Sunflower Plantation photos (1936 - 1939)
Commissary with the first artesian well and watering tub in the road in front. Sunflower Plantation (1927 Jan) [The second artesian well was drilled later behind the blacksmith's shop.]
Sunflower Plantation Store, Library, Doctor's Office & County Nurse's Office
Leisure Days in the Plantation Store.
Left to right: in dark glasses, Jim Miles; standing: H. T. Wheeler; seated: Ethan James, Fair Little, David Holman, N. C. Wright, Woodrow Perryhill, others unknown.
The three photos above are from Mozelle's book:
Mozelle Partridge Chason (1996). When Sweat Turns to Tears. Nashville, TN: Vaughan Printing, Inc.
Mozelle Partridge Chason (1996). When Sweat Turns to Tears. Nashville, TN: Vaughan Printing, Inc.
Old Photos Provenance
First developed by Taylor & Crate of Buffalo, New York in 1888, the area which later became known as Sunflower Plantation was about 7,000 acres of deeply wooded land which they purchased from Delta and Pine Land Company. Taylor & Crate harvested trees - thus clearing land - and turned it into a large farm on that rich Delta soil. In other words, as often happens with such things, a timber harvesting operation produced or became a farming enterprise–it became “Sunflower Plantation,” - a large, fairly progressive farm operation.
The Depression changed a lot of things across the country. Sunflower Plantation was created as a FSA (Farm Security Administration) project – one of many – when, in 1936, the government bought the Taylor & Crate land (well, 4616.5 acres of it) and divided it into 40-acre tracts which were initially rented out. Most of the farmers brought into the project had been sharecroppers (most locally recruited) and many of them bought their 40-acre tracts and eventually none of the land was owned by the government. (Separately, a number of 10- and 20-acre blocks of raw woodland were sold to individual owners during World War II as the government removed itself from the project.) There resulted around 100 free-standing, self-supporting farms.
There was also a project in which photographers were sent around to ‘experimental’ government projects like Sunflower Plantation to document them for posterity. [All these were part of (or holdovers from) the Depression era Federal government make-work projects: CCC, WPA, etc.] Sunflower Plantation came rather late in the larger federal government array of such Depression-era projects and benefited from the mistakes and lessons learned from those other similar projects.
The photographs of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) Photograph Collection form an extensive pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. This U.S. government photography project was headed for most of its existence by Roy E. Stryker, formerly an economics instructor at Columbia University, and employed such photographers as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, Jack Delano, Marion Post Wolcott, Gordon Parks, John Vachon, and Carl Mydans. This photo documentation project existed in a succession of government agencies: the Resettlement Administration (1935-1937), the Farm Security Administration (1937-1942), and the Office of War Information (1942-1944).
Staff photographers were given specific subjects and/or geographic areas to cover. These field assignments often lasted several months. Before beginning their assignments, photographers read relevant reports, local newspapers, and books in order to become familiar with their subject. A basic shooting script or outline was often prepared. Photographers were encouraged to record anything that might shed additional light on the topic that they were photographing, and they received training in making personal contacts and interviewing people.
The project initially documented cash loans made to individual farmers by the Resettlement Administration and the construction of planned suburban communities. The second stage focused on the lives of sharecroppers in the South and migratory agricultural workers in the midwestern and western states. As the scope of the project expanded, the photographers turned to recording both rural and urban conditions throughout the United States as well as mobilization efforts for World War II.
The collection of photos produced by that succession of government agencies (RA, FSA and OWI) is preserved by the Library of Congress and accessible on the website http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/
You may want to browse around that website. (There are 2068 with “Mississippi” in the descriptions.) The quickest path to the photos we're discussing here is to put "Sunflower Plantation" or similar key words into the search engine found there, or to browse their “Subject index” looking for the “Mississippi” entries.
[NOTE: I have used the original photo captions directly from the Library of Congress web site. However, in 2014 they did an "upgrade" to the site and mixed up a number of the captions. So one must now be skeptical about any particular caption on the Library of Congress web site. Also, during that "upgrade," a few photos disappeared.]
