The plight of sugar cane workers and SMHA’s determination to help the workers “help themselves,” was the topic of Patsy Sims’ book, Cleveland Benjamin’s Dead! A Struggle for Dignity in Louisiana’s Cane Country. SMHA relocated to its present address in New Iberia after barging a cypress, pre-civil war plantation home down the Bayou Teche. The organization purchased the home and land along the bayou with money from a successful lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, for improper defunding of a farmworker health and dental clinic.