Goudvis, Pat (Patricia), 1953-
Biographical Note
Photographer and documentary filmmaker Patricia Goudvis traveled across the South in the summer of 1974 to document Black agricultural cooperatives and labor organizing. Goudvis was born in Vermilion, Ohio on January 20, 1953 and attended Verde Valley High School in Arizona.
As a student at UC Berkeley, she attended the First National Conference on Land Reform in 1963. With the help of organizers, she met at the conference, she developed a plan to travel across the South and document sugarcane farming in Louisiana, poultry farming in Mississippi, and the work of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives (FSC) and Emergency Land Fund (LAF).
Goudvis traveled from San Francisco to Louisiana, where she documented the labor of Black sugarcane workers and their efforts to improve working conditions. Goudvis photographed working-class families living on or adjacent to plantations, cane fields, and sugarcane processing mills in Franklin, Houma, Thibodaux, Napoleonville, and Grand Caillou. In Louisiana, Goudvis photographed the annual USDA hearing on cane workers’ wages in Houma, Louisiana as well as key members of the Southern Mutual Help Association, Inc. (SMHA), a coalition formed in 1969 that sought fundamental change to the working conditions of sugarcane workers in the Southeast, providing education, medical, and social and legal advocacy to workers in Louisiana.
After Louisiana, Goudvis traveled to Forest, Mississippi, where she photographed poultry processing workers who organized with the independent Mississippi Poultry Workers' Union (MPWU). The MPWU formed on May 10th, 1972 after 60 workers at Forest’s Southeastern Poultry walked off the job demanding a 15 cent raise, collective bargaining rights, and paid vacation. The union won National Labor Relations Board elections at Gaddis Packing Company and Poultry Packers the same year. Management broke the strike by 1975 by hiring white strikebreakers and refusing to negotiate over key aspects of the contract, including a no-strike clause, with the help of law firm Kullman, Lang, Inman and Bee.
Next, Goudvis visited the farms and other cooperative ventures associated with the Federation of Southern Cooperatives (FSC), including the Green-Hale Sewing Cooperative in Alabama, the Georgia-based Shepard Broom Factory and the Male Trap clothing store at the FSC Business Development Office, and a Southeast Alabama Self-Help Association (SEASHA)-sponsored Feeder Pigs venture in Alabama. The FSC originated at a 1967 meeting between twenty low-income cooperatives and credit unions, and worked closely with the Emergency Land Fund, founded by economist Robert S. Browne in 1972. The organizations worked to increase Black land ownership in the South and financially supported cooperatives to mitigate racial economic inequality.
In Mobile and Carrollton, Alabama and nearby woods, Goudvis photographed members of the Gulfcoast Pulpwood Association (GPA), formed in 1968, a successful interracial union which won concessions from the paper and wood processing industry. By 1971 with the help of the Grassroots Organizing Project, over 35 GPA chapters across Mississippi waged a successful strike against wood price reductions. However, in September of 1973 when workers picketed Scott Paper and International Paper’s plants demanding higher prices, the companies responded by suing the union, claiming the workers were independent contractors. On March 18, 1974 the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of their right to unionize in Scott Paper Company v. Gulf Coast Pulpwood Association.
In Greensboro, Alabama, Goudvis visited the Greene-Hale Sewing Cooperative, an original member of the FSC that provided employment and training to Black women with the help of FSC loan guarantees and technical assistance. The cooperative members saw the cooperative as a symbol of their economic independence and survived despite opposition from the white local business community.
Goudvis also photographed the 1974 Freedom Quilting Bee in Alberta, now Rehoboth, Alabama, which held roots in the Selma civil rights movement. The quilting collective was founded on March 26, 1966 by Black women including community leader and civil rights activist Estelle Witherspoon and Episcopal pastor Francis Walter. The collective raised the standards of living of Black craftswomen and their families and helped popularize quilting as an interior decor trend throughout the 1960s. Many of these photographs appeared in a Federation of Southern Cooperatives exhibit entitled “Celebrating Black Family Farmers, Landowners & Cooperatives” along with a quote from Goudvis in 2021.
Goudvis traveled to Wadesboro, North Carolina, where she photographed yam and corn harvesting at the National Sharecroppers Fund’s (NSF) Frank Graham Training Center. The NSF lobbied for legislation to benefit small farmers and supported farmworker organizing, and their Rural Advancement Fund supported cooperatives through training in agriculture, marketing, and management.
Goudvis wrote in retrospect that the trip influenced her lifelong career as a photographer and filmmaker: “All those people helped me believe that something good and useful could come from using my cameras to cross borders and open doors.” In 1977, after finishing college at Berkeley, Goudvis went to Guatemala to study Spanish, documenting the experiences of children and adult civilians in the country’s civil war alongside other wars in Central America. For the next 30 years, Goudvis lived in Guatemala on-and-off, traveling throughout Central America to record the experiences of Central American peoples. She has filmed and produced several award-winning documentaries: “Under the Gun: Democracy in Guatemala” (1988); “If the Mango Tree Could Speak” (1993); “Dirty Secrets: Jennifer, Everardo and the CIA” (1998); and “Goodbye Baby: Adoptions from Guatemala” (2005).