apart as the lions to the pilgrims . . . so it shall be.
tallgrass this may be slightly off the subject but you have the experience of picking and being paid by volume, not time. I know a little about this and would like your opinion on stoop labor and what we can expect from an inexperience picker who is full grown before he gets any training. If you would like to contact me personal maybe you could forward a message through Zombie or Jack Cashill on WorldNetDaily.com Also you might expand on that though here. That is skilled labor just like basketball, baseball and other sports that require rigorous training of our reflexes. I believe there is far too little understood by the city slickers of what is required to produce the quantities and why is is usually the best way to compensate. We know there are lots of Sherrods in the business of fleecing their labor. There is always a conflict of interest in earning what you are paid and being paid what you earn. If you pay too little, then your employee cannot advance but if you pay too much, then you can’t advance. Most jobs have limited value but the limits varies with the productivity of the job. This kind of labor production can only be increased to the limit of your personal skill and I know the Mexicans could pick more apples than I could. The farmer paid by the bushes so there was equality in labor but one picker could make more than another picker. But the farmer had no control over what the market would pay for his apples. I think this does play into the Sherrod case and demonstrate that they were not good managers. So far I have no information of the type farming they did. How did they come by nine and a half sections of land? Someone look into that acquisition and tell us about it. With these other factors outstanding I think there is room for scandal here, too.
Whit:
To a great degree my experience is similar to yours. The hand & eye are a remarkable machine, coordinated and reflexive, nimble & dexterious . . . some are gifted with those capabilities . . . others are slow and methodical, ever bearing and constant, almost inexhaustable. The heat, dust, character of the very plants within which the work is being done had great impact on us all. Of all the farms we worked, the most hated were plants such as okra, the hell fire of the spines stayed alive on your skin for hours after leaving the fields. Some jobs were filled with the stench of chemicals and decay. To this day I suffer contact dermatitis from exposure to who knows what. Yes there is skill and experience and the quantity picked at the end of the day always influenced the pay. Strange it is now that I look back on those days as perhaps the happiest most fulfilling days of my life, for I was surrounded by my family, all bent on a single objective, survival. Were we being taken advantage of? In todays perspectives we would most definitely be viewed from that perspective. Was the farmer guilty of slavery by conditional requirement? Perhaps it could be viewed so today. Of course during those times when mortgages and loans were paid on annual basis . . . “the place payment is due in October” . . . and livelyhood depended on the excess above those costs. The farm owner was in serious stress. Something as simple as a week of heavy rain could bring ruin to the crop. My grandfather was always as aware of the weather and if conditions based on “his clairvoyant communication with nature” were going to get bad we worked by the head lights of his 1949 ford pick-up. Long hours were required even in the best of conditions. When a field of tomatoes begin to rippen even 2 or 3 days delay in getting the fruit off the vine and on to the canning plant WILL be diasterous. When we picked for the neighbor we usually got equal treatment in picking. However, there were farmers further away where we did not get equal picking. This is a very important thing . . . for location in the field could change the quantity of produce. Always when we picked with strangers there was the “boss” of the other crews and the preferred areas went to others. It is the unspoken word that the newest pickers got the worst picking area. Combine the preferrential treatment with skill and talent and it was possible for one group to have a daily total of more than twice as much as those who got the less preferred area. I saw fights over a handful of beans, when a picker reached across the row to take a particularly large bunch of beans from the row of the other picker. As far as age of the picker or experience, young verses older, it was all based on the critical need. There is always a “breaking in time”, getting accustomed to the work and learning how to do it. It is a matter of stick-to-it-tiveness. If they gave up too soon then futility would set in and they would quit. Always there is that perspective that working on a farm is NOT a hobby . . . it is a way of life . . . the job is never done . . . it is truly 24/7/365. Those that don’t understand the farm are best to stay at home cause it ain’t no easy buck.
Tallgrass I must be getting senile. I thought your post was the one I lost till I started to read. I appreciate your response. May it open some eyes to what we are talking about. Something we both know by experience. Few that are not in the business know what we are talking about. How tight the harvest season and how sensitive we become to the weather. It is not likely many farmers were fooled by the global warming scam. I will pass your comments on to others. Many thanks.
Sorry about the double post. While writing this one it just disappeared and I did not find it was posted till later, after I had rewritten my comment. To those of you who are interested this shows the difference between a first and second writing where I have lost the first I cannot repeat myself in a rewrite. Read them both.
The worst bigot is one that treats his own race with racism.
The Sherrods had their antecedents!
The abomination of Chattel Slavery was officially established in the US in 1654 by Anthony Johnson, an African-born black man, who convinced a court that his servant (also black) John Casor was his for life.
Johnson had arrived in the colony of Virginia as an indentured servant. He saved enough money to buy out the remainder of his contract and that of his wife.
As the first chattel slave owner in the colonies, the African born black man, Anthony Johnson eventually became very wealthy and began importing his own black slaves from Africa.
