During President Franklin Roosevelt’s first term, the long-established farm tenancy system in the Cotton Belt was collapsing. Almost two million tenant-farm households were facing ruin. Most lived in overcrowded shacks with no plumbing. Diseases of malnourishment were common, and medical care was inaccessible. The landowner sold the crop and tallied the tenant’s debts for their meager food and housing. A crooked owner could tell his tenants that their share of the crop only covered their debts, leaving them mired in poverty year after year.

By 1935, increasing farm mechanization and the contracting Depression economy displaced thousands of cotton sharecroppers and left countless others destitute. Pickers in the Cotton Belt produced a billion-dollar crop (worth more than $22 billion today), but the collapse of cotton tenancy had become “America’s greatest social humiliation.” While Congress dithered, President Roosevelt created the Resettlement Administration by an Executive Order to help these desperate families. The agency provided loans, grants, and opportunities for relocation and employment. Pilot programs offered improved housing and access to medical care.