As I went walking I saw a sign there And on the sign it said "No Trespassing." But on the other side it didn't say nothing, That side was made for you and me. In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people, By the relief office I seen my people; As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking Is this land made for you and me? Nobody living can ever stop me, As I go walking that freedom highway; Nobody living can ever make me turn back This land was made for you and me.

The Culture The Great Depression transformed the way people thought about themselves and their relationship to the country and the world. Though no two people had the same understanding of the Depression, everyone felt challenged and changed by the experience.

By 1932, three years after the initial crash, near thirty million Americans had lost their source of income, from unemployment or loss of a family breadwinner. Of those lucky enough to have consistent work, more than half were reduced to part-time schedules. Though there had been devastating economic depressions before, the 1930s crisis encompassed both urban and rural regions and devastated middle-class and working-class people alike.

Dorothea Lange

Photographs of a Decade: Dorothea Lange Photo Journalism White Angel Breadline 1932 – An old man waiting on a San Francisco breadline hoping to be fed.

Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother – I do remember she asked me no questions. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960).

A picture is worth a thousand words… What do these images say about the Great Depression.