THE HOUSE THAT DELMO BUILT

LILBOURN -- Bertha Bibb, 67, doesn't mind being a "project person."

Bibb has lived the majority of her life in what is locally referred to as South Lilbourn. The small community of low-cost homes holds the headquarters of the Delmo Housing Corporation, an organization created in the mid-1940s to help impoverished farm families in Southeast Missouri become independent homeowners.

Although now annexed by the city of Lilbourn, South Lilbourn was once an independent village of about 50 low-cost homes. Bibb's family was one of the first to move into the community, part of a Farm Security Administration construction project begun in 1940 to house some 1,500 displaced sharecroppers and tenant farmers who protested economic disparity during the Sharecroppers Demonstration of 1939.

In all, 600 homes in 10 villages were built by FSA. The villages, which would later become Delmo communities, were built in response to demands from those seeking better living conditions and economic prosperity for the roadside strikers.

"We're the project people as far as the town was concerned," Bibb said. "Most people worked in fields for someone else. We paid for our house by chopping cotton."

The villages were originally racially-segregated, with Grayridge (Circle City), Morehouse, East Prairie, South Lilbourn, North Wardell and Kennett reserved for white residents, while North Wyatt (Wilson City), North Lilbourn, South Wardell and Gobler were populated by blacks.

Each village included a community building, water tower, drainage ditches and electrical distribution centers centrally placed within the village's circular design.

Bibb still lives in her parents' first home. The house, like others originally built in the community, measures about 640 square feet and is divided into three bedrooms, a family room and kitchen and is built on a quarter-acre of land.

The homes originally came equipped with cabinets, a pantry and screened porch. Tools for gardening and farming also were supplied, along with canning equipment and sewing machines. Bibb still has two metal chests and a pressure cooker that also were included in the homes.

"They were nice houses as far as that goes, but they were government houses," said Bibb. "One of the biggest things I remember is even though we had a bath on the inside built on, my dad still liked to go to the one outside that came with the house."

In March 1945 Congress ordered the villages liquidated in part to appease planters, who disliked the communities because they enabled former sharecroppers and tenants to organize easily and demand increased wages.

"The residents wanted higher pay because of the former wrong-doing, and this resulted in some bad feelings," said Alex Cooper, former Delmo director. "Wyatt, an all-white community in Mississippi County, was sold to a vested interest and that became a sharecropping community again."

Nine months after the order to liquidate, a group of St. Louis business and religious leaders incorporated and soon raised enough money to purchase the remaining homes. The group called themselves the Delmo Housing Corporation.

The homes, valued at about $800 each, were resold to occupants for extended mortgage payments of about $8 per month.

Although its original intent was only to assist in home ownership, Delmo soon organized a number of social welfare programs to assist families in its communities. Health, educational and recreational programs were initiated in each community, along with the creation of village co-ops and credit unions.

Some programs, like the migrant health program and high school and college scholarships, continue to thrive in the communities today.

"It was the first private social service agency in Southeast Missouri," said Cooper. "Delmo is of benefit to the people of this region on several different levels, even though today the communities themselves appear very different than they once did."

In the early 1980s, Cooper said a push was initiated to make Delmo communities independent. Residents were encouraged to incorporate so their communities would be eligible for various state and federal economic programs, he said.

As a result, South Lilbourn has been annexed by the city of Lilbourn. The Delmo communities in East Prairie and Kennett have also become a part of larger cities. Other Delmo communities, like Homestown, North Lilbourn, Morehouse and Wilson City, have incorporated and are designated fourth-class cities.

"These were clustered, rural housing units," said Cooper. "These government colonies as they were called were clearly 30 or 40 years before their time. Now many of them are free-standing, independent, functioning communities, which was always Delmo's intent."