In our race to blame white people for the evils of slavery we inevitably fail to mention that all of the blacks purchased on the slave docks of Western Africa were sold into slavery by fellow Blacks. Slavery in Africa existed for thousands of years; long before Roman times. Perhaps we should be blaming the evil Blacks of Africa for corrupting the innocent white farmers of America by peddling their illicit “goods” in the new world just as we blame Columbian drug cartels for selling drugs on the streets of American cities.
Good work, Zombie.
I hope this story gets attention, but I’m not holding my breath.
Wow.
How the worm turns!
Salamander Drake I’m not holding my breath waiting for something to happen, I am fanning the flames to see that something does happen. Our current administration has reason to try and sweep all this under the rug then forget about it. It can well be the rip string on that sack of beans so that when it is pulled the sack is opened and spills all the beans.
With the available information it looks like Charles and Shirley Sherrod are up to their ears in scandal. With Zombie’s information here, the various comments and other sources I have, the Sherrods accumulated almost nine and a half sections of land. A square of 9 sections would be three miles on each side. That took a pretty good chunk of investment which, at present, I have no information about. How did they get control of those nine and a half sections? I don’t know the going rate when the land was acquired but I know it amounted to a substantial sum. They have not shown themselves to be good managers of those assets which adds to the questions, Then we have the Pigford deal which seems to be unabashed fraud. A collusion with our corrupt government that should not have been honored.
With that background we have an edited tape sent to Andrew Breitbart, which he played, showing racial prejudice on Shirley’s part but the full tape got her off the hook(?)? In the meantime she was fired from her government job in such a way as to guarantee the compliant press would pick it up only to have the full tape throw a jumbo monkey wrench into the works. Followed by profuse apologies, also designed for maximum mainstream dissemination. This happened to be a very red flag to me which subsequent information confirms.
This puts Shirley right in the middle of the whole mess that some mind had to concoct. This is not a Rube Goldberg drawing with so many things left to chance to make his cartoon ridiculous. About the only thing I see left to chance was whether Breitbart would play the tape as delivered or fully check it out first. I did not catch his presentation but believe he did the right thing whether he intended to or not.
Now it is all out in the open and we can dig into the details and most certainly should. We may have our hands on the socialist pillars the way Samson had his hands on the pillars supporting the temple of the Philistines. He did not have the strength to move the pillars but the Lord did. It is much like our power steering with which we are all familiar. You do the steering but the hydraulics does the work. We must be willing to make that first move and the Lord will do the rest. We must activate the control before we have any action. Lets get busy manipulating those control levers.
Wow. All I can say.
Just be glad you’re not a former “CORPSE man”
And, “WOW” was about all I had to say too (which speaks volumes considering I’m typically a loud mouth bass).
“PAYBACK”!!!
Does anyone besides me think the MSM found this out quickly, and it is the reason they abruptly stopped talking to her. One anchor, Cooper, even apologized the next evening for not following up more aggressively on his questioning of her. There was a sense that they knew more than they were saying.
So what was all of that talk about a ‘double standard’, again? I think something is messing around with my reception of that message…
Old Southern Saying based on experience: “If you want to work a black person to death put a black person in charge of him.”
Ron Radosh…great Book!
I’m amazed that everyone missed Breibart’s point – he wasn’t after Shirley – he was showing that when she started telling her story everyone in the room was murmuring in agreement. Breibart was trying to show how racist the NAACP membership was – the narrator, Shirley, was not the target. By focusing on Shirley – the NAACP is able to avoid the scrutiny it deserves. That’s why the partial video was all he needed to make his point – which everyone seems to have missed.
Nik
Some agriculture jobs were and still are exempt from minimum wage laws at. My first paying job was twelve hours for $5 a day; I was eleven so that was 1970. The job entailed getting into the back of a pickup with about five other kids and rounding up sheep. When the truck came upon a flock one of us would get out and herd them toward the corral one or two miles away. We then would build some pens out of panels and metal fence posts and pen up the sheep. Our job was to hold the lambs so they could be castrated, their ears marked and their tails cut off. It was hot, dusty, bloody work. I’d have quit except my employer, who was also my dad, wouldn’t let me.
And so forth and so on the main subject of the article is “O” will reward her with a high paying govmen job especially after he reads this citation oops I mean article.
I don’t know about this story but I do know that the author is ignorant. 67 cents an hour in 1974 for farm labor was not bad. I know that in 1972 the rate in Utah was 50 cents. And it is legal. Minimum wage does not apply to farm labor. It never has. Having children work on a family farm is not illegal. That is the reason why schools run from September to June. It was so that children could work on family farms during the summer.
It is depressing that the media can’t get stories right.
“67 cents an hour in 1974 for farm labor was not bad.”
Oh yeah, that was big money in 1974, when the federal minimum wage was $1.90 an hour.
Asbout ten years earlier (in 1965) grape pickers in Delano, Ca. went out on strike, thus creating the UFWA, because the growers, not famous for their overwhelming generosity, were only paying $ 1.20 an hour.
According to my calculations, 67 cents an hour works out to about $6,500 a year in today’s money.
Not bad at all, as long as you don’t mind doing without everything except food, and you enjoy sleeping in your car.
And, these are the wages paid by the guys who’s whole purpose in life is to help the poor…at least that’s the song they’re always singing.