Research Catalog

Title

H-2 worker : Research collection, 1940-1994.

Author

Black, Stephanie.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

2.3 lin. ft.

Summary

The collection consists primarily of printed material gathered by Stephanie Black in researching the sugar industry in the United States and its treatment of workers who harvest the crop. Included are FBI files related to investigations of the United States Sugar Corporation, 1940s peonage petitions filed by the Workers Defense League on behalf of the African-American workers and copies of the contractual agreements and documentation of the violations and abuses of the individuals contracted to work in the program. African-American male agricultural workers provided inexpensive and sometimes, free labor to the sugar industry until the peonage scandal broke in the 1930s. There is also documentation of the AFL-CIO's legal actions against the sugar corporations, opposing their usage of immigrants for the available jobs and the treatment of those hired to harvest the sugar cane. The newspaper clippings from the 1940s through the 1990s present a view of the media's coverage of the U.S. sugar industry, along with national, regional, and Caribbean public and political positions on the "H-2" guest-worker visa program. Also included are some of Stephanie Black's notes, transcripts of radio and television interviews, and copies of legal briefs (1942-1946) prepared by the Farmworkers Justice Fund.

Subjects

• Motion pictures > United States
• Agricultural laborers, Foreign > United States
• Peonage > United States
• H-2 Worker (Motion picture)
• Migrant labor > United States
• Experimental films > United States
• Sugar beet industry > Florida
• Farmworker Justice Fund (Washington, D.C.)
• Black, Stephanie
• Migrant agricultural laborers > United States > Economic conditions
• Sugar workers > Florida

Source (note)

• Stephanie Black

Biography (note)

• "H-2 Worker" (1990/16mm/70 min) is a documentary film about the plight of Caribbean men, mostly Jamaican, who are brought to Florida each year under the temporary guest-worker (H-2) visa program to harvest sugar cane for American sugar corporations.

Indexes/Finding Aids (note)

• Preliminary finding aid available.

Processing Action (note)

• Accessioned
• Cataloged

Call Number

Sc MG 681

OCLC

NYPW03-A56

Author

Black, Stephanie. Collector

Title

H-2 worker : Research collection, 1940-1994.

Biography

"H-2 Worker" (1990/16mm/70 min) is a documentary film about the plight of Caribbean men, mostly Jamaican, who are brought to Florida each year under the temporary guest-worker (H-2) visa program to harvest sugar cane for American sugar corporations. The film was produced and directed by Stephanie Black an independent filmmaker. The H-2 Worker program allows the U.S. sugar industry to legally recruit and permit entry of foreign workers in a collaborative venture among various U.S. federal government departments and the governments of the nations where the workers are recruited. The film tells the story of the mistreatment and exploitation of the migrant workers by the sugar corporations as well as the United States government's, through the Department of Agriculture, complicity in exploiting these workers and Caribbean nations for a profit.

Indexes

Preliminary finding aid available.

Connect to:

Finding Aid

Research Call Number

Sc MG 681