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The New Deal Farm Security Administration in the Lower Mississippi Delta:
Reading the Photographic Record
by
Jane Adams
D. Gorton

We recently read the memoir of John H. Scott, the man who had mobilized the protest that reached President Roosevelt's desk and the story became clearer.[9] Transylvania had been a black settlement created after the Civil War. Through various processes the land became owned by a Memphis company and rarely if ever visited these holdings. The farmers built a church, had a Rosenwald school, and buried their loved ones in a cemetery. In 1939 the FSA acquired the property and planned to remove all the blacks and re-settle the plantation with white tenant farmers selected by the FSA.
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 [Wolcott was apparently not aware that this had been the first black Baptist church in the parish, which was appropriated by the FSA when they settled white sharecroppers on the former plantation.]
The black tenants resisted, recruiting the NAACP and other powerful allies. For reasons that remain obscure – but potentially knowable as our research continues – the project moved forward. Eventually, on that bitter January day captured so enigmatically by Russell Lee, people were evicted from their homes.

Photos by Russell Lee, January 1939. Top to bottom, Left to Right:

Children in front of household goods at side of house. These people came from a western parish and brought all their household goods for which they have no storage space in temporary housing provided at Transylvania Project, Louisiana. LC-USF33- 011937-M3

Negro sharecropper with wire which he has rolled up after taking down fences on his rented farm, Transylvania Project, Louisiana. LC-USF33-011937-M4

Goods stored on front porch of former sharecropper's cabin, now temporary home of FSA (Farm Security Administration) client. Transylvania, Louisiana. LC-USF34-031910-D

Condition of crossing over ditch. Mules' shack in background on temporary farmstead. Transylvania Project, Louisiana. Until recently this was occupied by Negro sharecropper. LC-USF34- 031895-D
The displaced blacks got a sop, however, at least as Scott tells it: three other projects on which all the qualified families were resettled. One was at the south end of East Carroll Parish, adjoining Transylvania but on poorer land, called Henderson. One was at Thomastown to the south. And the third was called Lakeview, to the north and across the lake from the town of Lake Providence. Wife and daughter of FSA (Farm Security Administration) client in front of fireplace of temporary home. Transylvania, Louisiana. Russell Lee, January 1939. LC-USF34-031894-D
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