Allen Eugene Cox Papers

Allen Eugene “Gene” Cox was born in Denison, Grayson County, Texas, on August 13, 1905. His father, James Edgar Cox, was a dairyman from Missouri and his mother, Laura May Lott Cox, came from Prairie Grove, Arkansas. Cox was the eldest of two boys and four girls. He attended four schools in Denison between 1912 and 1916 because the family often moved. By 1920 he was living in Dallas and attending school there but left in the 7th grade. Cox then worked for a merchant in Dallas until 1927. Early that year he moved to El Paso where he was employed in the accounting departments of the Armour Packing Company and the Magnolia Petroleum Company. In 1931 he entered Texas Christian University with the intention of entering the ministry. He was active in the International Relations Club and involved in promoting civil rights for African Americans.



After meeting the prominent missionary Sherwood Eddy at a revival, Cox became interested in the cooperative farm project Eddy had founded at Hillhouse (later called Rochdale), in Bolivar County, Mississippi. Also involved with Eddy on the Delta Cooperative Farm project, purchased in March 1936, were theologian Reinhold Niebuhr; John and Mack Rust, inventors of the cotton picking machine; William Amberson, a physiology professor at the University of Tennessee Medical School in Memphis, Tennessee, who was also the leader of the Memphis Chapter of the Socialist Party of America; Sam H. Franklin, Eddy’s student; and H.L. Mitchell, executive secretary of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. The 2,138-acre farm a was diverse operation under resident director Franklin and had a mix of Black and White families, mostly evicted Arkansas sharecroppers. It promoted economic equality and gave both races access to various social services. Cox moved there in June 1936 to work as accountant and bookkeeper. There he met Miriam Lindsey “Lindy” Hail (1911-1996) who was born in Japan to missionaries John Eugene Hail (1873-1911) and Harriet J. Wyckoff Hail (1874-1942). She had trained as a registered nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital and was also recruited by the cooperative farm in 1936. Gene and Lindy married the following year. They had three daughters: Carol, Patricia Gail, and Ann.



After Franklin enlisted in the navy in 1942, Cox became resident director of Providence Cooperative Farm, bought in 1938, near Cruger, Holmes County. But the cooperative farms were struggling. The Delta Cooperative Farm was on land difficult for farming and was never viable without outside money. This problem was made worse by the exodus of rural workers entering the armed services and moving to war-related industries, which led to the sale of the Delta Cooperative Farm in 1942. Cox found Providence could not compete against the mechanized farms and leased much of its land to private farmers. David R. Minter became farm doctor in 1938 and returned in 1946 after serving in the war. In that same year, Delta Foundation Inc. was organized as a non-profit organization primarily for educational work. In 1950, Sam Franklin, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Charles S. Johnson resigned from the Providence board of trustees and a new board of directors was formed comprising Gene and Lindy Cox, and David and Mary Sue Minter. By the 1950s Providence included a cooperative grocery, a credit union, a purchasing cooperative, a supplementary school for African American children and a medical clinic. Cox became acting director of the Mount Beulah Christian Center, near Edwards, Mississippi, in 1954 to offer religious and social services to African Americans.



Despite some early efforts by local plantation owners to undermine the cooperative farm, Cox and the people on the cooperative farms had generally cordial relations with the surrounding communities in Bolivar and then Holmes County until the early 1950s. But that cordiality began to change as some whites were concerned about the work of the farm with African Americans because the interaction was not strictly segregated. The label of communist was also attached to the farm leaders. They seemed out of sympathy with locals after Minter testified in support of Hazel Brannon Smith, editor of the Lexington Advertiser, in a libel case in which she accused a local sheriff of an unprovoked shooting of an African American man. On September 27, 1955, a group of about 600 white people organized by the local Citizens’ Council met at Tchula High School to protest an incident where some African American boys had allegedly whistled at a white girl. Tensions were already high because of the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision and the acquittal a week earlier of two white men for the murder of African American youth Emmett Till in the Mississippi Delta. Summoned to the meeting, Cox and Minter heard a tape recording of the boys’ interrogation conducted the previous day, which included references to mixed activities among the races at the farm. Both Cox and Minter denied racial integration was practiced there but Cox admitted he thought segregation was unChristian. The Cox and Minter families were asked to leave the county but initially they refused. The incident received national attention and the farm families suffered harassment from the local sheriff’s department. Bowing to the inevitable, the Cox and Minter families left Mississippi, with the former moving to Whitehaven in Memphis, Tennessee, where Cox worked for the National Council of Churches as director of rural development programs. Providence farm was sold to the Delta Foundation with Gene Cox acting as executive director. The intention was for the foundation to carry on the work of the farm as the founders had intended. Lindy Cox and the Minters, now living in Texas, continued as directors. The farm, run by Fannye Booker, continued to have a store and offered educational programs to local African Americans.



Cox was deeply affected by being forced to leave Mississippi and in order to protect the image of the cooperative farms he decided to restrict some of his papers in later years. Yet, he was also determined not to abandon Mississippi and he continued to visit the state as part of his work for the NCC. He was active with religious groups and civil rights organizations and as part of an effort to publicize and document the situation in Mississippi and further afield, he collected materials including voluminous clippings which he copied and distributed. It says much about the organized nature of the man, his attention to detail and determination, and his wide interests, that he compiled such extensive files. Cox was very involved with the labor activities of H.L. Mitchell and the two men were life-long friends. He was very interested in the history of telephones and established a small museum. Another interest was archeology and he also collected and polished stones which he would give to the wide circle of people he met. Cox became increasingly concerned about the legacy of the cooperative farms and began donating his papers to a number of institutions including Mississippi State University Libraries. He also encouraged others like Mitchell and fellow director, minister and social critic Will Campbell to do the same.



By the 1980s a decision had to be made on the future of Providence farm. Nearly 289 acres containing an archeological site was donated to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, while the remaining land was sold to the Nature Conservancy in 1991. In their retirement, Gene and Lindy volunteered extensively for the Memphis Regional Medical Center which was recognized by Congressional Community Service Awards in 1981. Gene Cox died after a stroke on December 19, 1992. Lindy Cox died on August 1, 1996.



Sources:



Allen Eugene Cox papers.



Cobb, James C. The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity, 1992, pp.222-224.



Dunbar, Anthony P. Against the Grain: Southern Radicals and Prophets 1929-1959, 1981, pp. 119, 200, 244-245, 259.



Franklin, Sam H. Early Years of the Delta Cooperative Farm and the Providence Cooperative Farm, 1980.