Bridging Hardship: Great Depression, New Deal, and World War II
1928–1948

The Great Depression compounded poverty in Mississippi. Federal programs paid farmers not to plant. Crop prices rose, but landowners let their fields go unplanted and evicted sharecroppers. The 1927 flood and excessive logging left vast stretches of land from the Delta to the Piney Woods barren and scarred.

By 1930, Mississippians earned only about one-third of the national average income. The federal New Deal created programs like the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) that put people—mostly White—to work, brought electrification, nurtured the environment, and helped feed and clothe impoverished citizens. Thousands of Black and White Mississippians fought for freedom abroad during World War II (1941–1945), causing many returning servicemen to question racial inequality at home. Women entered the workforce as military spending remade towns like Pascagoula, Biloxi, and Moss Point.