Union wary of school with communist ties

TYRONZA — Van Hawkins’ book Plowing New Ground: The Southern Tenant Farmers Union and Its Place in Delta History includes a topic not covered at the Southern Tenant Farmers Museum - the union’s wary on-and-off relationship with Commonwealth College, a Mena-based institution known for its communist inclinations.

Published in 2007 and sold in the museum’s gift shop, the book reports that “sometimes, politically radical helpers generated more liabilities than assets” for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. “The union’s affiliation with Commonwealth College is a case in point. An institution notorious for communist sympathies, the school’s help came at too high a price for the union.”

In 1934, Commonwealth Director Lucien Koch “arranged a meeting with union leaders in Marked Tree. Though uneasy about an association with Commonwealth, given the school’s alleged Communist Party ties, [STFU co-founder H.L.] Mitchell accepted Koch’s offer of student help distributing literature.”

One student who helped in that effort, according to Plowing New Ground, was future Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus. (The three months Faubus spent at Commonwealth became an issue during his successful first gubernatorial campaign in 1954.)

“Koch’s union activities soon landed him in the Lepanto jail,” writes Hawkins, the husband of Ruth Hawkins, director of Arkansas Heritage Sites at Arkansas State University. “Though Mitchell arranged his release, the STFU leader became increasingly convinced that the school’s assistance brought more problems than progress.”

In July 1936, according to the book, Mitchell visited the college, where “Walter Moskop, once president of a Marked Tree STFU local and then a Commonwealth student, allegedly objected to Mitchell’s rejection of communist ideology in favor of socialism and during Mitchell’s visit fired a pistol at the STFU leader. Fortunately for Mitchell, Moskop missed. Union and school officials hushed up the assault to appease liberal allies.”

Hawkins writes that union leaders suspected many Commonwealth faculty members and students aimed to infiltrate and control the union. Claude Williams, who replaced Koch as the college’s director, was expelled from the union in 1938 based on suspicions that he was plotting a takeover. He “remained a bitter enemy of the union and used Commonwealth’s resources to compete with the STFU until the school’s demise in 1940.”

Asked about the Commonwealth connection, Linda Hinton, assistant director of the Southern Tenant Farmers Museum, says, “You didn’t miss it at the museum. It’s just not there. H.L. Mitchell always made it very clear that he was not a communist.”