Planting Hope on Worn-Out Land : The History of the Tuskegee Land Utilization Study, Macon County, Alabama, 1935-1959

by Pasquill, Robert G.

• ISBN13: 9781588382054
• ISBN10: 1588382052
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-01-30
• Publisher: John F Blair Pub

Summary

The Great Depression of the 1930s contained misery for millions of Americans. Nowhere was the despair greater than in Macon County, Alabama, where hundreds of poor families lived on and worked land that had been eroded and depleted until it no longer supported crops. Ironically, this was once some of the deepest, richest soil in America-in the fabled Black Belt of Alabama, home to huge cotton plantations and thousands of slaves. After the Civil War, however, sharecropping and tenant farming impoverished former slaves and former slave owners alike, and decades of poor farming practices ruined the land.

Author Biography

Robert G. Pasquill, Jr. is currently the Heritage Program Manager (Forest Archeologist and Historian) for the National Forests in Alabama.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments	p. 9
Introduction	p. 13
Tenant Farming and 'The Big Hungry'	p. 17
The Resettlement Administration	p. 23
A Planned Land Use Demonstration	p. 31
The Tuskegee Project Area	p. 36
The Tuskegee Project, 1935-1938	p. 40
The Prairie Farms Resettlement Project	p. 62
SCS Supervision	p. 71
East Alabama District SCS Lease	p. 101
National, November 1959	p. 111
Discussion of Success and Failure	p. 115
Interviews	p. 127
Glossary	p. 136
Bibliography	p. 139
Index	p. 145
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