Great Depression History

In the mid-1930s, the Farm Security Administration’s Resettlement Administration hired photographers to document the work done by the agency. Some of the most powerful images were captured by photographer Dorothea Lange. Lange took this photo in New Mexico in 1935, noting, “It was conditions of this sort which forced many farmers to abandon the area.”

Arthur Rothstein was one of the first photographers to join the Farm Security Administration. His most noteworthy contribution during his five years with FSA may have been this photograph, showing a (supposedly posed) farmer walking in the face of a dust storm with his sons in Oklahoma, 1936.

Oklahoma dust bowl refugees reach San Fernando, California in their overloaded vehicle in this 1935 FSA photo by Lange.

Migrants from Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas and Mexico pick carrots on a California farm in 1937. A caption with Lange’s image reads, “We come from all states and we can’t make a dollar in this field noways. Working from seven in the morning until twelve noon, we earn an average of thirty-five cents.”

This Texas tenant farmer brought his family to Marysville, California in 1935. He shared his story with photographer Lange, saying, “1927 made $7000 in cotton. 1928 broke even. 1929 went in the hole. 1930 went in still deeper. 1931 lost everything. 1932 hit the road.”

A family of 22 set up camp alongside the highway in Bakersfield, California in 1935. The family told Lange they were without shelter, without water and were looking for work on cotton farms.

A pea picker’s makeshift home in Nipomo, California, 1936. Lange noted on the back of this photograph, “The condition of these people warrant resettlement camps for migrant agricultural workers.”

Among Dorothea Lange’s most iconic photos was of this woman in Nipomo, California in 1936. As a mother of seven at age 32, she worked as a pea picker to support her family.

The family who lived in this make-shift home, photographed in Coachella Valley, California in 1935, picked dates on a farm.

Californians derided the newcomers as “hillbillies,” “fruit tramps” and other names, but “Okie”—a term applied to migrants regardless of what state they came from—was the one that seemed to stick. The beginning of World War II would finally turn migrants’ fortunes as many headed to cities to work in factories as part of the war effort.

Walker Evans was among a handful of photographers hired by the Farm Security Administration to document the lives of farmers and the challenges of rural poverty from 1935–1944. Here, a farmer and mule team toil in a field near Tupelo, Mississippi.

The black-and-white photos portion of Evans’ collection comprises about 175,000 film negatives, many of which showcase slice-of-life moments during the Great Depression, including this roadside food stand.

This is a 1936 portrait of Floyd Burroughs, a cotton sharecropper, shot by Evans in Hale County, Alabama. At harvest time every year, Burroughs had to give his landlord half his cotton and corn crop, and pay off any other debts incurred during the year for food, seed, fertilizer and medicine.

While collaborating with writer James Agee on an article about cotton farmers in the south, Evans took photos of sharecropper families and the environments they lived in. The article later became the seminal book “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.” In it, Agee observes how household objects set apart from one another take on unique significance, with each object gaining “a full strength it would not otherwise have.”

Shot on a large format film camera, this photo by Evans of houses in the African American quarters of Tupelo, Mississippi, highlight the meager living conditions Black Americans faced during the Great Depression.

Walker Evans shot this 1936 photo of Bud Fields sitting with his wife Ivy as she nurses their daughter Ellen in Hale County, Alabama. Evans lived with the family for a month while photographing their lives for what would later become “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.”

Allie Mae Burroughs, the wife of sharecropper Floyd Burroughs, photographed during the Great Depression. Evans took a majority of his Hale County photographs in the Burroughs’ four-room cabin, including four portraits of Allie Mae.

Floyd Burroughs poses with his three children on their porch in Hale County, Alabama, 1936.

People sit outside stores and on porches overlooking desolate streets in the African American quarters of Savannah, Georgia, in 1935.

Walker Evans’ series of men in front of barber shops in Vicksburg, Mississippi—including this photo—is considered among his best work.

Two African American sharecroppers, a woman and a man sitting behind her, pose for Walker Evans in Pulaski County, Arkansas, in 1935.

Scenes of miners’ houses in Vicinity Birmingham, Alabama, such as this image, showcase the relative comfort of the homes they inhabited compared to those of sharecroppers living in Hale County not far away. Still, some inhabitants were likely unemployed and receiving government assistance just like Evans, who prior to accepting work from the FSA, was broke and unemployed.

This monochrome photograph of a carpenter holding his toolbox on his shoulder was shot by Evans in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, 1935.

