Stories from the Great Depression

When Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke these simple, inspiring words in 1933, Americans from coast to coast, tired of years of economic hardship, were willing to take the newly minted president's word—he offered them hope, which was what only one that many people had abandoned. The difficulties caused by the Great Depression had reached their peak in the spring of 1933, on March 4, an unprecedented event had occurred, each and every bank had closed its doors, for some this measure was only temporary , but for a large number the economic crisis was permanent. In reality, the banking system was on the brink of collapse, a quarter of the workforce was unemployed, and prices and output were down to 1/3 of their 1929 levels.

During his first inaugural address, President Roosevelt looked over of the tense cloud in front of the Capitol, anxiously gathered before it. and with unquestionable conviction I said that this nation calls for action and action now my father is a cotton factory worker and that is why we moved when I was 21 years old. I had moved 21 times, but you know we didn't have a big house. so and you didn't have carpet or anything, I think you know Borden is old with a linoleum carpet on it right up there because part of the place actually exceeded the floor through the floor that we ran, the nearest country was stolen inside Miss Vale and the cotton gin at South Cotton was that you couldn't get anything for the card and then well, we arrived and he made us take the head off.

We cut off cotton production in the

depression

, we saw a lot of people come from southeastern Kentucky and eastern Tennessee because they wanted to get better jobs there was nothing to do in the coal mines so a lot of people came who were in bad conditions and they also crossed the river to Cincinnati and there were almost people hoping to get one day. to Detroit people found ways to get money to do a job get jobs to keep the family going in the first 100 days of the new administration 15 measures flowed from the White House to Congress 15 new laws ensured absolute government action to employ to the unemployed improve the Tennessee Valley support crop prices prevent foreclosures insure bank deposits and stabilize the economy Franklin D.

Roosevelt called these programs a new deal for the nation my mother got a job at the WPA one of the agencies of the New Deal that he worked in the public library and I think he really enjoyed that job, he talked a lot about it and it's the only job he ever had in his entire life. After she got married, she didn't work outside the home and talked a lot when she took us to the library when we were little, telling us about her experiences working for the WPA in the public library during the Depression, many people from Oklahoma and other states affected by the Dust Bowl Valley. from San Joaquin were looking for work some families were lucky and I was able to get good jobs in Tehachapi working in the cement plant at the Roman state prison my parents bought a house on the outskirts of the city and we had no gas or sewer line.

I still remember when Lange gas came late through the alley. The workers wrapped me in plastic-like material around the pipes. The house next door was primarily rented by a family from Oklahoma. One family built a small square shack behind the house using rolls of roofing material to cover the outside walls and immigrant families will do so. We lived in the shack for a while before moving to another place looking for work. Our house was near the train tracks and I remember men knocking on our back door and asking for water and something to eat. My mom made them a bologna sandwich.

I like bread. Back then these men didn't call all these people hobos. Many people remember what I think is the cause, but they don't remember what they did and that makes a big difference. You know, you could buy a coat for a nickel or a nickel. hamburger for a nickel, but the problem was you didn't even have a nickel to buy them when it was mostly and you only think like that so you know your memory blurs things a little and you tend to remember how good my husband was when he was a little kid. . He grew up in Walker County, Alabama, it's a coal mining district and he was paid 10 cents a shot to go into the coal mines and light the gunpowder fuse and then get out before it exploded.

Grown men wouldn't do it because they couldn't move fast enough, so they hired him because he was small and wiry and he would just get out of this before he exploded. When his father found out, he whipped him. President Vitara's first priority was relief for the millions of Americans who suddenly found themselves without jobs, without food, without shelter, and without hope. He concluded that aid for the downtrodden must come from beyond the traditional private or local government sources that he believed the federal government needed. to take a larger role in providing for the well-being of the American people of its many initiatives, the Works Progress Administration was the largest, created in the spring of 1935 and further expanded the national relief effort, the primary goal of the WPA. was to alleviate the high unemployment rate and provide assistance to the discouraged American workforce.

The story where they used the fabric and it looks like the fabric was all one color, so everyone knew that if you had that fabric, it's not a tight part of their job, part of their pain, my grandmother made dresses for all the pearls that She had two dresses and in this day and time we don't think about that many but she was very excited to wear her new dress to school but when she got there the other girls who had a little more money laughed at her because she was in the WBA, but I laughed at her for her statement, she said I didn't care, I have another dress and she said it was the most important thing, but that my grandmother was a seamstress and she worked all her life all her married life and she sent this and I went out to collect scraps from clothing factories and sewing clothes was not a problem because my grandmother could make something out of nothing she always said, however, they didn't have shoes because she couldn't make shoes, but one of my aunts who was 85 years he shared so many

stories

that he said he didn't feel the Depression had that much of an impact on them.

