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CONTENTSActivity 1: Conducting and Interview |
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Activity 1: Conducting an Interview Migratory packinghouse workers waiting around post office during slack season. Belle Grande, Florida. Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910- photographer. CREATED/PUBLISHED 1939 REPRODUCTION NUMBER LC-USF33-030450-M4 DLC (b&w film neg.)
Talk to your grandparents, great grandparents or older members of the community about the Great Depression. Make sure that you talk with someone old enough to have lived during the
Depression and can remember it. He or she will have to be at least 65 years old. Before conducting your interview collect sources of information about the Depression. Appropriate
sections of textbooks, as well as library resources can be drawn on. Sources can be found beyond traditional histories, such as John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath or the John Ford movie based on the book. If at all possible tape record or video tape your interview. Make sure that you are comfortable
with how to use a tape or video recorder. See that the machine you are using is in good working order. If possible, use a recorder that can be plugged in. Make sure that you label your interview
with the date, time and place of the interview. Run a voice level check before you begin the interview and be sure that you introduce the person you are interviewing, spelling out their name,
the date and place of the interview, the interviewer, and so on, at the beginning of the tape. If you are not recording your interview, but taking notes by hand, make sure that you include the
full name of the person you are interviewing, the place your interview was conducted and the date. Ask permission to use your interview as part of a report that will be shared with others.
Questions that you might want to have as part of your interview include:
1. What year were you born? How old were you in 1929 when the stock market crashed? 2. Where did you live during the Depression? 3. Did you live on a farm, in a small town or in a city? 4. Who lived with you in your family when you were a child? 5. How did your family support itself? Who worked? What type of work did they do?
6. Did the Depression affect the day-to-day life of your family? If so, how? If not, why not? 7. Did you know what the Depression meant when you were a child?
8. Did the Depression have a direct affect on your life as a child? 9. Did the Depression influence how you thought about things or did things throughout your life?
10. Is there anything else you would like to tell me about the Depression?
You may want to take Carlebach and Provenzo's Farm Security Administration Photographs of Florida with you on your interview. The photographs might be useful in helping people recall the past. Pulling together a group of older people and having them share their memories is often a good way of obtaining information. Often they will trigger memories for one another.
You may wish to use a video camera to record interviews and use what you have recorded to create your own documentary. Share your results interviews with others.You can do this in a number of ways:
1. Present a formal written report about the interview. 2. Present a report in class about the person you interviewed and their experience. You can
include listening to segments from your interview, etc.
Activity 2: Analyzing a Photograph Lunchroom near Belle Glade, Florida. Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910- photographer. 1939 Jan. REPRODUCTION NUMBER LC-USF34-050500-D DLC (b&w film neg.) The FSA photographs consider many different subjects. Among them are agriculture, workers,
family life, housing, tourism, African Americans, and government aid. Discuss what the photographs in each of the subject areas tell us about life in Florida fifty years ago.
You may find it helpful to use a photographic analysis chart to review each photograph. An outline for a chart is included below: FSA PHOTOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS CHART
Photo Researcher's Name: Date: Photographer's Name: Title of Photograph: Description of Photograph: Important Parts and Details of the Photograph:
Interpretation:
Activity 3 : Clothes Then and Now Pepe's coffee shop. Key West, Florida. Rothstein, Arthur, 1915- photographer. PUBLISHED 1938 Jan. Look carefully look at the photographs in the Florida FSA series. How is clothing the same or different from what people wear today? Are people wearing different clothing depending on whether they live in the city or the country? How does their clothing relate to the type of work they seem to be doing, or to their social or economic class?
Photo studio, Key West, Florida. Rothstein, Arthur, 1915- photographer. CREATED/PUBLISHED 1938 Jan. Look at signs imcluded in photographs in the Florida FSA collection. What is being advertised? To whom are the advertisements meant appeal? Which of these products can still be bought today?
Activity 5: Looking at Children Supervised play hour for younger children in assembly building at Osceola migratory labor camp. Belle Glade, Florida.Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910- photographer. CREATED/PUBLISHED 1940 June. REPRODUCTION NUMBER LC-USF34-054114-D DLC (b&w film neg.) Look at the photographs of children in the Florida FSA collection. What do their clothes tell you about the types of lives they live. Do they look happy? Do they look like they have enough to eat? Do they have homes that are comfortable? Can you learn much about their lives from these pictures?
