Biography
Pierce White was a white farmer in the federal Rural Rehabilitation program at Lafayette, Chambers County, Alabama. He received a six-month sentence after selling about two hundred pounds of cotton he had grown to buy groceries for his family. Field foreman Vernon Jennings accused him of stealing government cotton. While White was jailed, officials seized his livestock and farm equipment and threatened his wife and four daughters with eviction. The Share Croppers’ Union sought his release and challenged the administration’s treatment of the rehabilitation farmers.
