978-1-58838-205-4
$24.95 hardcover
6 x 9
152 pages
Index, B-W photographs
History/United States/
20th Century
NewSouth Books
AVAILABLE NOW
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By the 1930s, decades of inefficient cotton farming had stripped the topsoil from thousands of acres of Macon County, Alabama. The land's inhabitants, mostly poor black farmers and sharecroppers, were starving in their weather-beaten shacks; the land was simply too worn out for them to make a living. This book describes these conditions and then traces the history of an innovative New Deal program established by the Franklin Roosevelt administration to reclaim the land and the people's lives. The Tuskegee Land Utilization Project converted much of the land into what is now the Tuskegee National Forest. It also established the model settlement of Prairie Farms. In this volume, Pasquill assesses the project seven decades later. The book also includes interviews with descendants of some of the original Prairie Farms participants.
about the author
Robert Pasquill is a U.S. Forest Service historian. He lives in Montgomery, Alabama. |
