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Go directly to the collection, America from the Great Depression to World War II: Black and White Photographs from the FSA and OWI, ca. 1935-1945, in American Memory, or view a Summary of Resources related to the collection.

The images from FSA/OWI Photographs, 1935-1945 provide a captivating alternative to textual records of history. By engaging with these photographs as both historical records and creative, persuasive expressions, students may develop the thinking skills critical to a sophisticated understanding of history.

Home in "Little Oklahoma," a community that has grown out of migrant potato and cotton workers. California.

Have students create a timeline of major events and experiences of the Depression and New Deal. They can use these timelines to formulate search words and find photographs to illustrate their timelines. In addition to a sense of cause and effect over time, attention to details of the photographs and captions will give students a sense of the relationship between local and national events, social conditions and governmental decisions. Alternatively, students can search related topics such as the dust bowl and migrants for photographs such as this one. Focusing on dates and places, students can discern cause-and-effect relationships.

The collection provides vivid scenes of the harshness of life in rural America during the Great Depression. Students can explore this aspect of social history with some depth by searching squatters, drought, sharecropper, migrant, or Hooverville. Students may then use Voices From the Dustbowl to access songs that provide another kind of account of the stark living conditions of poverty-stricken Americans. Browse Song Text for lyrics or Audio Titles for recordings of songs such as the following. Students can then write their own lyrics to a song that describes or tells a story about life in rural America during the Depression.

Dispossessed Arkansas farmers. . . .

Students can learn to analyze and interpret photographs by thinking of them as the creations of different photographers with different approaches. Have students read about two or more photographers in the Special Presentation "Documenting America: Photographers on Assignment". Then have them browse the photographs by creator and choose images by these photographers for analysis and comparison.

Have them answer the following questions about each picture:

• What is the subject of the photograph? Where was it taken?
• What stands out to you? Tiny details or big shapes? People or things?
• What is its mood? How does it make you feel to look at it?
• Which photograph do you like best? Why?
• What is different about the photographs? What is the same?
• Do the photographs reflect what you read about their creators? Why or why not?
• What do you think the photographer might be trying to communicate about his subject? What does she want you to know or notice about her subject?
• Do the photographs reinforce points of view? Are they the same?
• Do the images or their captions reflect a bias? At what point does a photograph become biased? Are these "documentary" photographs objective? To what extent?

Students can also compare photographs of the same subject by browsing by subject. Or students may choose to compare photographs dealing with the issue of segregation. Search Forrest City, Arkansas, for photographs depicting relief efforts for flood refugees. Search Hill House (an experimental cooperative) and colored for other pertinent images. Analyze, interpret, and compare these photographs using the preceding questions.

Part of the mess line in the camp for white flood refugees, Forrest City, Arkansas.

Negroes in the lineup for food at meal time in the camp for flood refugees, Forrest City, Arkansas.

Children at Hill House, Mississippi.

Negro drinking at "Colored" water cooler in streetcar terminal, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Many photographs document problems that face the nation today, such as soil erosion, migrant labor, slums, and tenements. Search any of these words for photographs that may be compared and contrasted with contemporary images from television or periodicals. Have students research a current and local problem, take a position on it, and take a photograph or make a drawing that reflects that position.

Scene from the Bronx tenement district from which many of the New Jersey homesteaders have come. New York.

Using photographs as a starting point for research can give the research topics a context and relevance that make them less abstract and more engaging to students. With an eye for detail, students can use photographs and their captions to formulate search words for research into the major issues of the Depression era. In addition to FSA/OWI Photographs, 1935-1945, research can begin with Voices from the Dustbowl.

"Damned if we'll work for what they pay folks hereabouts." Crittenden County, Arkansas. . . .

This photograph and its full caption can be a starting point for research into sharecropper contracts and the effects of surplus labor.

Parkin (vicinity), Arkansas . . . families of evicted sharecroppers from the Dibble plantation. . . .

The story of this family's legal eviction due to union membership provides a starting point for research into the plight of farm union members.