Brief Autograph Letter Signed, on Hotel Tulare stationery. Entire text: Oct 13 - 1933. Davis, The Cotton strike is in full swing we are the only Press in the area. We are feeling the migrants.
Tulare, CA: 1933. Holograph. 24 x 15 cm. Small illustration of Hotel Tulare at top of page. on this letterhead stationery. We know nothing about the letter's recipient ("Davis"). Beasley, an African American, was born in Cincinnati and spent her first four decades in Ohio before moving to Oakland, California around 1910. She is probably most remembered for "The Negro Trail-Blazers of California," published in 1919. She had a weekly column ("Activities among Negroes") each Sunday in the Oakland Tribune for about a ten year period (1923-1934). We don't know whether Beasley went on her own to Tulare or was sent somehow sent by the firmly Republican Oakland Tribune. Her column was focused on African Americans and the vast majority of cotton field strikers near Tulare were Mexican. Perhaps some of the non-Mexican strikers were African American. Beasley was a devout Catholic. Perhaps that had something to do with her interest in the strikers. In any event, the owners and their allies used violence and heavy-handed intimidation swinging public opinion toward the agricultural strikers. The cotton growers, with a nudge from the Regional Labor Board, agreed to raise the pay rate to 75 cents per hundred pounds picked. The Regional Labor Board threatened strikers with loss of all relief payments if this offer was not accepted. The workers accepted the offer on October 26, ending the strike. We found nothing online in Beasley's October or early November columns in 1933 about the strike or strikers. We also found nothing to indicate that anything by Beasley about the strike or strikers was published elsewhere. She died less than a year after this letter was written. Near Fine. Item #95603
Price: $2,000.00