H. L. Mitchell
Harry Leland Mitchell | |
|---|---|
Portrait by Dorothea Lange, 1938 | |
| Born | June 14, 1906. |
| Died | August 1, 1989 (aged 83) |
| Resting place | Greenwood Cemetery (Montgomery, Alabama) |
| Alma mater | Halls High School (Knox County, Tennessee), graduated 1924 |
| Occupation(s) | Sharecropper, union organizer |
| Years active | 1934–1973 |
| Employer(s) | Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU), National Farm Labor Union (NFLU), National Agricultural Workers Union (NAWU) |
| Known for | Farmworkers union leader; organizing the STFU with Clay East |
| Notable work | Mean Things Happening In This Land |
| Title | Executive Secretary STFU (1934–1939, 1941–1944), President NFLU (1945–1955) and NAWU (1955–1960) |
| Spouses | Lyndell "Dell" Cannack (1926–c. 1940), Dorothy Dowe (1951–1989) |
| Children | Harry L. Mitchell Jr., Samuel Howard Mitchell, Mrs. Joe Freeland |
| Father | James Y. Mitchell |
| Relatives | Edwin Mitchell (brother) |
Harry Leland Mitchell (June 14, 1906 – January 8, 1989) was an American union leader. He was a cofounder and leader of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU) in 1934, and led its successor unions, for most of the next twenty-six years. He had been a sharecropper himself, and a socialist like his fellow instigator of the STFU, Clay East. They led an initially small racially mixed union of poor people within three years to a membership of some 30,000 tenant farmers and sharecroppers. As the STFU evolved through association with larger, more powerful unions, it changed its name, and Mitchell his official role. He was President of the National Farm Labor Union (NFLU), then of the National Agricultural Workers Union (NAWU), before retiring in 1960. In 1979, he published a memoir concerned almost entirely with his organizing activities.