Links to Sites on the Great Depression

Street scene, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1937.
Roy Emerson Stryker, (1893-1975), photographer.

Image from American Memory, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection.

American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writer's Project, 1936-1940 -- a searchable site from the Library of Congress, providing access to nearly 3000 manuscripts created by the Federal Writer's Project.  The manuscripts contain case histories of individuals interviewed during the depression.  The interviews "consist of drafts and revisions, varying in form from narrative to dialogue to report to case history. The histories describe the informant's family education, income, occupation, political views, religion and mores, medical needs, diet and miscellaneous observations. Pseudonyms are often substituted for individuals and places named in the narrative texts."  A major resource for understanding the depression at the grass roots.

Minnesota Historical Society's Photograph Database has more than 100,000 photograph entries (many with online images), including hundreds of photographs of the depression years.

Photographs of the Farm Security Administration -- website from the Library of Congress, containing over 50,000 images of photographs taken in the 1930s in order to document the depression in rural America.  The website images may be searched.  There are numerous images in the collection concerning Minnesota in the 1930s, as well as other states in the upper midwest.