Race and Contested Rural Space in the Missouri Delta: African American Farm Workers and the Delmo Labor Homes, 1940–51

In 1940 the Farm Security Administration, as part of the New Deal, embarked on an experimental housing program in the Missouri Delta when it constructed the Delmo Labor Homes. Although classified as migratory labor camps, the FSA designed the ten communities as permanent housing projects for the growing workforce of farm laborers. The Delmo communities were segregated, and the experience of African American farm workers in the North Wyatt and South Wardell projects during the 1940s illustrates the interconnectedness of housing and education struggles in this Border South region. In 1941 black farm workers in Pemiscot County fought for the right to live in the South Wardell project when local white residents campaigned the government to keep them out. During this battle the workers stressed the importance of living in housing off plantations, where landowners were in control. The increased autonomy provided by the Delmo projects also facilitated residents’ ten-year struggle for a public school in the African American Delmo community of North Wyatt. The community center, at the heart of the project, was a staging ground for this battle. Both of these examples demonstrate the importance of interrogating the spaces in which rural black freedom struggles took place.