Who counts as a worker: the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union in the Delta, 1965 to 1966

The Mississippi Freedom Labor Union (MFLU) organized agricultural and domestic workers, unemployed people, and evicted sharecroppers in the Mississippi Delta during 1965–1966. Drawing on union documents, oral histories, movement correspondence, and government records, this article argues that its efforts to maintain a constituency across employment and unemployment connected wage demands to struggles over food, housing, and public employment. Agricultural mechanization reduced strike leverage, while employer retaliation, resource shortages, and internal disputes weakened collective action. Exclusion from federal collective bargaining protections and uneven support from established unions further limited the MFLU’s ability to sustain its members. Strike City and the related campaigns for public assistance reveal both the possibilities and the difficulties of representing people whose claims as workers persisted after the loss of their jobs.