sharecropper families of the 1930s

Here are photographs of sharecropper families in the Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection in the Prints and Photos Division of the Library of Congress. The captions are by LC staff using information on the photos. Click images to view full size. This set includes images by Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Carl Mydans, and Russell Lee. I'm going to do separate posts on the photos of Walker Evans.

Dorothea Lange

July 1939                

{Zollie Lyon, Negro sharecropper, home from the field for dinner at noontime, with his wife and part of his family. Note dog run. Wake County, North Carolina}

{Tobacco sharecroppers and family at back of their house. Person County, North Carolina}

July 1937                

{Sharecropper family near Hazlehurst, Georgia}

{Cotton sharecropper family. Macon County, Georgia}

{Landless family of cotton sharecroppers, Macon County, Georgia. For their labor they receive half the crop they produce, and the equivalent of ten dollars a month "furnish" (credit) from the landlord. Their vegetable garden failed this year for lack of rain}

{Sharecropper family near Chesnee, South Carolina}

{Cotton sharecropper family. Macon County, Georgia}

{Part of a family of ten children who live and farm in the area which was flooded in the spring of 1937. They escaped in a boat}

June 1937                

{Cotton sharecropper family near Cleveland, Mississippi}

{Cotton sharecropper family near Cleveland, Mississippi}

Ben Shahn

Oct. 1935                

{Boone County, Arkansas. The family of a Resettlement Administration client in the doorway of their home}

{Family of rehabilitation client, Boone County, Arkansas}

{Family of rehabilitation client, Boone County, Arkansas}

{Family of Negro sharecropper, Little Rock, Arkansas}

Carl Mydans

June 1936                

{"Griffin children" of west Alabama land use demonstration project near Greensboro, Alabama. They are all third or fourth generation resulting from, it is believed, a white woman and a Negro. They are mostly white and refused to be placed with the Negroes, but the whites will not have them.}

Russell Lee

May 1938                

{Family of FSA (Farm Security Administration) client, former sharecropper, on porch of old shack home. New Madrid County, Missouri}

{Family of sharecropper on front porch, Southeast Missouri Farms}

June 1939

{Negro tenant farmer and his family on front porch of their home in Wagoner County, Oklahoma}

{Part of family of tenant farmer. Hill section, McIntosh County, Oklahoma}

July 1939

{Family of tenant farmer at noonday meal near Muskogee, Oklahoma. His wife is shooing away flies with branch. See general caption number 20}