Dorothea Lange

Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression

Wall Street Crash •  The Roaring Twenties, the decade that led up to the Crash, was a time of optimism,

wealth and excess, created by an economic bubble. Despite the dangers of speculation, many people invest because they believed that the stock market would continue to rise indefinitely.

•  The Wall Street Crash or Black Tuesday began in late October 1929. As share

prices began to fall and panic selling caused prices to fall sharply. Financiers tried to restore confidence by buying shares to prop up prices, but this failed to alter the rapid change in market sentiment. Masses of people tried to sell their stock, but no one was buying.

•  It was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States. It spread all the economic sectors: financial system, commerce, industry and agriculture.

•  The crash signaled the beginning of the 10-year Great Depression that affected all

Western industrialized countries and did not end in the United States until the onset of American mobilization for World War II at the end of 1941.

The Great Depression •  The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic crisis in the decade

preceding World War II.

•  The structural weaknesses and specific events turned it into a major depression and the manner in which the downturn spread from country to country.

•  It was the longest, most widespread, and deepest depression of the Capitalism in the 20th century. It had devastating effects in rich and poor countries. Millions of people were out of work across the United States. Unable to find another job locally, many unemployed people hit the road, traveling from place to place, hoping to find some work.

•  The elections of 1932 brought to power Franklin D. Roosevelt, who implement the New Deal. It was a series of domestic economic programs enacted in the United States between 1933 and 1936. It focused on Relief, Recovery, and Reform. That is Relief for the unemployed and poor; Recovery of the economy to normal levels; and Reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression.

Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) •  She was an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best

known for her Depression-era work .

•  She turned her camera lens from the studio to the street. Her photographs humanized the consequences of the Great Depression –above all rural poverty in Western states–:migrant, unemployed and homeless people. She worked for the Farm Security Administration.

•  Lange's best-known picture is titled Migrant Mother and it was shot in 1936. It’s

one of a series of photographs of Florence Owens Thompson, who was a destitute pea picker in California, a mother of seven children, age 32. It became instantly a recognized symbol of the Depression.

•  She greatly influenced the development of documentary photography in the United States.