The New Communities store sold produce that was grown on the farm as well as meats that were smoked there. 

Photo Credit: New Communities

A grant from the Office of Economic Opportunity, a federal agency, funded a design charrette that allowed hundreds of people to help plan New Communities.

Photo Credit: Joe Pfister

An Antebellum mansion is one of several buildings on the 1,600 acre Cypress Pond Plantation purchased by New Communities in 2011 with funds from a successful class action lawsuit brought against the U.S. Department of Agriculture for loan discrimination. 

Charles Sherrod (standing on right), Field Secretary for the SNCC, and civil rights activist Randy Battle visit a family in southwest Georgia. 1962. 

Photo Credit: Danny Lyon/Magnum Photos

A daycare center flourished at New Communities.  500 families were ready to move into homes on the land, but racist opposition prevented the execution implementation of their plans.

Photo Credit: Joe Pfister

Livestock was raised and sold at New Communities.  The land was farmed from 1970 until 1985 when it was lost due to an extended drought and the inability to get loans for working capital.  

Photo Credit: Mtamanika Youngblood

Before irrigation pipes were installed onat the new property at Cypress Pond Plantation, tanks were used to water the almond pecan and orange trees.

New Communities purchased almost 6,000 acres of land in 1970 and was the largest African-American land hold at the time.  It successfully farmed the land until 1985 when it was unable to get loans to carry it through several years of drought.   

Photo Credit: Joe Pfister

New Communities purchased almost 6,000 acres of land in 1970 and was the largest African-American land hold at the time.  It successfully farmed the land until 1985 when it was unable to get loans to carry it through several years of drought and lost the land.

Photo Credit: Joe Pfister

Charles and Shirley Sherrod lead a weekly meeting of New Communities staff and volunteers.

Shirley Sherrod met her future husband at a civil rights meeting in 1965.  They married a year later and over the next 20 years she and Charles worked side by side, leading the Southwest Georgia Project and New Communities. After the loss of NCI’s land in 1985, she accepted a job with the Land Assistance Fund of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, helping farmers in financial distress, black and white. She was appointed director of Rural Development for Georgia in 2009, but was forced to resign when video of a speech she had given was edited by a right-wing blogger to make her sound like a racist. When the truth came to light, she was offered another job at USDA, but declined. She currently serves as the executive director of the Southwest Georgia Project. 

Rev. Charles Sherrod arrived in Albany, GA in 1961 at the age of 23 to open a field office for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Under the banner of the Southwest Georgia Project, he and other SNCC organizers registered voters and staged repeated protests against segregation. He left SNCC in 1966 and entered Union Theological Seminary. Soon after his return to Albany, he traveled to Israel with Slater King and six others to learn about agricultural cooperatives on leased land. He helped to organize New Communities Inc. and assumed the presidency in 1969, leading that organization for 16 years.

Rep. John Lewis Rep. John Lewis was born into a family of Alabama sharecroppers in 1940. While attending Fisk University, he participated in sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Nashville. He joined SNCC in 1961and was elected chairman two years later, a post he held until 1966. He was a leader of the Freedom Rides, helped to plan the 1963 March on Washington, and was at the head of 525 marchers when they were assaulted in Selma by state troopers on “Bloody Sunday.” In 1968, Lewis participated in a meeting of half-­a-dozen civil rights groups that discussed the feasibility of creating a “land trust program” in the South. He was elected to the Atlanta City Council in 1981 and to the U.S. Congress in 1986, where he continues to serve.