Providence Plantation (Miss.)

Delta Cooperative Farm, started in 1936 in the community of Hillhouse (later called Rochdale) in Bolivar County, Miss., and Providence Cooperative Farm, started in 1939 near Cruger in Holmes County, Miss., were attempts by a philanthropically supported corporation, Cooperative Farms, Inc., to help southern agricultural laborers out of their economic plight. The cooperatives were organized around four principles: efficiency in production and economy in finance through the cooperative principle, participation in building a socialized economy of abundance, inter-racial justice, and realistic religion as a social dynamic. To these ends, the Delta and Providence cooperatives were to pay African Americans and whites equal wages for work, and provided social and other services, most of which were open to neighboring communities. These services included a cooperative store; a medical clinic, eventually run by physician David R. Minter; a credit union; a library; a community building; religious services; educational programs, including a school for African American children; summer work camps for visiting students; and community institutes. In addition to growing cotton, agricultural operations eventually included a dairy farm, a beef farm, a pasteurizing plant, and a saw mill.

Delta Cooperative Farm was founded by missionary evangelist and author Sherwood Eddy, who served as secretary-treasurer, and Reverend Sam H. Franklin, director, 1936-1943. In addition to Franklin and Eddy, the original board of trustees included theologian Reinhold Niebuhr; John Rust, inventor of the cotton picking machine; and Professor William R. Amberson. Later trustees included Blaine Treadway, Charles S. Johnson, Arthur Raper, and Frederick Patterson. Most of the first member families on the farm were sharecroppers who lost work following the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933; many were also refugees from East Arkansas who were evicted during a strike in the mid-1930s. Interracial efforts on the farm primarily focused on establishing economic equality, as whites and African Americans worked together and were to be paid equally depending upon the amount and quality of work done. Living arrangements, schooling, and social affairs were segregated, while it appears that some religious services and the medical clinic were integrated. The farm was managed by a democratically elected council made up of five members, no more than three of whom could be of the same race, and was organized into a Producer's Cooperative and a Consumer's Cooperative. Delta was funded primarily through capital investments. Over time, members were to amortize the capital funds supplied by the board of trustees and would gradually gain control and ownership of the farm. The capital funds would then be used by the trustees as a revolving fund for the establishment of more cooperative farms.

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