Evans photographed this bustling scene on Main Street in Macon, Georgia in 1936.

People line up for mealtime at a flood refugee camp in Forrest City, Arkansas, March 1936.

The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was created as part of the New Deal to build relief camps and offer loans and relocation assistance to farmers impacted by the Depression and the Dust Bowl. A photography unit, including New Jersey-born Dorothea Lange (whose photos are featured in this gallery), documented rural America for the agency.This photo shows a migrant family stalled in Texas with a flat tire on their way to Arkansas to find field work.

Lange’s access to the inner lives of struggling Americans was the result of patience and careful consideration of the people she photographed. Here, a field worker in Holtville, California shows shoes he had just made himself shoes out of an old tire.

Children of migrant workers collect water at the American River Migrant Camp in San Joaquin Valley, California.

Lange was best known for a series of photographs of Florence Owens Thompson, a 32-year-old mother living in a camp of stranded pea pickers.This photo of Thompson, “Migrant Mother,” came to symbolize the Great Depression.

Lange photographed this family of a turpentine worker near Cordele, Alabama. The father’s wages was $1 a day.

Migrant workers toiling a field. Lange’s colleague, Ron Partridge described how Lange would work, saying, “She would walk through the field and talk to people, asking simple questions—what are you picking? . . . How long have you been here? When do you eat lunch? . . . I’d like to photograph you, she’d say, and by now it would be ‘Sure, why not,’ and they would pose a little, but she would sort of ignore it, walk around until they forgot us and were back at work.”

The wife of a migratory laborer and mother of three is captured by Lange’s lens in Texas.

This photo shows a woman holding an infant, walking through a muddy migrants’ camp in California.

Children of drought refugees sit at the back of their family’s car as they arrive in California.

A Mexican-American mother and her baby photographed in June 1935 in California

A drought refugee from Polk, Missouri awaits the start of orange-picking season in Porterville, California. As they traveled west from the drought-ravaged Midwest, American-born migrants were often viewed as intruders.

A teenage sharecropper works in a field in Georgia, circa 1937.

A migrant shed worker takes a break at his post in northeast Florida.

Here, farmers in drought-stricken Oklahoma sit in the shade in August 1936.The FSA created a historical archive unlike any made before. By the time the project was finished, FSA photographers had taken some 250,000 photographs.

Arthur Rothstein was the first staff photographer hired to work for the Farm Security Administration. FSA photographers were tasked with documenting people’s living conditions in rural America so the images could be used to report back to Congress.Rothstein was born in New York City and studied at Columbia University. Here, Rothstein’s photo shows a woman spinning wool in Madison County, Arkansas.

As farmers and their families in Great Plains and the Midwest lost their homes and livelihoods in the Dust Bowl, many headed west to California. Once they reached the west, they were often derided as “fruit tamps” or “Okies.” This photo shows a migrant worker in the Yakima Valley, California. Rothstein once said he believed the role of documentary photographers was to “examine and scrutinize in order to reveal the truth.”

This photo shows evicted sharecroppers camping along Highway 60 in New Madrid County, Missouri. In 1935, 50 percent of all white farmers and 77 percent of all Black farmers were sharecroppers.

A migrant worker picks cranberries in Burlington County, New Jersey, 1938.

Rothstein took this photo of an African American girl looking out the window of a log cabin in Gee’s Bend, Alabama in 1938.

Mrs. Dobson and some of her nine children, as captured by Rothstein in 1935 in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia.

This man spread sliced apples on a roof to dry to later sell them. The photo was taken in Nicholson Hollow, Shenandoah National Park, Virginia.

As drought depleted crops, many in the midwest abandoned their farms to move west or into North Dakota’s urban cities. This North Dakota farmer remained optimistic, according to photographer Rothstein.

Shadows of workers are seen through a tent at Quarter Circle U Ranch, Montana.

The son of a migrant citrus worker poses for Rothstein in Winter Haven, Florida.

A chef rings a dinner triangle at Rimrock Camp in Central Oregon Land Development Project, Jefferson County, Oregon.

Cotton pickers weigh their cotton on a farm in Kaufman County, Texas.

A family whose farm was optioned by the FSA’s Resettlement Administration is shown on their porch in Oneida County, Idaho.

Farmer Russ Nicholson peels potatoes, Shenandoah National Park, Virginia.

This June 1938 photo shows a farmer cultivating corn with fertilizer on a horse-drawn plow at the Wabash Farms, Indiana.