A New Deal in Dyess: The Depression Era Agricultural Resettlement Colony in Arkansas

This is the story of the Dyess Colony, created in 1934 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal to aid in the nation’s economic recovery from the Great Depression. As a federal agricultural resettlement community, it provided a fresh start for nearly 500 impoverished Arkansas farm families, including the family of music legend Johnny Cash. Genesis of this edition is a slender volume published in 2015 in conjunction with the opening of the restored Johnny Cash Boyhood Home and the Dyess Colony visitors center. Since that time, former colonists and their descendants have contributed numerous documents, letters, and photographs to the Dyess Colony Archives. Additionally, more than 50 oral histories have been collected. This expanded edition draws on these resources to present a more extensive tellng of the Dyess story.