Gray, Eula

GRAY, EULA (1912–n.d.). The descendant of poor black tenant farmers, Eula Gray was born in Tallapoosa County, Alabama. At the age of nineteen Gray became a leader of the Communist-led Share Croppers Union (SCU) and subsequently joined the Communist Party. The daughter of SCU leader Tommy Gray, she held the union together in rural Alabama after her uncle, Ralph Gray, a Communist and union cofounder, was killed in an armed confrontation with local police in 1931. Besides serving as ad hoc secretary of the SCU until the spring of 1932, she organized and led the Young Communist League in the “black belt.” Once she took up residence in New York (c. 1935), her public esteem diminished, though she continued to raise money for the Alabama SCU.

Gray, Tommy. “Brother Ralph Gray’s Story.” Labor Defender 11, no. 8 (August 1935).

Kelley, Robin D. G. Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.

Rosen, Dale. “The Alabama Share Croppers Union.” B.A. Honors Thesis, Radcliffe College, 1969.