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

In March of 1935 a government truck carried young J. R. Cash and his family from Cleveland County, Arkansas to their new home in Dyess, an agricultural resettlement community in Northeast Arkansas. Financed with federal dollars, the community existed to give struggling tenant farmers a chance to acquire a new home and farm land at reasonable rates. As the truck carried them farther and farther down muddy roads, the boy who grew up to become Johnny Cash remembered that sometimes his mother cried, sometimes she sang, and sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. The Cash children tried to sleep in the bed of the bouncing truck, but the tarpaulin used for cover did not protect them from frigid temperatures and freezing rain. What the Cash family discovered after their grueling journey, and what followed for them and families who joined them, is the story told here.