Walker Evans and his colleagues, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, and Marion Post Wolcott, photographers for the Farm Security Administration, introduced a way of seeing and a commitment that put the word documentary into the lexicon of serious photography...These images help define for us the meaning of the Depression in Mississippi.
A collection of newspaper articles and essays written during the Depression, detailing the conditions faced by various individuals and social classes. Includes first- person and eye-witness accounts.
Benjamin Roth was born in New York City in 1894 and received a law before serving as an Army officer during World War I. When the stock market crashed in 1929, he had been practicing law for approximately ten years. After he began to grasp the magnitude of what had happened to American economic life, he started writing down his impressions in a diary that he maintained intermittently until he died in 1978 (eBook).
The political ideas that resulted from confronting the crisis of the Great Depression and the New Deal of the early 20th century reshaped America. This documentary history collects a range of primary sources to illuminate this critical period in U.S. history.
A re-creation of the America of the thirties, based on the reminiscences of a cross-section of people representing all walks of life, including several notable personalities.
From the introduction: "The authors contributing to this book are Southerners, well acquainted with one another and of similar tastes... By conversation and exchange of letters over a number of years it had developed that they entertained many convictions in common, and it was decided to make a volume..." Originally published in 1930.
A collection of articles, essays, and book fragments written during the New Deal era and covering topics including opposition to the New Deal and the impending war.
This anthology assembles the contemporary writings not only of the New Dealers―the men who devised and executed the programs of the government in the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt―but also of the "social critics" who "gathered in various stances and at various distances around the Roosevelt fires."
Compiles photographs from five different sources in the New Deal: the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the National Youth Administration (NYA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), as well as the Farm Security Administration (FSA).
These posters were designed for other federal agencies, and as travel posters, education and civic activity posters, health and safety posters, and propaganda posters for World War II.
This book examines the songs American workers sang at three different strikes - the Gastonia, North Carolina, textile mill strike (1929), Harlan County, Kentucky coal mining strike (1931-32), and Flint, Michigan automobile sit down strike (1936-37). Much of the text in this book is secondary source material, but it does contain song lyrics which are primary sources (eBook).
Life histories of 37 ordinary citizens, both black and white, in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia collected by the Federal Writers's Project as part of Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. The intention was to create a faithful representation of southern society. Originally published in 1939.
Presents autobiographical accounts of women who influenced government and labor policy during the Depression, including Eleanor Roosevelt and Lillian Wald.
Resources in Library Databases
Off campus, these resources are available only to RVCC students, staff, and faculty and require a login with your G# and password.
An online resource that provides an overview of historical US events of the last 500 years with timelines, videos of newsreels, photographic documentation, biographies, statistics on historic US expeditions and exploration, immigration maps and charts plus links to many primary source documents.
This database provides an overview of historical US events of the last 500 years with timelines, videos of newsreels, photographic documentation, biographies, statistics on historic US expeditions and exploration, immigration maps and charts plus links to many primary source documents on topics such as state charters, Federalist Papers, westward expansion, women’s suffrage, State of the Union addresses and Presidential Inaugural addresses.
Perform a keyword search, then select Primary Sources from the tabbed results.
To browse, select Primary Sources and then The Great Depression: 1929-1941
A multidisciplinary, scholarly database containing digitized back issues of academic journals, books, primary sources, and current issues of journals.
It provides full-text searches of almost 2,000 journals on a variety of subjects including history, science, literature, music, philosophy, world culture and business.
The Work Projects Administration (WPA) Poster Collection consists of 907 posters produced from 1936 to 1943 by various branches of the WPA. Of the 2,000 WPA posters known to exist, the Library of Congress's collection of more than 900 is the largest.