As they were a family of nine children, life was always a struggle and she didn't really realize that because everyone in the neighborhood and everyone else in the family was working just as hard and fighting just as hard in one of the

stories

that the truck would come to their farm what to sleep and if they had worked hard for their family that we would receive help for each child there were 12 children they got an egg I could exchange it for a candy my mother tells him on Tuesday well that flavor of candle that they had for a whole week more when we were little we had to go out near the garbage can play ball you know use rocks and stones as bases my brother and I one of the things we love to do all the time during the summer is go pick berries , but the berries are abundant and they are free, they grow as long as the forest and we always came home and I helped her make a pot very kind and we loved it and she always told me that we were using her granite her mother's recipe and the bicycle very She has a very simple dish to make, it doesn't cost much but the berries are free, it's just a little bit of sugar and then a crust made with flour and butter and she told me that there were times during the Depression when black mooncakes were everything they had to eat.

We grew up in the Sunset District of San Francisco. My father had an office job and, like so many people in the prosperous 1920s, he was doing well, then the Great Depression hit me. dad lost his job in 1930 his savings were depleted we were forced to accept charities the term welfare was not fashionable at the time the procedure was once a week the Associated Charities of San Francisco delivered boxes of food to families in need We watched as the boxes were taken to the men. At first one or two families received help but as the

depression

deepened the majority of the families received assistance.

It was sad to see the men selling apples on the street corners. Their clothes were old and threadbare and usually consisted of a pair of old pants with a suit jacket trying to keep us warm on a typical foggy day we lost our home a cabin at 1933 Eighth Avenue that is still standing and is currently occupied Edward McSweeney June 1994 my grandfather used to talk a lot about the depression and he often said that during the Depression money was very tight and I remember the story he told me about his oldest son, he said if you did well living on the farm you could always eat and said he didn't have to stay there. the soup line kind of because he could grow his own food and he also had a lot of cows and chickens and holes to eat, so he wasn't hungry, but some of the other things, like clothes, his family didn't have a lot of clothes. . or something like that, they didn't have much money to buy it and she said that her son was barefoot and she wanted him to go to school and he didn't have shoes and she found the nipple and with that nickel she went to buy her son a pair of shoes.

My grandmother said she was angry. with President Hoover at that time and she felt at that particular time that the work she had to do was much better than the work her grandparents had to do and you know they were slaves and she said that wasn't much better than slave labor. My maternal grandmother was born in Maine in 1920. In the summer of 1929, when she was nine years old, her parents decided to move to Michigan because some other family members had found work there. They had a substantial amount of money in the bank when the stock market crashed in October 1929 the banks closed and they had no access to their funds over time they both lost their jobs they struggled for a couple of years in Michigan in fact they lived near a state prison and my

great

uncle told me that he remembered people talking about breaking into the prison because the prisoners could get a lot of fresh food from the gardens they grew after fighting for a couple of years in Michigan, my grandfather. -The grandparents received a letter from a relative in Maine saying he could provide my

great

-grandfather a job in the logging industry.

The relative who offered this job wrote to state officials on my great-grandfather's behalf and the state accepted. He will provide her with $25 and a Model T Ford to travel back to Maine. It was a journey of setbacks. The Ford Model T they were given did not have a fuel pump like modern cars, gas was fed by gravity to the engine so the car could drive up steep hills in reverse, and in fact, the car was sometimes so slow that the family I would just go out and walk alongside him, but eventually they returned to the main forest where my great-grandfather worked as a logger for a while. near the town of Andover, I know that during that time hard working loggers could earn about a dollar a day cutting wood, they used saws and axes and pulled the trees out of the forest using horses and if they were lucky they could cut down four. six-quarters of a day old, the 1930s were a decade of tremendous technological advances and by 1939, more than 80% of Americans owned a radio set, although it was used primarily for entertainment.

