Calvin and Lola Simmons

The farms of the Midwest and the South were having problems well before the stock market crash. Years of drought and overcultivation had made the earth virtually useless. The farmers could not even grow enough to feed themselves. The onset of the Depression just made things worse. Many farmers and their families abandoned their worthless land and moved into the cities and towns looking for jobs. Conditions were seldom better in urban areas so most of them ended up on relief. Calvin and Lola Simmons were refugees from the mountains of Tennessee. They worked for years sharecropping but were never able to get ahead. They moved to Knoxville and eked out a marginal living doing odd jobs. Their story was recorded by Dean Newman, Jennette Edwards, and James Aswell for the WPA record.

Calvin and me come...