Robert Lee Hill (June 8, 1892 – May 11, 1963)[1][2] was an African-American sharecropper from the Arkansas Delta and a political activist, founder of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America following World War I.
Based in Arkansas, this organization was intended to help sharecroppers and tenant farmers to gain better financial arrangements with white landowners.
Hill was listed as working as a brakeman for the Missouri Pacific Railroad in Little Rock, Arkansas, from January 1915 to December 1919.
[citation needed] While living in Winchester, Hill became active in organizing African-American laborers, sharecroppers and tenant farmers.
They worked for white landowners at a disadvantage, as they were dependent on the owners' dispersing funds and settling accounts after they sold the cotton crops.
The landowners seldom provided itemized accounts, often required sharecroppers to buy seeds and supplies from plantation stores, and sold the cotton according to their own schedules.
He based his association on black fraternal organizations, the international trade union movement, and Booker T. Washington's National Negro Business League.
[citation needed] Hill intended to use the organization to force landowners to pay tenant farmers their full shares and to establish union-owned farms.
During the summer of 1919, following the end of World War I, Hill encouraged hundreds of African-American sharecroppers and sawmill workers to join his organization.
[citation needed] After intense lobbying by the NAACP, Kansas Governor Henry Justin Allen refused to extradite Hill.
[citation needed] Hill was released on October 11, 1920, after federal charges were dropped due to NAACP lobbying with authorities in Washington.