DELTA PRIDE
“All stress is the result of feeling as though you have no choice about something. As soon as you recognize the choices inherent in any situation, you regain a sense of being in control and the feeling of stress will begin to disappear.”
Bill Cumming
Sarah White is currently serving as the President of the Board of Directors at Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights. The Center was founded by long-time human rights activist Jaribu Hill in 1996. Located in the Mississippi Delta, the Center fights for the dignity and human rights of low-wage African American workers and all those who languish in extreme poverty. She shared the struggles of Mississippi catfish workers and the battles for human rights and justice they faced every day. She said during the 2009 Durban Review Conference, “We as Black women had to stand on our feet for 12 hours a day in ankle-deep water that contained chlorine and other harmful chemicals. This contaminated water caused severe skin rashes and other serious physical ailments. White male supervisors would force us to speed-up our work on the assembly-line so the company could make maximum profit. The bosses did not care about the health and well-being of the workers. Supervisors would terrorize us, making threats, ‘Speed it up or lose your job.’ We were sexually and racially harassed on a daily basis. We were mentally, emotionally, and psychologically tired. Why is this happening?
We were denied bathroom privileges. Even when we were allowed to go the bathroom, we were forced to wait long periods of time. Many times, white male supervisors would come into the women’s bathrooms which had no doors on the stalls. They would stand over us and would shout, ‘Hurry up and get up and go back to work.’ These are some of the conditions workers encountered every day in catfish and poultry plants across the Mississippi Delta. These indignities were suffered by us as workers because of our skin color and economic class.”
At that time, workers at Delta Pride were given six bathrooms breaks a week.
Your word is a
lamp to my feet and
a light for my path.
Psalm 119:105
“In 2009, workers in catfish and poultry plants in the Delta were forced to clock out and go to the bathroom. In other words, they lose money when they go to the bathroom. I am here today to let you know we rose up and fought Delta Pride for over three months to get justice and human rights. We, as African American women, had to show the bosses that we were proud, beautiful Black women who would never again tolerate that type of abuse. We led the largest labor strike in the state of Mississippi.
We won that battle and began a workers’ rights movement all over the state. Plants began to organize. Although we won many battles, we still must continue the struggle to overthrow Jim Crow laws (Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. All were enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by white Democratic-dominated state legislatures) that still exist today. Workplaces are still racially segregated. Black workers still are assigned to the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs and forced to work under conditions that look a lot like slavery.”