Tobacco Workers in Connecticut
“This wooden barrel on wheels is the most important piece of field equipment we have,” says Duane Adams, a Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum docent who worked 46 years in the tobacco farms of the Connecticut Valley. He slapped the weathered sides of a wooden barrel, and pointed out how essential cool water was to field workers. Later when they delivered water in plastic barrels, Adams said “you could brew tea with it, it came out so hot.”
On Saturday March 18, former workers gathered for an oral history event at the museum in Northwest Park in Windsor: elderly folks recalled cuts and bruises, teen romances and lifelong friendships. Many were only 14 or 15 years old when they started working, and the summer job could fill their pockets with enough to buy a stereo system or a new Columbia 3-speed bike. A bus picked them up at 7 am, returning them stained with tobacco juice to towns near Hartford. “At the end of the day we smelled like tobacco and you could not even recognize us under the head-to-toe dirt, “said Pat Wice who was recruited from New Britain High School.
The Tobacco Museum in Windsor has collected artifacts, workers records, paraphernalia of the cigar trade, and equipment used in growing Connecticut’s specialty tobacco: wrapper leaf for making cigars that has to be grown under shaded nets to get the right temperature. What’s good for tobacco is hard on the workers, many participants emphasized how hot it was under the cotton netting. Growers invested in research, helped by 1920s agricultural stations, to produce seed that would thrive in the microclimate of the Connecticut Valley. Eastern Connecticut State University filmmakers, Kristen Morgan, Brian Day and Seth Richards showed an excerpt from their documentary series “Stepping into the Shade.” In the film, Jim Lamondia, a plant biologist retired from the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station explains that the sandy loam left by glacial lakes in the area, nourished broadleaf tobacco. These plants could grow an inch a day under the best sun. Lamondia commented that what was once 30,000 acres of tobacco has shrunken to 20–25 acres today.
Gail who worked at the Brown farm around 1957 or 1958 described how the juice ran down her arms as she tied bundles of leaves to lathes in the curing barns, leaving a stinging red rash. She only lasted six weeks at the job until she discovered she was allergic to the juice. Other workers remembered the constant banter: “the boys were always trying to get our attention, even if they had to put frogs or a giant green tobacco worm in our baskets.” One fellow said “we wanted to work in the sheds to be near the girls.” Pay sounds modest at 28 cents an hour, later 50 to 80 cents, but it was better than the wages at many local employers.
Surrounding towns could not supply enough workers and at various times, laborers were recruited from the South and the Caribbean. Around World War I and through the 1940s the growers set up a program in cooperation with The National Urban League to recruit African American students from southern colleges such as Morehouse. Martin Luther King, Thurgood Marshall and Mahalia Jackson all worked in Connecticut. In 1955, a Puerto Rican Farm Labor program brought large numbers of islanders to the area, many of whom settled in Hartford. Many Jamaicans came, year after year, and formed communities with such anchor institutions as the West Indian Social Club. According to curator Rain Michel, oral histories are being actively sought with the various waves of workers. More sessions to capture worker memories from the tobacco fields are planned for June and September. Jim Daniels president of the Board of the Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum emphasizes the impact the industry has had on the area, supporting the economy and drawing migrant groups.
