A Homestead Album

Times were hard in 1933. The Depression was in full swing and the people of the Cumberland Plateau were down on their luck like so many Americans. Subsistence farmers, coal miners, down and out mill workers, unemployed timber and sawmill workers were barely making ends meet. These were proud, independent people desperate for an opportunity to make it on their own. They got their chance with the passage of the National Industrial Recoveries Act of 1933. Section 208 of the bill provided $25,000,000.00 for the establishment of the Division of Subsistence Homesteads. A total of 158 Homesteads communities were built across the nation between 1933 and 1945. There is one in Greenbelt Maryland.

The Roosevelt administration turned to the AFSC for support and expertise with its ambitious agenda of progressive social programs. The Roosevelts were aware of the AFSC's efforts to help bituminous coal miners in Pennsylvania with vocational reeducation, subsistence living projects and child feeding programs. They tapped Clarence Pickett, the head of AFSC and a Quaker, to be head of the Stranded Mining and Industrial Populations Section in the Department of the Interior. He in turn used his connections among Friends to draw upon the service-minded Quakers eager to put their faith into practice. Eleanor Roosevelt took great personal interest in the Homestead Communities. She visited many of them and was a private contributor, especially in the area of public education.

The Cumberland Homesteads was the second Homestead community established, carved out of 10,000 acres purchased from the Missouri Coal and Land Co. south of Crossville, TN by Homer Morris, a Quaker and a graduate of Earlham college. Over time several hundred more acres were added. The architect of the homes was William Macy Stanton, a Quaker from Philadelphia. The plan was to provide homes, built from local materials, that would jobs and shelter to displaced families. The skills gained in quarrying the stone, planing the lumber, roofing and plumbing led to lifetime vocations for some. Each home had land so that families could grow most of their own food. Cooperatives were established to provide employment such as a mattress factory, hosiery mill, trading post, cannery, and loom house.

The Division of Subsistence Homesteads counted among its administrators many individuals with lofty ideals and a desire to establish communities that would function according to Utopian principles. On the Plateau the strong desire to serve sometimes clashed with the fiercely independent local population. There were tensions over culture, the direction of the project, and the dealings with a distant bureaucracy that, as the administration of the Homesteads shifted from agency to agency, seemed arbitrary and capricious. Most troublesome was the unresolved question of how ownership of the homes would pass to the Homesteaders. The Homesteaders came to their homes under a rental-lease agreement that was vague and somewhat mysterious to the community. The Homesteaders were finally allowed to purchase their homes at the end of World War II on low interest long-term notes. Their chance at a long held dream was now reality.

Prepared by Toni Evans

Sources:
Homer Morris Collection, Lilly Library, Earlham College
http://www.afsc.org/about/hist/Roosevelt.htm
http://pleateauproperties.com/home.html

See photos from the Community Play here: http://www.ssfs.org/galleries_0506/comm_play_2006/