A mass demonstration took place in New Madrid, Missouri, during the winter of 1939. Approximately 1,100 sharecroppers, black and white, occupied two federal highways to emphasize the troubling predicament of cotton laborers. Sharecropping exploited labor and fostered racism. Some of the Bootheel farmworkers were transient, moving from farm to farm. Others had been forced off land they had worked for generations. All were displaced with no place to go. The protest, with entire families camped along the highway in the freezing cold, was well into its second week when the State Highway Patrol began moving people from the roadside. The protest was an embarrassment to municipal and state governments. Farm Security Administration photographer Arthur Rothstein was there with his camera to document what was going on. He hoped that his pictures would illustrate and draw attention to the plight of the landless farmers.