Joanne Cash Yates, sister of Johnny Cash, describes growing up on the Dyess Colony to visitors. Image courtesy of Heritage Sites at Arkansas State University.
At the height of the Great Depression, nearly 500 families lived in the Dyess Colony, which was created in 1934 to help destitute farmers get back on their feet. It is now more famous as the childhood home of Johnny Cash, who moved to Dyess with his family in 1935. In partnership with the City of Dyess and an NEH challenge grant that helped raise an additional $1.5 million, Arkansas State University set out to save the colony’s historic buildings in 2011. The Federal Administration Building now houses a museum that connects visitors with the history of the New Deal and the Depression, while the Cash homestead has been meticulously restored. Since it opened in 2014, Historic Dyess Colony has attracted visitors from every state and 60 foreign countries to the 295-person town. And since October 2017, Dyess has hosted and attracted thousands to the Johnny Cash Heritage Festival, a weekend-long celebration that combined music performances with humanities programming on the history of rock and roll, the New Deal Federal Writers Project, and the history of religion in the Mississippi Delta, among other topics.
Read More
The Cash homestead, restored with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, has brought visitors from every state and 48 foreign countries to the rural town of Dyess, Arkansas. Image courtesy of Heritage Sites at Arkansas State University.
Though most people visit Dyess to learn more about Cash, they linger over the museum and homestead, fascinated by the story it tells about a difficult and relatively understudied period of American history. Ninety-eight percent of music festival survey respondents saw significant value in holding the festival at Dyess Colony and felt it deepened the musical experience, and 100 percent felt their visit to the homestead enhanced their appreciation for the cultural and historical influences of Cash’s music. One attendee commented: “I cannot imagine the festival having as much impact if it was at another location. The home and farm added much to the experience. […] This is a special event in the Dyess location.”
The Federal Administration Building, once the center of the Dyess Colony, now houses a museum connecting visitors with the history of the New Deal. It was restored with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Image courtesy of Heritage Sites at Arkansas State University.
And according to Ruth Hawkins, past Executive Director of A-State Heritage Sites, Historic Dyess Colony is a model partnership between a state university and a small community. The colony provided ASU graduate students with valuable educational experiences as they helped restore the site. At the same time, Arkansas State managed the project and raised funds with the help of the NEH challenge grant. “The challenge grant has meant the world to me in being able to locate other grant possibilities,” says Hawkins; without it, other groups “never would have bought in to the extent that they did.” The benefits were more than financial: “Knowing that this has the NEH name on it certainly has an impact in terms of making sure we do things to the highest standards.”
