This man selling apples on a street corner in the 1930s looks like he once had a better-paying job.

Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images/Fine Art America

"Look like a reanimated mannequin."

"Our helpers, the birds."

(source: The Palmyra Spectator, December 22, 1937.)

Hoover was a Republican.

“Two Runaway Girls Say They Will Do It Again,” Los Angeles Times, Oct 4, 1935

John Steinbeck was particularly enamored with the performance of Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, feeling that he perfectly encapsulated everything he wanted to convey with this character. The two became good friends. Indeed Fonda did a reading at Steinbeck's funeral.

HENRY FONDA in THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940) | dir. John Ford

A photo from 'South Sea Vagabonds', the Depression era sailing memoirs of New Zealander Johnny Wray. Source.

𝒋𝒆𝒂𝒏 𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒍𝒐𝒘 𝒊𝒏 𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒍𝒔 𝜗𝜚

Cab Calloway and his band in a sleeper car, 1933

"The Glandon family around the fireplace in their home at Bridges Chapel near Loydston[sic], Tennessee. Glandon's wife plays both the guitar and the organ."

Record Group 142: Records of the Tennessee Valley Authority Series: Lewis Hine Photographs for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

This black and white photograph shows a family consisting of a mother, father, two boys, and a girl.  The parents sit in unmatched wooden chairs.  To the left of the fireplace, the mother sits playing a guitar.  The father sits to the right holding a fireplace poker.  One boy sits on the floor holding a small black dog.  The girl sits next to him on the wide planked wooden floor.  A pile of kindling is between them.  The other boy stands behind his father’s chair.  The stone fireplace has a roaring fire in it.  The mantel is covered with photographs and prints.  Fabric or paper covers the walls.  On the far left a bureau of drawers with a mirror is visible.  On the far right, there is a neatly made bed.

When the sales clerks at Woolworth's—all of them women—went on strike in March, 1937, some men (union members?) turned out to support them. They picketed near the home of Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress, on March 18, 1937.

Photo: Associated Press

"Detail of farmer's blue jeans, boots and spurs. This man was once a cowboy and still prefers the cowboy's dress. Pie Town, New Mexico." Russell Lee, 1940. Library of Congress.

The Black Okies l Matt Black l 1999-2001

A documentary photo essay on the untold history of the black cotton migrants who came to California’s Central Valley during the Great Depression

I posted a week or so back, that I would start a Levi x reader/oc ballad of songbirds and snakes au, well I’m putting a pen in that. I’m having a trouble time figuring out how to write it. But I’m going to replace it with another one that I feel I won’t struggle with as much. It will be a Levi x reader/oc set in the 1930s Great Depression where Levi is a dog/cage fighter and reader is a prostitute. This goes without saying that this story will be much darker than my original idea, you’ve been warned. I hope to get the first chapter published soon, tell me if I should post it on here too.

It’s inspired by this art print I saw on etsy. 

Gloria Graves is dug up from her steel tomb, Los Angeles, 1935

19-year-old Gloria Graves has been arrested for violating the city's Marathon ordinance outlawing contests and entertainments involving endurance that might affect participants' health due to locking herself in a steel tomb for the past week at Fifth Street and Vermont Avenue. Gloria's open coffin rests on solid ground with her still inside of it. The inside of her coffin is white with a speaker attached to the inside so she could communicate with outsiders and a light bulb so she could see.

"Tomb Girl's Bail Fixed," Los Angeles Times, 17 Nov 1935

Morning and a Sack of Meal, c. 1933. Thomas Hart Benton Oil and tempera on Masonite