Boys fishing in a bayou in Schriever, Louisiana
Farm Security Administration photographer Marion Post Wolcott's amazing colour photos depict the poverty and deprivation of life in the Deep South in the 1930s and early 1940s
By
Daily Mail Reporter
It was viewed as the 'benighted
South' - an isolated part of America enduring the legacy of slavery,
extreme poverty and the rise of small evangelical Protestant
congregations in rural towns.
These
incredible colour pictures depict the life of African-American tenant
farmers and their families living in the Deep South in the 1930s and
early 1940s - working on plantations, swimming in levees and sitting on
their stoops.
They're the work of noted Farm Security Administration photographer Marion Post Wolcott, who
documented poverty and deprivation during and after the Great Depression.
'As
an FSA documentary photographer, I was committed to changing the
attitudes of people by familiarising America with the plight of the
underprivileged, especially in rural America. FSA
photographs shocked and aroused public opinion to increase support for
the New Deal policies and projects, and played an important part in the
social revolution of the 30s.'
- Marion Post Wolcott, according to a University of Virginia biographical sketch.
The
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division has preserved the
original photographs, but have made them available on photosharing
website Flickr since 2008.
The
vivid collection of shots has attracted more than 10 million views,
enabling viewers to tag and comment on pictures - what the library calls
'history detective' work.
A tenant's home beside the Mississippi River levee, near Lake Providence, Louisiana
Bayou Bourbeau plantation operated by Bayou
Bourbeau Farmstead Association, a cooperative established through the
cooperation of FSA, Natchitoches, LA
A store with live cat fish for sale near Natchitoches, Louisiana
Men fishing at a creek near cotton plantations outside Belzoni, Mississippi
A group of people - possibly a family - at the Bayou Bourbeau plantation, an FSA cooperative at Natchitoches, Louisiana
A cross roads store, bar, 'juke joint' and gas station in the cotton plantation area of Melrose, Louisiana
Day-labourers picking cotton near Clarksdale, Mississippi
An old tenant house with a mud chimney and cotton growing up to its door in Melrose, Louisiana
A group in transit, captured somewhere in Mississippi
Day labourers picking cotton near Clarksdale, Mississippi
Clothes of swimmers hanging on a telegraph pole
in Lake Providence, Louisiana. The children from the nearby farms and
neighborhoods often went swimming on the weekend
Children on the porch of a home at Marcella Plantation in Mileston, Mississippi
People walking at the Marcella Plantation in Mileston, Mississippi
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