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An African-American Man Protests Labor Discrimination at Bowman Dairy
In 1937, African-American activists in Chicago founded the Negro Labor Relations League to put pressure on companies that refused to hire black workers. The League's campaigns targeted newspapers (to promote black newscarriers), movie theaters (to [...]
Women Workers Protest the Loss of Jobs at Ford Motor Co.
When World War II ended, Ford Motor Company's Highland Park plant, like industrial manufacturers across the country, laid off thousands of women workers and replaced them with inexperienced men. In Highland Park, women members of the United Auto [...]
1960s Protesters Link to Earlier Black Freedom Struggles
In 1960, four African-American college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, began "sitting in" at the local Woolworth store’s lunch counter, which, like virtually all such lunch counters at the time, did not serve black customers. The [...]
"Cotton Picking in Georgia"
In the 1890s, most African Americans labored in the southern cotton economy. Some owned their own farms, but many worked in a system called sharecropping. Landlords provided sharecroppers with land, a cabin, farm tools, and cotton seed; in return, [...]
A Black Family Leaves Their Home After the 1919 Chicago Race Riot
In July 1919, Chicago suffered a terrible race riot. An African-American teenager swimming in Lake Michigan floated into a "white" area and drowned after being stoned by a white crowd. Violence spread rapidly. Black Chicagoans, including World War [...]
"Boys Hopping Freight"
During the Great Depression an estimated 250,000 youths left home to search for work, to ease the burden on their families, to escape an abusive home life, or to find adventure. Opportunities for work were rare and never long-term, and most young [...]
Unemployed Single Women Demonstrate for Jobs
As millions of men lost their jobs during the Great Depression, many began to argue that women (particularly married women) should not be occupying the scarce jobs that remained. When women could find jobs, employers routinely paid them less than [...]
CCC Boys Serve a Meal in California
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was established in 1933 and provided temporary work for three million young men, who lived in military-style camps, constructed recreation facilities, and carried out conservation projects under the direction of [...]
African-American CCCers Practice Radio Communications
In this 1933 photograph, young men study radio operations at a Civilian Conservation Corps camp for African-American men in Kane, Pennsylvania. After work hours, enrollees were encouraged to take educational and vocational classes that might help [...]
"Boys At Work, Prince George's County, Maryland"
This photograph is part of a series of iconic images of the Civilian Conservation Corps taken at an "experimental farm" in Beltsville, Maryland. The photographer, Carl Mydans (1907-2004), worked for the Farm Security Administration and, in 1936, [...]