In 1968, the NAACP’s monthly magazine, The Crisis, ran a series of shocking photographs about hunger in the Mississippi River Delta. The previous year, the NAACP had opened three emergency relief centers in the region, but such emergency measures were not enough to abate the crisis. Many families did not qualify for food stamps, forcing some parents to abandon their families so that their children could eat. These images of mothers and their starving children sent a clear message to readers that the famine-like conditions in the Delta were urgent.