Circa 1935–1937 draft of letter by George B. Vashon to Congress on the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Bill.

Black grassroots Great Depression letter urging New Deal land reform

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In this two-page letter addressed to lawmakers, George B. Vashon, president of the Affiliated Colored Democratic Clubs of St. Louis, urges congressional support for the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act. Vashon was a Black civic leader in Missouri. His relation, if any, to the like-named George Boyer Vashon, who was the first African American graduate of Oberlin College and a noted abolitionist, is unknown.

Written during the Great Depression, the letter is a clear expression of grassroots New Deal advocacy from within the Black political community. Vashon argues for the transformative power of land ownership among Black tenant farmers in the South and praises the “back to the farm” movement. Decrying “farm-worker poverty and discontent” under the tenant system, he endorses the bill’s goal of converting “raw-product producers” into “benefactors,” envisioning a shift that would draw “countless thousands of failures in over-crowded city life to profitable happy lives as producers.”

The message blends economic rationale with moral appeal, asserting that stabilizing African American farmers through ownership would uplift entire communities: “Consciousness of ownership stimulates [...] a commendable pride.” Vashon concludes: “Stabilizing [these] farm people as producers graded to the high place to which they belong as benefactors, rather than perpetuating them as stagnated, suffering ‘clod-hoppers’ is most commendable statesmanship.”

Price: $250.00