An examination of the mythic frameworks used by two forms of media to present the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union

This study looks at how myth framed discussion of the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, a biracial union formed in the 1930s in Poinsett County, Arkansas. The study examines the elements of myth that appear in the Poinsett County newspaper, the Marked Tree Tribune, and in the Commonwealth College play One Bread One Body. The Tribune's banner declared the newspaper to be "The Standard Bearer for Community Builders," while the play from the small labor college was avowedly partisan---it was written to support the union.; Two myths were used to frame contradictory understandings of the STFU. The myth of the Old South present in the pages of the Marked Tree Tribune explained the conflicts between plantation owner and tenant farmer in terms of a stable, traditional world threatened with destruction by the violence of crude and self-serving outsiders. It was a myth that divided the world into Southerners---or in the Tribune, citizens---and outsiders, who were presented as ideological outsiders when they were geographically southern. In this myth, the Southerners or citizens were decent people, people who, in fact, were the true Americans.; The STFU had passionate allies in the students and faculty of Commonwealth College, located in Mena, Arkansas. The Commoners, as they called themselves, brandished another myth in their play, a Social Gospel vision of the New Testament, to sustain and support the union members. Their myth emphasized the brotherhood of man as the way to solve the injustice of inequity. It was a myth that emphasized oneness, although the play shied away from explicit discussion of the dangerous subject of race.