State v. Rodgers (1935)

Ward H. Rodgers was convicted of anarchy on January 21, 1935, in Marked Tree (Poinsett County). District Attorney Fred Stafford of Marked Tree led the state’s prosecution, while C. T. Carpenter, attorney for the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU), led the defense, with financial and legal support from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Rodgers successfully appealed the decision to the Poinsett County Circuit Court, and the conviction was dismissed in March 1936. State v. Rodgers was significant in that it was a state-led legal challenge addressing the boundaries of free speech. The state’s successful prosecution of Rodgers seemed to establish limits of free speech for private citizens in the political realm, especially speech that could be linked to potential violence. The conviction served as a setback for Rodgers in his efforts as an organizer for the STFU. However, the eventual dismissal illustrated the difficulty in the state applying criminality to speech, even speech that was deemed incendiary.

Arrest
On January 15, 1935, while speaking at a meeting of more than 500 members of the STFU in Marked Tree, Rodgers, who had been an active STFU organizer, suggested that a lynch mob could be formed by sharecroppers to lynch landowners in the county. At the time of his speech, Rodgers was working for an adult education program of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) teaching adults to read, write, and perform arithmetic. When some plantation owners objected to sharecroppers learning these skills, the superintendent of the area’s schools directed Rodgers to stop teaching these classes and leave the county. When Rodgers protested, the superintendent told him he might “find himself strung up on a telephone pole, if he did not leave.” Rodgers later recalled the statement in an article for the Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP: “I spoke of the violence being used against the Union and told of our policy of non-violence. But stated that violence is a weapon that two can use. And that if the planters continued their violent acts, eventually sharecroppers would stop turning their other cheeks and start using lynch ropes.”

STFU Secretary and co-founder H. L. Mitchell attended the meeting and would later recall the incident: “Without explaining what had happened at his adult education class the night before Rodgers said, ‘You know if I wanted to do so, I could lead a lynch mob to lynch any plantation owner in Poinsett County.’ When he said that about 1500 hats went up in the air and they said, ‘Come on boy, let’s go get them.’ I knew he had said the wrong thing, so I got up on the platform and explained what had happened the night before.”

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Fred Stafford and Sheriff J. D. Dubard, both of Poinsett County, were also present at the meeting. At its conclusion, Rodgers was arrested by Dubard and charged with a litany of criminal offenses, including using profane and abusive language, inciting a riot, conspiracy to usurp the government, blasphemy, barratry, and anarchy. Bond was set at $3,000 (more than $70,000 in 2025 dollars). Unable to make bail, Rodgers sat in a Harrisburg (Poinsett County) jail awaiting trial.

Following Rodgers’s arrest and jailing, organizations and figures sympathetic to the STFU cause offered support. The Farmers National Committee for Action (FNCA), a communist front, raised money for Rodgers’s defense. The National Headquarters of the Socialist Party called for protests. The Highlander Folk School in Tennessee made significant financial contributions. Prominent American socialist Norman Thomas helped to form the Committee to Aid the Defense of Ward Rodgers and, additionally, utilized the press to defend Rodgers as well as the wider STFU mission. These organizations typically viewed Rodgers’s arrest as part of a wider attack by wealthy landowners on labor rights, specifically union organizing.

Trial
The trial took place on January 21, 1935, in a Marked Tree grocery store. The prosecution, led by Fred Stafford, presented the state’s case. Six state witnesses took the stand, and all attested to Rodgers’s inflammatory speech at the relevant union meeting. Stafford accused Rodgers of being a “foreign agitator from that Yankee school, Vanderbilt University.” The case went to the jury—Rodgers labeled it “a planter jury.” After ten minutes of deliberation, the jury delivered a verdict of guilty on the charge of anarchy. The court sentenced Rodgers to six months in prison and a $500 fine. Rodgers eventually made bond and was released awaiting appeal.

Aftermath/Appeal/Dismissal
Rodgers’s legal troubles did not dissuade him from continued activism on behalf of the union. In February 1935, he attempted to “speak on the streets” in Lepanto (Poinsett County) and was arrested and charged with obstructing traffic. After spending a few nights in a “filthy jail…inadequate heat, bedding and food,” and despite efforts by local officials to impose a six-month jail sentence, the charge was eventually dismissed by the local prosecuting attorney.

Rodgers’s appeal reached the Poinsett County Circuit Court more than a year after his initial arrest. On March 3, 1936, the conviction was dismissed at the request of the assigned prosecutor, Denver L. Dudley. In announcing the dismissal, Dudley stated: “I regard Rodgers as a meddler and agitator. There is no reason to distinguish that case between any other misdemeanor case. I do not see any reason for spending the county’s money to try that sort of a case.” Rodgers would credit the publicity of the case as the main reason for dismissal.

For additional information:
“Charges against Ward Rodgers Dropped.” Jonesboro Evening Sun, March 3, 1936.

“Charges Dropped against Minister.” Kingsport Times, March 3, 1936.

Kern, Jamie. “The Price of Dissent: Freedom of Speech and Arkansas Criminal Anarchy Arrests.” Master’s thesis, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, 2012. https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/475 (accessed June 10, 2025).

———. “State v. Rodgers: The 1935 Anarchy Trial of Ward Rodgers in Poinsett County.” In First Amendment Studies in Arkansas: The Richard S. Arnold Prize Essays, edited by Stephen A. Smith. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2016.

Mitchell, H. L. “The Founding of the Early History of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 32 (1973): 342–369.

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Records: 1929–1968; Labor; Agriculture; Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union; Ward, Rodgers, defense, 1935. Manuscript Division. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss65570.mss65570-10111/?st=gallery (accessed June 10, 2025).

Rodgers, Ward H. “Sharecroppers Drop Color Line.” Crisis 42, no. 6 (June 1935): 168–169, 175. https://archive.org/details/sim_crisis_1935-06_42_6/page/168/mode/2up (accessed June 10, 2025).

“Spotlight Is Turned Again on This State.” Helena World, January 20, 1935.

Charles A. Bonet
Maumelle, Arkansas