2019 Regular Session ENROLLED
SENATE RESOLUTION NO. 87
BY SENATOR MILLS
A RESOLUTION
To commend the Southern Mutual Help Association, Inc. on fifty years of working for social
and employment equality and refusing to surrender its dream of a country that lives
up to the lofty aspirations of the Declaration of Independence and the preamble to
the United States Constitution.
WHEREAS, the Southern Mutual Help Association (SMHA) was founded in the
summer of 1969 to be an agent of change amid, arguably, the time of greatest racial discord
and division the country had faced in more than one hundred years, during and at the end of
the Civil War, leaving a country battered and scarred and many issues unchanged; and
WHEREAS, the racial strife of the 1960s is symbolized by the cowardly and
unconscionable murder of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on April 4, 1968, on a
Memphis, Tennessee, motel balcony; and
WHEREAS, the specific factors that led to the founding of the SMHA included the
broad issue of various oppressive societal constructs, and personally for the founders, their
individual experiences in rural Louisiana; and
WHEREAS, the conditions on sugarcane plantations at the time, which affected over
one hundred thousand people across the state, were not generally known outside the specific
areas of cane farming; and
WHEREAS, the founders, Anne C. Bizalion, Henry Pelet, and Lorna Bourg, were
buoyed by a judicial victory in 1969 in a case in which a three-judge appellate panel ruled
that SMHA had the right to "free assembly" with farm and plantation workers as guaranteed
in the United States Constitution; and
WHEREAS, the founders had been encouraged also by the passage of the national
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"War on Poverty" and the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act by President Lyndon Johnson,
which appeared to bode well for change, but despite incremental progress that change
remained elusive; and
WHEREAS, frustration grew in the rural communities when public officials did not
adhere to the ideals of the "War on Poverty" or the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act; and
WHEREAS, the mission of the organization, as the founders saw it, was to help
people develop strong, healthy, prosperous rural communities in Louisiana, and the special
focus of SMHA is distressed rural communities whose livelihood is interdependent with the
land and waters, and they are committed to finding fair and innovative solutions for
challenged rural communities; and
WHEREAS, within a year of its founding, SMHA initiated a program of self-help,
low-income housing efforts, including the first neighborhood, called "Rabbit Hill", in
Abbeville, Louisiana, where thirty homes were successfully renovated; and
WHEREAS, because of the successful renovation of these homes, Abbeville obtained
the first federally-funded Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) for rural
communities, and soon the success in Abbeville was duplicated in dozens of other small
rural communities in Louisiana; and
WHEREAS, utilizing its own self-help housing strategy, SMHA went on to build
forty-nine individually-owned new homes for sugarcane farm worker families; and
WHEREAS, substandard housing was not SMHA's only focus; with adult education
being a vital, but unmet need, the organization began adult basic education and job training
classes with culturally adapted materials specifically aimed at plantation workers; and
WHEREAS, as an example of the success of this program, a graduate of the first
SMHA adult education program went on to earn a master's degree in rural development at
the University of Massachusetts, and after serving as executive director of a community
action agency and organizing farm workers around legal issues, this graduate returned to
SMHA as the housing director and was eventually honored at the White House as an
example of needed, extraordinary, community involvement; and
WHEREAS, SMHA was first to document and address the health needs of farm
worker families, founding the first rural dental and medical clinic for farm workers that saw
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over ten thousand visits in its first year and became the template for what is now a network
of rural health centers across the state; and
WHEREAS, in the 1980s SMHA won another major legal battle with the United
States Supreme Court decision in a case filed by SMHA involving the "Itinerant Workers
Law", in which, under the authority of state law, St. Mary Parish enacted an ordinance that
required all of the persons applying for a job in the parish to be photographed and
fingerprinted, answer personal questions, and pay a ten dollar fee; and
WHEREAS, the Supreme Court declared the St. Mary Parish ordinance
unconstitutional and ordered the state and the parish to pay compensation to the people who
were plaintiffs in the case and had been adversely affected by the ordinance; and
WHEREAS, not content with the status quo, SMHA continues today to be true to its
original purpose of being an agent of change without the organization changing its mission
and goal, working with communities in a way that does not demean, providing tools for
growth and empowerment, and to train other leaders in development skills so they may be
useful to each community and its unique characteristics; and
WHEREAS, the SMHA of the twenty-first century continues to pioneer new
approaches to challenges facing Louisiana's rural communities, standing strong against the
root causes of poverty, sexism, and class divisions while creating new institutions, policies,
leadership, learning opportunities, and new wealth in communities and building and
leveraging new partnerships; and
WHEREAS, the vision of the founders of the Southern Mutual Help Association, Inc.
remains clear and the commitment, especially to being an agent of change in rural Louisiana,
is unwavering, understanding that the work is ongoing and that the leaders being sought and
trained today will continue protecting the environment, fostering economic development,
developing rural housing, and developing community capacity for change, all in an era of
the internet, social media, and instant gratification; not an easy task, but the tasks that were
present in 1969 were no less daunting than those set before them today.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Senate of the Legislature of Louisiana
does hereby commend the Southern Mutual Help Association, Inc. upon the occasion of the
fiftieth anniversary of the organization's founding.
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BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that a copy of this Resolution be transmitted to
Southern Mutual Help Association, Inc. at its headquarters in New Iberia, Louisiana.
PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE
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