German POWs in the Cotton Fields

During World War Two, Mississippi County, Arkansas hosted prisoner of war camps. A camp near Bassett is said to have housed German soldiers captured in North Africa and Europe, then shipped across the Atlantic to the American heartland.

The men spent their days doing what Mississippi County had always done: picking cotton. Farmers were desperate for labor while American men were overseas, and the federal government contracted POWs out to fill the gap. The Germans earned a small daily credit for their labor.

Some are said to have taken a liking to the Delta, and a few reportedly returned after the war.