America from the Great Depression to World War II: Black and White Photographs from the FSA and OWI, ca. 1935-1945

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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The visual nature of FSA/OWI Photographs, 1935-1945 lends itself to a variety of imaginative projects, while the historical content provides a wide variety of writing topics. The collection also affords students the opportunity to consider and write about photographs as "texts" and to explore the connections between the visual and literary media.

Tom Collins, manager of Kern migrant camp, talking with one of the members. California.

Students can use the collection to see the relationship between literature and social history. Have students read excerpts from John Steinbeck's The Harvest Gypsies or The Grapes of Wrath, formulate search words from the texts, and find photographs to illustrate selected passages. Search Tom Collins and Kern County for photographs that document the Resettlement Camp and camp manager upon which those in The Grapes of Wrath are based. Search Joad in Voices from the Dustbowl, read the notes on the collecting expedition, or turn to page 10 in Charles Todd's Scrapbook to see how the novel in turn affected social history. Alternatively, have students search evacuation and Japanese for photographs to illustrate Ellen Levine's A Fence Away from Freedom or Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston.

Students can select and research a New Deal activity using the collection and other resources. Have them write a paper analyzing the pros and cons, successes and failures of the activity, making an argument about its effectiveness. Students may also be encouraged to analyze photographs, as they would other evidence, in support of their claims.

Public speaking inundated the meetings and rallies of union organization and the labor movement. Students can learn more about these events and speeches by searching union, meeting, strike, and picket for photographs such as these. They can also research other sources including Voices from the Dustbowl and American Life Histories, 1936-1940. Then have them write and deliver a speech as if at a union meeting, labor rally, or strike.

Meeting of agricultural workers union. Bridgeton, New Jersey.

Leif Dahl . . . speaking at union meeting in Bridgeton, New Jersey.

The Federal Theatre Project, established during the New Deal, employed unemployed playwrights and actors to create and perform short dramas based on current issues. These "Living Newspaper" plays were often used to sway public opinion to support New Deal programs. Have students form groups to select and dramatize an issue from the Depression era, referring to photographs to create a backdrop and select props.

Boy, fourteen, in eighth grade . . . American River camp, near Sacramento, California.

Students can assume the roles of youth appearing in various photographs and write journal entries or letters describing what their daily lives are like. Dorothea Lange's photograph of this fourteen-year-old provides a starting point for imagining what life in a migrant camp must have been like. Edwin Rosskam's photograph provokes empathy with urban children during the Depression. Search playing and children for a broader picture of such youths' lives.

Children playing on the street, Chicago, Illinois.

Students can write short stories based on photographs with extensive and detailed captions. The caption of this photograph describes the plight of an Arkansas family that was refused entrance into California until they could prove they were not indigents. They went all the way back to Arkansas to borrow the fifty dollars that finally enabled them to enter the state. A discussion about how a photograph can be like a story with plot, setting, and characters may provide a foundation for this project as well as for looking at photographs.

Migrant family in Kern County. . . .

Sign on drug store window, Black Belt, Chicago, Illinois.

Toward Los Angeles, California.

These two photographs provide the material for a lesson on irony. Have students examine them and explain, or discuss together, how these images express irony. Students can then make a photograph or drawing of their own that expresses irony.