The photographers who took photos that involved Sunflower Plantation were Carl Mydans, Dorothea Lange,
Russell Lee and Marion Post Wolcott. You can see their photos in the sub-pages under this heading.
First developed by Taylor & Crate of Buffalo, New York in 1888, the area which later became known as Sunflower Plantation was about 7,000 acres of deeply wooded land which they purchased from Delta and Pine Land Company. Taylor & Crate harvested trees - thus clearing land - and turned it into a large farm on that rich Delta soil. In other words, as often happens with such things, a timber harvesting operation produced or became a farming enterprise–it became “Sunflower Plantation,” - a large, fairly progressive farm operation.
The Depression changed a lot of things across the country. Sunflower Plantation was created as a FSA (Farm Security Administration) project – one of many – when, in 1936, the government bought the Taylor & Crate land (well, 4616.5 acres of it) and divided it into 40-acre tracts which were initially rented out. Most of the farmers brought into the project had been sharecroppers (most locally recruited) and many of them bought their 40-acre tracts and eventually none of the land was owned by the government. (Separately, a number of 10- and 20-acre blocks of raw woodland were sold to individual owners during World War II as the government removed itself from the project.) There resulted around 100 free-standing, self-supporting farms.
There was also a project in which photographers were sent around to ‘experimental’ government projects like Sunflower Plantation to document them for posterity. [All these were part of (or holdovers from) the Depression era Federal government make-work projects: CCC, WPA, etc.] Sunflower Plantation came rather late in the larger federal government array of such Depression-era projects and benefited from the mistakes and lessons learned from those other similar projects.
The photographs of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) Photograph Collection form an extensive pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. This U.S. government photography project was headed for most of its existence by Roy E. Stryker, formerly an economics instructor at Columbia University, and employed such photographers as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, Jack Delano, Marion Post Wolcott, Gordon Parks, John Vachon, and Carl Mydans. This photo documentation project existed in a succession of government agencies: the Resettlement Administration (1935-1937), the Farm Security Administration (1937-1942), and the Office of War Information (1942-1944).
Staff photographers were given specific subjects and/or geographic areas to cover. These field assignments often lasted several months. Before beginning their assignments, photographers read relevant reports, local newspapers, and books in order to become familiar with their subject. A basic shooting script or outline was often prepared. Photographers were encouraged to record anything that might shed additional light on the topic that they were photographing, and they received training in making personal contacts and interviewing people.
The project initially documented cash loans made to individual farmers by the Resettlement Administration and the construction of planned suburban communities. The second stage focused on the lives of sharecroppers in the South and migratory agricultural workers in the midwestern and western states. As the scope of the project expanded, the photographers turned to recording both rural and urban conditions throughout the United States as well as mobilization efforts for World War II.
The collection of photos produced by that succession of government agencies (RA, FSA and OWI) is preserved by the Library of Congress and accessible on the website http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/
You may want to browse around that website. (There are 2068 with “Mississippi” in the descriptions.) The quickest path to the photos we're discussing here is to put "Sunflower Plantation" or similar key words into the search engine found there, or to browse their “Subject index” looking for the “Mississippi” entries.
[NOTE: I have used the original photo captions directly from the Library of Congress web site. However, in 2014 they did an "upgrade" to the site and mixed up a number of the captions. So one must now be skeptical about any particular caption on the Library of Congress web site. Also, during that "upgrade," a few photos disappeared.]
The photographers who took photos that involved Sunflower Plantation were Carl Mydans, Dorothea Lange,
Russell Lee and Marion Post Wolcott. You can see their photos in the sub-pages under this heading.
Here’s an interesting web site about the FSA photographers. It’s a map showing each county in which FSA photograghs were taken. You can encompass the whole set and/or filter for a particular time span (years) and/or filter by individual photographer. Neat, huh? (Be aware: the results you get may not be complete. Their classification scheme isn't perfect. But it is quick, easy to use and reasonably robust -- and therefore useful.)
http://photogrammar.yale.edu/map/
http://photogrammar.yale.edu/map/
