home | pg. 1 | pg. 2 | pg. 3 | pg. 4 | pg. 5 | pg. 6 | pg. 7 | pg. 8 | pg. 9 | pg. 10 | pg. 11 | pg. 12 | pg. 13 | pg. 14 | pg. 15 | pg. 16 | pg. 17 | notes | Transylvania detail 1 | Transylvania detail 2 | Wolcott detail | Bibliography | D. Gorton Homepage | Jane Adams Homepage
The New Deal Farm Security Administration in the Lower Mississippi Delta:
Reading the Photographic Record
by
Jane Adams
D. Gorton

When we study these images they become far more ambiguous, their interpretations far less transparent. Two examples will serve to illustrate the ambiguity – Sunflower Plantation in Sunflower Plantation, Mississippi, and Transylvania Plantation, near Lake Providence, East Carroll Parish, Louisiana.
The photographers documented many aspects of the daily life of the FSA farmers. The images they framed reveal many of the labor relations in the projects – families working together, cooperative projects, the sexual division of labor, and the use of day laborers to help harvest the crops.
Left: Mrs. Fay Melvee and family working in their garden. Plum Bayou Project, Arkansas. Marion Post Wolcott, May 1940.

Right: Negroes returning home after cotton picking, Sunflower Plantation, FSA (Farm Security Administration) project, Merigold, Mississippi. Marion Post Wolcott. Oct.? 1939. LC-USF33- 030666-M5

They picture the educational and medical care provided, and the activities of government agents. That is, simply by mining the photographs for their visual data one can construct a relatively coherent and at least partially accurate story of these projects. In some cases, shooting and re-shooting at different times can put that story in motion, showing the growth and development of a single place.

One can create a coherent narrative that, on the surface, appears unambiguous, albeit patchy.

Let us trouble the story.
Farm Supervisor talking to one of the project farmers. Transylvania, Louisiana. Marion Post Wolcott, June 1940. LC-USF34- 053919-E
Home management supervisor Miss Louise Martin giving a demonstration and talk at women's club meeting in church and community building. Transylvania Project, Louisiana. Marion Post Wolcott, June, 1940. LC-USF34- 053927-D
Mrs. M.E. Chappell with her daughter, Sybil Lee, being given typhoid anti-toxin by Dr. F.A. Williams, director of East Carroll Parish health unit, assisted by Miss Lucy Akin, community nurse, in the project school clinic. Transylvania Project, Louisiana. Marion Post Wolcott, June 1940. LC-USF346- 053987-D
Page 7
home | pg. 1 | pg. 2 | pg. 3 | pg. 4 | pg. 5 | pg. 6 | pg. 7 | pg. 8 | pg. 9 | pg. 10 | pg. 11 | pg. 12 | pg. 13 | pg. 14 | pg. 15 | pg. 16 | pg. 17 | notes | Bibliography | Transylvania detail 1 | Transylvania detail 2 | Wolcott detail |