| home | pg. 1 | pg. 2 | pg. 3 | pg. 4 | pg. 5 | pg. 6 | pg. 7 | pg. 8 | pg. 9 | pg. 10 | pg. 11 | Map of FSA Projects | Map of Transylvania | notes | Transylvania detail 1 | Transylvania detail 2 | Wolcott detail | Bibliography | D. Gorton Homepage | Jane Adams Homepage
|
|
by
Jane Adams
D. Gorton
Paper given at the Joint Meetings of the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society and the Association for the Study of Food and Society, Boston University, June 7-11, 2006
|
Scott described the impact (p. 90-91): The Transylvania community was torn apart. … We were put out of the place where most of us had been born, where many of our fathers and mothers had been born, back before the Civil War. Many people had to leave behind houses and barns they had built and the fine crop-growing land they had developed. They even took our Rosenwald school, with its blackboards and separate classrooms. … They took the children’s desks and all our school equipment and turned it over to the new white settlers, while the children displaced from Transylvania had to start attending classes all in one room at a church, with church benches instead of desks. |
 Negro mother teaching children numbers and alphabet in home of sharecropper, Transylvania, Louisiana. Russell Lee, Jan 1939. LC-USF34- 031938-D |
Russell Lee photographed 19 images of this family. The meaining of this famous photograph shifts considerably when the viewer knows the context in which it was made. See this page for all the images in series. They are arranged in LOC call number order here. |
| They even took Seven Stars, the first black Baptist church in East Carroll, the church my great grandfather had founded, and sold it to the new settlers. Because of the publicity, several projects were established for the displaced families. Thomastown, where the bulk of the community was resettled, had been planned for Transylvania's black tenants. The other projects were Henderson Project, just south of Transylvania, Lakeview Project on the north side of Lake Providence, and in Blue Front and Fortune Fork below Transylvania outside Tallulah.[7]
|
The women's club leaving the church and community building after a home management demonstration by the supervisor and a baby shower they gave for Mrs. Verden Lee, one of their members. Transylvania Project, Louisiana. Marion Post Wolcott. June 1940. LC-USF34- 054019-D
|
|
| The tenants who worked Transylvania Plantation in East Carroll Parish were scattered along about 40 miles, from the north end of the lake that gave the town of Lake Providence its name, into Madison Parish on several plantations from Thomastown to Tallulah. This map shows the general location of the projects in relation ot the surrounding states. |
 |
|
home | pg. 1 | pg. 2 | pg. 3 | pg. 4 | pg. 5 | pg. 6 | pg. 7 | pg. 8 | pg. 9 | pg. 10 | pg. 11 | notes | Map of FSA Projects | Transylvania detail 1 | Transylvania detail 2 | Wolcott detail | Bibliography |
|