Activity 6: The World of Work Young girls grading string beans. Deerfield, Florida. Many of these workers are from Alabama and Georgia. Rothstein, Arthur, 1915- photographer. CREATED/PUBLISHED 1937 Jan. REPRODUCTION NUMBER LC-USF34-005802-D DLC (b&w film neg.)Look carefully at this and other photographs in the Florida FSA collection that show people at work. What type of work are people doing? Is the work the same or different from the types of things people do today?
Activity 7: Times Change June in January, Miami Beach, Florida. Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910- photographer. CREATED/PUBLISHED 1939 Mar.? REPRODUCTION NUMBER LC-USF33-030464-M3 DLC (b&w film neg.)Consider all of the photographs included in the Florida FSA collection. Write an essay based upon the photographs of Florida during the Depression, discussing how it was the same or different from the Florida you know today
The FSA photographers had the job of documenting America during the Depression. Their main purpose w to provide a record of what America looked like particularly in its rural areas. They were also very talent artists. Look at the photograph above and other ones throughout the collection and try to explain why they a such powerful images. Can you explain why they are great images? Are some photographs better artistical than others? If yes, why? Activity 9: Point of View
Buddy," youngest child of migrant packinghouse worker from Tennessee, sitting on the only bed for six people, which is rolled
out on the ground at night and pushed into the back during the day. Belle Glade, Florida. Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910-
photographer. CREATED/PUBLISHED 1939 Jan. REPRODUCTION NUMBER LC-USF34-050905-D DLC (b&w film neg.) The photographers from the FSA were accused of trying to create visual propaganda to influence how people viewed the world and the problems of the rural poor during the Depression. Look at the photographs in the Florida FSA collection. Do you think that they are propaganda? If they are, is this good or bad?
Activity 10: Looking at Your Family's Photographs Migrant packinghouse worker's family near Belle Glade, Florida. Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910- photographer. Ask if your family has an album or a collection of old photographs from the Depression Era. Find out as much as you can about the people in the photographs. What do your family photographs tell you about your ow family's history and experience?
Activity 11: Comparing FSA Photographers in Florida Bar in Belle Glade for Negroes. Florida. Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910- photographer. CREATED/PUBLISHED 1939 Jan. REPRODUCTION NUMBER LC-USF34-051169-D DLC (b&w film neg.) The main FSA photographers who made pictures in Florida are Carl Mydans, John Collier, Gordon Parks, Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein and Marion Post Wolcott. Do you see differences in their photographs? Their subjects and themes? The way they compose their pictures? Analyze and compare the differences among the photographers included in Florida FSA photographs.
Activity 12:
Prices Then and Now Restaurant sign, Key West, Florida. Rothstein, Arthur, 1915- photographer. CREATED/PUBLISHED 1938 Jan. REPRODUCTION NUMBER LC-USF33-T01-002703-M1 DLC (b&w film dup. neg.) There is evidence of how much things cost in some of the photographs taken in Florida by the FSA. Look at photographs in the Florida FSA collection and see if you can find this type of information, and then compare it with what the say things cost today. Activity 13: Comparing Then and Now Fishermen, Key West, Florida.Rothstein, Arthur, 1915- photographer. CREATED/PUBLISHED 1938 Jan. REPRODUCTION NUMBER LC-USF33-T01-002700-M4 DLC (b&w film dup. neg.) If you live in the same community as those where the FSA photographs were taken, go out and see if you can find similar scenes or the same places today, then take photographs yourself. Discuss how things have changed or remained the same in the fifty years since the photographs were first taken.
Activity 14: Comparing Florida with Other Communities in the Depression Migrant packinghouse worker's children. Belle Glade, Florida. Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910- photographer.
There are a wide range of books on the FSA photographers and their work across the country. Compare photographs produced in different parts of the country. How do the experiences of
people in one part of the country seem different or the same? The following are some of the books you might find helpful: Ben Shahn, photographer; an album from the thirties. Edited, with an introd., by Margaret R. Weiss
Imprint New York, Da Capo Press, 1973 In this proud land : America, 1935-1943, as seen in the FSA photographs / Roy Emerson Stryker and Nancy Wood Imprint
Boston : New York Graphic Society, 1975, c1973 Mind's eye, mind's truth : FSA photography reconsidered / James Curtis Imprint Philadelphia : Temple University Press, c1989
The Black image in the New Deal : the politics of FSA photography / Nicholas Natanson Imprint Knoxville : University of Tennessee Press, c1992
An excellent bibliographical source for books on the FSA is: Photographers of the Farm Security Administration : an annotated bibliography,
1930-1980 / Penelope Dixon ; introduction and essays by Fortune Ryan. New York : Garland, 1983
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