Howard Kester

Howard Kester was an American preacher, organizer, and activist, most known for his work organizing the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU) beginning in 1934. His work was inspired by a radical version of Christianity called the Social Gospel, influenced by Reinhold Niebuhr among others, and a Marxist critique of the Southern economy. A white Southerner himself, he firmly believed that the only way to create a new "Eden" was to end racial strife by uniting poor black and whites around a common cause. His views on race began when, as a college student, he toured Poland with the YMCA. After visiting a Jewish ghetto he began to see a parallel between Europe's treatment of Jews and America's treatment of blacks. Kester worked with numerous organizations throughout his life that sought equality in the United States: NAACP, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Fellowship of Southern Churchmen, and the Committee on Economic and Racial Justice. In 1936 he published "Revolt Among the Sharecroppers" on behalf of the STFU.

External links

* [http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/B-0007-01/menu.html Oral history interview] by Jacquelyn Hall and William Finger, July 1974 (Southern Oral History Program, UNC-Chapel Hill)
* [http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/B-0007-02/menu.html Oral history interview] by Mary Frederickson, August 1974 (Southern Oral History Program, UNC-Chapel Hill)