The bottomlands of the Mississippi Delta were still 90% undeveloped after the Civil War. Thousands of migrants, both black and white, entered this area for a chance at land ownership. They sold timber while clearing land to raise money for purchases. During the Reconstruction era, many freedmen became owners of farms in these areas, and by 1900, composed two-thirds of the property owners in the Mississippi Delta. Democrats regained control of the state legislature in the late 19th century, and in 1890, passed a disfranchising constitution, resulting in the exclusion of African Americans from political life until the mid-1960s. Most African Americans lost their lands due to disenfranchisement, segregation, financial crises, and an extended decline in cotton prices. By 1920, most African Americans were landless sharecroppers and tenant farmers. However in the 1930s, some African Americans acquired land under low-interest loans from New Deal programs; in 1960 Holmes County still had 800 black farmers, the most of any county in the state. The state continued to rely mostly on agriculture and timber into the 20th century, but mechanization and acquisition of properties by megafarms would change the face of the labor market and economy.