Radio broadcasts quickly became a tool to inform the public about the growing crisis in Europe. He stayed a steady course and kept the American audience informed of his plans and progress through a series of radio addresses that came to be called private chats, these broadcasts focused on specific topics and issues and were conveyed in warm and friendly language. When Franklin Roosevelt, calm and self-assured, addressed his audience as my friends, most Americans believed they were exactly what my grandfather he had a store, a small country store, and therefore food, but also other types of items as well and he was very successful with his business until the depression came and he had extended credit to a lot of people and, of course, people were without work and they couldn't pay and they didn't pay him what he could He couldn't afford to run the store so he lost his business and the family struggled for a long time because there was no work.

It took him a long time to find work, especially in that part of the country. My grandfather was always a shopkeeper. He had been a grocer and I noticed in the city directories that they were always moving, always moving, and she said that was because he was always looking for a better location, a better neighborhood where business would be better and his finances could improve. But he finally closed the business after 25 years of being a grocer. His Rhoyne had been his compassion for the poor. He gave them credit and they couldn't pay him. They didn't know that they were poor as such because they have food.

I have questions aboutwhere you need many things. She didn't know that she had the basic things you need and a big family. Mom was born in 1918. My dad was born in 1920. They both passed away in the last 18 months. or that's what I remember most about them: they were great parents, great providers, and they were great teachers to all the McSweeney kids growing up. I remember them talking not about the difficult times during the 1930s, but rather about Roosevelt's hope and optimism. and they told us stories over and over again about old radio Jack Armstrong, American boy Jack Benny Amos and Andy, they talked about all the famous sports teams, like the gas house being a baseball, the New York Yankees, They told us. about how they could go to the movies for a nickel and see the Marx Brothers, the films of young Betty Davis, Walt Disney, etc., it was a tremendous time to be a little kid and I guess it's testament to their own parents that they kept That side of the ExcellentDepression in terms of the negative image, we were aware that it was a degree, but most of my friends were in the same boat as us, so we didn't know much about the script and we said we would see the big houses, since You know, people had great. houses and things like that, but we were never in contact with many or talked to them much, so we knew that they had a lot more than us, but there was no fact that we never wanted to be rich with the government that we knew. you were taking care of the patient that they were coming to dinner that MPSP my name is Jeff Zucker what's your name and I told you this is I love names, but I would like to call you Susie, okay and I said, oh, and get what we call it grote and all the kids call him doc red blood cell, we have a late newsletter here it's a flash.

President Roosevelt passed away satire in Warm Springs Georgia this afternoon in his little white pine cabin above death. not Franklin D Roosevelt in his 63rd year is George was affectionately called the little white house of which they said beyond a doubt the syrup that here for me denied is spilling is simple the death of the president came without warning had been at 4:35 p.m. In Eastern wartime, presidents died without the Eastern junta's forty-five p.m. I'm in Washington. They told me that when they came back from you he thought, "Well, if I can write one down, I prayed with it and he looked at it.

He was 63 years old." old and now, but he was, he looked tired and always smiled when you saw him when the news came on April 12, 1945 that President Roosevelt had died. The gravity of this loss was felt by all Americans. Millions of people mourned his death. of a man most had never met President Roosevelt died confident believing that victory was assured but he was never able to fully realize the success of all he had accomplished in federal programs there seemed to be discrimination against a black person being able to get a job With the WPA as soon as they were white people, they loved FDR and they loved the federal programs because, as black families, they felt like they were really benefiting from those programs.

My mother, you know who came here in 1914, but she thought she always had bruises. The best part was walking so yeah she took it hard and a lot of the neighbors did, it was a working town it was a savior back then because things were so bad it was a very difficult time and it left a lot of memories in people. and I think they were sometimes reluctant to talk about them during the 1930s and early 1940s, the Farm Security Administration, a federal agency created to alleviate the plight of farmers, employed a notable group of photographers, Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks and many others, to document the lives and struggles of Americans during the Great Depression.

Their work included some of the most powerful images of the nation that emerged from those difficult years. Many of these photographs have reached An iconic status in American culture for those born after the 1930s, the Great Depression is something that can only be visualized through photographs and personal oral histories. These photographs on display in the Southeast Region of the National Archives inspire family historians to examine their past and reflect on their family's lives during one of the most difficult times in American history through the National Archives' public programs. . southeast region these stories will be remembered and preserved for future generations through our holdings students educators family historians and the general public have the opportunity to rub shoulders with presidents war heroes civil rights leaders and the greatest scientific minds the world has ever seen Known National Archives in Atlanta, Georgia houses thousands of original records documenting the settlement and development of the Southeast.

These documents tell intriguing stories of the people who once inhabited this land and the history of this unique area. We invite you to visit us in Georgia and discover its history. visit us at WWF you