The FSA sent Wolcott to Gee’s Bend to document the changes to the community since the government turned it into a planned community. Gee’s Bends Farms, as the cooperative resettlement project was called, had opened its medical clinic in 1937 and its new school in October 1938. This photograph shows Jorena Pettway’s new house built by the federal government and sold with a low interest loan. The home, with its cozy furnishings and sunlit rooms, contrasts sharply with the log cabins Rothstein photographed in Gee’s Bend two years earlier.

[Full title: "Jorena Pettway and her daughter making chair cover out of bleached flour sacks and flower decorations from paper. She also made the chairs and practically all the furniture in the house."]

Title: 
Jorena Pettway and her daughter making chair cover ...
Maker: 
Marion Post Wolcott
Gees Bend, Alabama, May 1939
Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress