Course Syllabus

The 1920s and 1930s

Background

The Library of Congress resources in this collection illustrate a series of themes that relate to the 1920s and 1930s: Work/Labor, New Negro/Harlem Renaissance, Urbanization/City Planning, New Deal/Public Programs, Dust Bowl//Rural Life, Great Depression/Poverty, and Technology/Industry. The majority of the resources come from the 1920s and 1930s, though a few are from the period just before the period (they allude to useful historical developments that influenced important trends or events during the 20s and 30s) and a few are from the early 1940s (they emphasize the results from events and trends that emerged during the 1920s and 1930s).

Resources

Resources include photographs, paintings, interviews, oral histories, songs, and maps.

Work/Labor

[Widening Washington Boulevard, worker blasting concrete with a jackhammer]. [Buildings near the LaSalle Hotel during construction, looking out across steel beams, with one construction worker visible near building materials at the bottom of the image ]. [Assembly] Electric phosphate smelting furnace used to make elemental phosphorus in a TVA chemical plant in the vicinity of Muscle Shoals, Alabama [Mrs. Eulalia McCranie] (Image 5) W.P.A. Federal Theatre presents \

New Negro/Harlem Renaissance

A terrible blot on American civilization. 3424 lynchings in 33 years ... Prepared by the Committee on public affairs The Inter-fraternal council. Issued by District of Columbia anti-lynching committee North eastern federation of Colored women's -- Piece 1 of 1 God Bless' the Child,' a swing-spiritual based on the authentic proverb 'God Blessed the Child That's Got His Own. Langston Hughes (1902-1967) to Walter White, October 29, 1925 [Harlem Rent Parties] Drawing in two colors / Winold Reiss.

Urbanization/City Planning

Hammond's bird's-eye view map of Philadelphia and vicinity / Spofford, N.Y. Birmingham, Alabama, Block Statistics. [General view, looking north, showing the Woolworth Bldg. [Clyde (Kingfish) Smith] (Image 3)

New Deal/Public Works

[Tuskeegee, Alabama.] Macbeth In March read the books you've always meant to read [Women and the Changing Times] PWA (Public Works Administration) housing projects for Negroes. Omaha, Nebraska.

Dust Bowl/Agriculture/Rural Life

Typescript for The Grapes of Wrath with copy-editing marks Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged thirty-two. Father is native Californian. Nipomo, California [Group of children posing under sign that reads \ Arizona Farmer and sons walking in the face of a dust storm. Cimarron County, Oklahoma.

Great Depression/Poverty

People living in miserable poverty, Elm Grove, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma. The philanthropist Tuberculosis Tests for Children [George Mehales] (Image 8)

Technology/Industry

Mrs. Gagne beside a Model T, 1920 A Ford song. G. Schirmer's secular choruses. 1918 [Mass production by Henry Ford,] The Encyclopedia britannica; a dictionary of arts, sciences, literature & general information. [v.30, 821-23.] Natl. League of Women Voters, 9/17/24 [Chris Thorsten] (Image 5)