Dyess celebration

Recent news items announce that Rosanne Cash, John Carter Cash, and Tommy Cash are promoting a performance at Dyess, Arkansas, on August 4 to raise money to restore Johnny Cash's boyhood home and build a museum. The Cash family moved to what was called Dyess Colony in 1935 when Johnny was 3 years old.

As a Johnny Cash fan, I hope this effort is successful, but as a historian I would say let's keep our perspective. What Johnny Cash wanted to do was leave the place as soon as possible. I've been to Dyess several times; in fact I was there only about 20 years after it was founded as a resettlement project for poor farmers in the Depression. It was a total failure. The government as usual started up a wrong-headed idea. The country did not need more poor, small farmers. We already had too many of them. Some historians tend to get nostalgic about such topics, but if you want to find out the true read the two chapters I wrote on Dyess Colony in Uncle Sam's Farmers.