This detailed history of the Red Banks Mutual
Association project begins with a useful discussion of conditions Lumbee
farmers were enduring, thus explaining the need for the projects.
By the late 1920's, many Lumbee were working as sharecroppers, farming
cotton or tobacco. They constantly owed money to local stores (which
were operated by landowners), and the money they owed was charged against
their share of the year's crop proceeds. During the Great Depression,
when landowners were paid to take some of their land out of production,
Lumbee sharecroppers were often thrown off the land they had been farming.
Whites were shown preference when they applied for local relief funds.
Anderson gives specific, moving examples from government reports of the
vicious cycle for Lumbee farmers: sharecroppers' low compensation; reliance
on credit at high interest rates; falling crop prices; unreasonable mortgage
rates exacted from those who were small landowners; having land foreclosed
on due to inability to make mortgage payments; and working as a sharecropper
only eight months of the year and being unable to find work during the
other months.
Anderson quotes from 1934 correspondence from H.R. Barton
of Maxton to Mrs. Thomas O'Berry in Raleigh (an officer of the State
Relief Administration) concerning the competition Lumbee farmers faced,
in trying to get government aid, from Whites who were also losing their
land due to mortgage foreclosures: “There are at least eight or
ten thousand Indians...turned away when they apply to these local relief
offices here in the county.”
After setting the stage for the need for Red Banks, Anderson
discusses John Collier, who became Commissioner of Indian Affairs in
1933. Collier had worked as an anthropologist and had assisted
Indian rights groups for many year. He strived, as Commissioner,
to “restore traditional Indian culture, political autonomy, and
communal land ownership.”
Anderson notes the strong efforts, during this period,
of Joseph Brooks , Chief of the Siouan Council, to get relief for Lumbee
people. [Note: the tribal name “Lumbee” is used in this
annotation for purposes of clarity and simplicity. The tribal
name Lumbee was not legally adopted until 1953. In 1934 there
was a strong movement to enact the tribal name Siouan Indians.]
Brooks wrote repeatedly to Collier, describing the Lumbee struggle with
poverty, land loss, and sharecropping. The 1935 visit to Robeson
County by Indian Agent Fred Baker, and his detailed report on the Lumbees'
reliability, desire for help, and obvious needs, brought action.
Pembroke Farms (which later contained the smaller communal Red Banks
area) began in late summer, 1935. It was administered by the state
office of the Farm Security Administration. The entire Pembroke
Farms project consisted of 9,287 acres, between Pembroke and Maxton.
Individual farms on the project contained a 5- or 7-room house and outbuildings.
Red Banks Mutual Association was established in 1938 as a subdivision
of Pembroke Farms. It was a cooperative farming effort, run by
the Indian families themselves (up to fifteen at a time), who worked
1,720 acres through a 99-year lease. They operated independently
of Pembroke Farms and made annual reports to the federal government
on their loan.
Collier wanted the Siouans to obtain federal recognition,
so the BIA, in 1936, sent anthropologist Carl Seltzer to measure the
Siouan peoples' "Indianness" by skull shape, body measurements, and
skin color. His methods, which have been derided as racist (for
more details, see The Lumbee Indians: an annotated bibliography,
items 57, 610, and 666), certified 22 of 209 applicants as 1/2 or more
Indian blood. In the original government correspondence about
Pembroke Farms, the intent was to allow people of at least 1/32 Indian
blood to obtain land. The change to 1/2 Indian blood had to do
with political concessions tied to passage of the Indian Reorganization
Act. The project was suddenly shifted from oversight by the BIA
to the Farm Security Administration (which was within the Department
of Agriculture), thus allowing people other than the 22 “certified”
individuals to obtain land.
Another roadblock Anderson describes was the visit to
Washington by a group of members of a White church adjacent to Pembroke
Farms who complained that the Indian farms would spoil the view from their
sanctuary and were also unhappy that the project excluded Whites.
As a compromise, a row of trees was planted between the sanctuary and the
farms; and some small plots were given to White and Black farmers.
The article gives a wide range of interesting details
on the history of Red Banks. The project was dissolved in 1968 in
such a way that the remaining members could become individual landowners.
The article is well researched and documented.
Anderson makes extensive use of primary sources such as government reports
from the Red Banks period; correspondence between Lumbee tenants/leaders
and government officials; minutes of the Red Banks Mutual Association,
held by Lumbee River Legal Services; the papers of Earl Deese, who was
a manager of Red Banks, held by Dr. Linda Oxendine; and a number of
appropriate secondary sources, such as books, journal articles, newspaper
articles specifically on Red Banks, the Lumbee petition, and
masters theses.
Key source