And Their Children After Them

Michael Williamson

Sacramento Bee

Fifty years ago Farm Security Administration photographer Walker Evans was sent to rural Alabama to focus on the affects of the Depression on three white cotton sharecropper families. These photographs are not just an update of what happened to these families, but also includes 128 of their descendants. One of the areas concentrated on was documenting the last black sharecroppers and their families, a subject not touched upon in the original project. First Photograph--Except for modern cars and a few remodeled buildings, the town of Centerboro, the nearest city to the farmers, looks much the same today as it did when Evans photographed it in 1936.

Michael Williamson, "And Their Children After Them," in POYi Archive, Item #17552, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/17552 (accessed May 4, 2024).