Abstract
When the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America, with its CIO affiliation, its inter-racial membership policy, and its alleged and subsequently proven communist leadership began sending organizers into central Florida in 1937, citrus owners and operators reacted swiftly with anger and vigor. The UCAPAWA-CIO confirmed their suspicions that organized labor, communism, socialism, and what the American Legion called “the other isms” were essentially alike— un-American and things to be treated as any other disease. As Frank McCallister, a socialist member of the Workers Defense League, put it in 1938 when a legionnaire called him a “dangerous communist, ” “it really is libellous and slanderous to call a man a communist in the south because you do irreparable damage to his reputation. The ideas these people have of a communist would give them complete justification for running anyone out of town who was so classed.“
Recommended Citation
Shofner, Jerrell H.
(1992)
"Communists, Klansmen, and the CIO in the Florida Citrus Industry,"
Florida Historical Quarterly: Vol. 71:
No.
3, Article 4.
Available at:
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/fhq/vol71/iss3/4
