- City:
- Tallulah, LA
- Site Type:
- Resettlement Communities, Forestry and Agriculture
- New Deal Agencies:
- Housing Programs, Farm Security Administration (FSA)
- Started:
- 1938
- Completed:
- 1940
- Quality of Information:
- Very Good
- Marked:
- Unknown
Description
The Farm Security Administration established a resettlement project called the Ladelta Co-operative Association at Thomastown, Louisiana in 1938. The project was for African American families who had been sharecroppers. The project included 147 individual farmsteads, with five-room house, barn, smokehouse, and poultry shed. The project also included the school building, and cotton gin. The project encompassed 21,876 acres in East Carroll (Transylvania) and Madison (Thomastown) parishes. Bids were solicited for the community center construction in May 1939. The high school at Thomastown graduated its first class in 1944. The building was destroyed by fire in 1972, but the elementary school remains extant, though in serious deterioration.
Source notes
Workers of the Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration. (1941). Louisiana: A Guide to the State. New York: Hastings House.
Wolcott, M. P., photographer. (1940) Home of FSA Farm Security Administration client. La Delta Project, Thomastown, Louisiana. United States Thomastown Louisiana Madison Parish, 1940. May. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2017803086/.
Wolcott, M. P., photographer. (1940) School building. La Delta Project, Louisiana. United States Thomastown Louisiana Madison Parish, 1940. May. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2017803055/.
Wolcott, M. P., photographer. (1940) Old home and a new home on La Delta Project. Thomastown, Louisiana. United States Thomastown Louisiana Madison Parish, 1940. June. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2017803115/.
F. B.Spencer to Manage Thomastown’s Project. (Mar 5, 1939). The (Shreveport) Times, p. 22.
U. S. Department of Agriculture, Farm Security Administration. (May 29, 1939). Monroe-News-Star, p. 6.
Powell, S. B. (1944). The Second Louisiana All-State High School Biographical Annual Review. New Orleans, LA: The Colored American Publishers. Retrieved October 3, 2021 from https://africanamericanhighschoolsinlouisianabefore1970.com/history/
Fire Levels School in Madison Parish. (Mar 3, 1972). The Shreveport Journal, p. 2.
Site originally submitted by Susan Allen on November 7, 2021.
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