Great Depression

Although most photos depicting the Great Depression are black-and-white, America's Library of Congress has a series of color transparencies which have been digitized.  Photographers employed by the Farm Security Administration (also known as the FSA, which later merged with the Office of War Information) took the pictures between 1939 and 1943. 

Providing a glimpse into the lives of people enduring hardship, while sharing family love, these amazing FSA pictures are part of an exhibit which the Library calls "Bound for Glory:  America in Color."  Take a look at someof the exhibit's 70 featured photos (and learn the stories behind the pictures):

• Dugout home of Jack Whinery and his family

• The Jack Whinery Family

• Faro and Doris Caudill, with their family, in Pie Town

• Faro Caudill, drawing water at the dugout

• Fourth of July at St. Helena Island

• Family at Bayou Bourbeau Plantation

• Tenant Home by a Mississippi River levee

• Worker at a carbon black plant in Sunray, Texas

• At the Vermont State Fair

• Children in the Tenement District

• Children Gathering Potatoes near Caribou, Maine

• Trucks Outside a Starch Factory in Caribou

• Migratory Workers by a "Juke Joint" in Belle Glade, Florida
  

These colored pictures are just a sampling of the FSA's photographs depicting Americans during the Great Depression.  What were the causes of that catastrophic economic decline which adversely impacted the well-being of so many people?