During the Great Depression and World War II, the United States Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information hired photographers to document American life. The documentarians, working between 1935 and 1944, captured 170,000 pictures. This included many in Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
It is described as one of the most famous documentary photography collections of the twentieth century, “creating visual evidence of government initiatives alongside scenes of everyday life during the Great Depression and World War II across the United States.”
Once the program ended, The Library of Congress became the custodian of this work. They were placed in public file cabinets where researchers could browse the prints, searching for visual clues of earlier times. In March 2011, Yale University received a grant to create an interactive web-based open soured visualization platform for these images. The free online platform, Photogrammar, allows a rapid search of the large photographic data set. Easy to use, it includes an interactive map, which facilitates locating images of interest.
If you are interested in the images of the photographers who documented America during the Great Depression and World War II check out this free resource https://photogrammar.org/maps
“Dorchester County, Maryland. The congregation of this church are all waterman.” Jack Collier, Feb. 1942. U.S. Farm AdministrationDORCHESTER COUNTY — “Dorchester County, Maryland. Home of an Eastern shore waterman.” Jack Collier, Feb. 1942. The U.S. Farm Administration
I am investigating the nature of work for African Americans in the public sector during the Jim Crow Era, specifically in healthcare, local government, and public safety. Drawing on archival research, interviews with local experts, and oral histories with tradition-bearers and pioneers who broke barriers, this research examines the opportunities, obstacles, and challenges for Black Americans before the passage of modern Civil Rights legislation.
Atlantic City is one place I have included in the study. There a large, vibrant Black community contributed to the growth, development, and culture of the resort. As a result, the city had more public-sector employment opportunities. But it was far from equitable as Black people struggled to break through the barriers of discrimination and segregation. This complicated history is a perspective I am working to understand as I contextualize the opportunities in the public sector as Jim Crow lost its hold over the country.
As Black Americans held a variety of government and nonprofit positions along the Jersey Shore, this has led me to ask about the first police officers, firefighters, nurses, and doctors. Noting those who went first is crucial to understanding the forces at work. The published literature, especially the Northside by Nelson Johnson, is of immense help in understanding the healthcare professions and firefighters.
However, law enforcement needs more research as this part of the history of policing is largely unexplored. When did the first Black officer receive his appointment? What was his life story? After he broke the color line, what struggles did he face? These are some of the questions under consideration as I research the first cohort of early pioneers in police work.
Members of what is believed to be the Atlantic City Police Department pose for a photographer, probably around the turn of the twentieth century. There are two African American policemen in the image. (Source: Bob Ruffolo)
The Atlantic City Daily Press published this photo of “Chief Harry C. Eldrige, who died on May 4, 1906. (Atlantic City Daily Press, May 5, 1906)
This line of inquiry led me to Princeton Antiques Book Service in Atlantic City. The proprietor, Bob Ruffolo, was of immense help. He has an expansive collection of 20,000 local images and a vast knowledge of the past along the Jersey Shore. In the collection, he had this photograph of police officers, which he thought was from Atlantic City around the turn-of-the-twentieth-century. Standing in the uniformed ranks are two Black police officers.
I am still working on comparing this picture with other images from the force around that time, but only a few surviving images exist. So I will keep at this. However, in the old microfilm reels at the Atlantic City Library, I located an image of Chief Harry C. Eldridge. He passed away in 1906. There appears to be some likeness to the chief in the group photo.
Finally, the Atlantic City Free Public Library (ACFPL) identified the first Black female police officer. In 1924, Margaret “Maggie Creswell became a seasonal officer and in 1927 she became a permanent member of the force. According to the library, she was the first female officer in the city and the state. Office Creswell retired in 1964.
After Google launched an ambitious project in 2008 to digitize many local newspapers, the giant e-content provider scanned about 2,000 publications, including a Wilmington newspaper, the Sunday Morning Star.
The whole wide world in your home. Delaware’s only Sunday Newspaper.
In the era when many dailies didn’t have Sunday editions, these periodicals functioned like newsweeklies, the broadsheet having a form distinct from the weekday news. They pulled together features and more in-depth, colorful pieces as reporters worked seven days to assemble stories for the Saturday afternoon deadline. It was this sought-after, far more leisurely reading on peaceful Sundays that made these publications unique.
Delaware’s only Sunday newspaper was first issued in 1881 by Jerome B. Bell. The second editor and publisher was Joseph H. Martin, who sold it to J. Edwin Carter in 1946. An agent for Alexis I. du Pont Bayard and Erwin M. Budner purchased the paper in 1949, and they became the controlling interest.
The broadsheets contained robust women’s sections, news in photographs (once technology advanced), advice for modern living, entertainment coverage, history pieces, and “The Delaware Magazine,” a weekly insert.
The last number of the 73-year-old paper rumbled off the press on April 18, 1954. It had revised its name and added new typefaces almost two years earlier to serve readers and advertisers better. But “The Star that had been such an important feature of Delaware Life since 1881 was out,” Morning News Columnist Bill Frank wrote. It is tough “to run a Sunday newspaper in Wilmington against the competition from out-of-town Sunday papers and their abundance of pages of comics.”
The Star – A Valuable Research Source
Bill Frank called the Wilmington Sunday Star a “fighting newspaper.” Often overlooked, it is a valuable source for genealogists and local history researchers. The coverage and perspective differ from what was covered in the city’s dailies.
Here are the links to the Sunday Morning Star on the Google archives, which provides free access.
I recently had the opportunity to examine the subject of temperance and prohibition from a New England perspective. While framing this within a national context for the Nashua Public Library, the lecture considered the centuries-long attempt to control and regulate the consumption of alcohol in a regional context. This took in stories of rumrunners landing Canadian whiskey on isolated beaches, moonshiners, bathtub gin, intriguing personalities, complicated New England politics, organized crime, outgunned lawmen, and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. There is a growing interest in this period, and I was pleased to do the prohibition talk while discussing these matters from the New England perspective.
House Adopts Prohibition Amendment, New York Tribue, June 18, 1917
