Tenant farmer. Chatham County, North Carolina
Dorothea Lange, July 1939
Tenant farmers were particularly vulnerable during the 1930s. After the stock market crash, banks foreclosed on farm owners unable to pay mortgages and the government seized the land of owners who could not afford their taxes. Tenants and sharecroppers who rented land from these farm owners found themselves without work or homes. While some tenant farmers were able to acquire their own land through New Deal programs, many of them gave up farming altogether and migrated to towns and cities to find more reliable sources of income.
