We Made Do: Recalling the Great Depression
http://www.mcsc.k12.in.us/
mhs/social/madedo/
Description: This is an oral history project on the Great Depression by students at Mooresville High School in Indiana. These recollections by Americans who lived through the ear are a wonderful example of students as historians. 
Resource Type: Primary Source Text
Graphics Content: Low
 

FDR Cartoon Collection Database
http://www.wizvax.net/nisk_hs/
departments/social/fdr_html/
FDRmain.html
Description: This shows what high school students can do with the Internet - with humor and style. An excellent visual chronicle of FDR's political career.
Comments: Cartoons are over-sized and present some problems in viewing.
Resource Type: Mix of Text and Graphics
Graphics Content: High
 

Folk Music From Northern California in the 1930s
http://lcweb2.loc.gov
/ammem/afccchtml/
cowhome.html
Description: This site provides a unique window on the Great Depression through a collection of recorded folk music from the 1930s featuring both well known and little known performers. 
Comments: This is part of the American Memory Collection of the Library of Congress.
Resource Type: Sound or Music
Graphics Content: Low
 

Great Depression Photos
http://www.lycos.com/
cgi-bin/pursuit?cat=
graphics&query=great
+depression&FIELDS=
Symbol&x=39&y=8
Description: This site is a work in progress containing a growing number of primary source photographs about the Depression from family albums.
Comments: A wonderful site for those wishing to learn how Depression times "looked".
Resource Type: Photos or Pictures
Graphics Content: High
 

New Deal Network
http://newdeal.feri.org/
index.htm
Description: The New Deal Network includes a database of photographs, political cartoons, and texts (speeches, letters, and other historic documents) from the New Deal period. Every few months new features are added. These include lessons and student projects.
Resource Type: Mix of Text and Graphics
Graphics Content: High
 

Prices Now and Then
http://www.sos.state.mi.
us/history/museum/
kidstuff/depressn/
costlist.html
Description: Compare the cost of toys and clothes with wages during the Great Depression and today.
Resource Type: Other
Graphics Content: Low
 

All Aboard the Silver Streak
http://www.msichicago.org/
exhibit/zephyr/index.html
Description: The 1930s were a difficult time for the passenger rail industry. People who traveled around the country preferred the comfort, freedom, and novelty of the automobile. Rail industry income from transporting freight also decreased because of the Great Depression. In order to revive passenger rail travel, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy (CB&Q) Railroad decided to make a new train from the inside out. The result was the Burlington Zephyr, renamed the Pioneer Zephyr in 1936. Its diesel-electric power plant, streamlined design, and lightweight stainless steel made it fast, sleek, and efficient. Explore the Zephyr inside and out at this Museum of Science and Industry site.
Comments: The influence of the designs of the Silver Streak provide insight into popular culture.
Resource Type: Mix of Text and Graphics
Graphics Content: High
 

America From the Great Depression and World War II
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/
ammem/fsowhome.html
Description: This Library of Congress site has photographs from the Office of War Information and Farm Security Administration about life in the U.S. from 1938 to 1944.
Comments: Excellent source for creating newspaper projects from World War II.
Resource Type: Photos or Pictures
Graphics Content: High

Dear Mrs. Roosevelt
http://newdeal.feri.org/
classrm/classdmr.htm
Learn about what the Great Depression meant to children by reading their letters to Mrs. Roosevelt asking for help for their families and themselves.
Author: Rachael Yarnell Thompson
 

Great Depression: Primary Sources Lesson
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/
CalHeritage/k12/
depression_lesson.
htm#intro
Using primary source photos from collections at the Bancroft Library, students reconstruct what life was life for the "Okies and Arkies" who migrated to California in the 1930's. Learn primary source analysis techniques in the process. The teacher will need to help fourth students with this lesson but the pictures make the content accessible to them.
Author: C. Chin
 

Herbert Hoover: Iowa Farm Boy and Humanitarian
http://www.cr.nps.gov/
nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/
34hoover/34hoover.htm
Herbert Hoover's handling of the public relief following the economic collapse in 1929 was challenged by his critics. However, his skill and compassion in helping to feed the starving children in Europe during World War I earned him the honorary title "Great Humanitarian." When America entered the war, he returned home to make sure that both civilians and soldiers in the U.S. had enough to eat. Why were those experiences so different?
Author: Pat Wheeler 
 

Political Cartoons and the TVA
http://newdeal.feri.org/
classrm/clastva2.htm
Political cartoons have been popular since Ben Franklin published "Join or Die" prior to the American Revolution. Part of what makes this medium so appealing is that it demands reader participation. You must put visual and verbal clues together in order to "get it." Here is your chance to try. 
Author: Stanlee Bimberg
 

Relief ! 
http://www.archives.state.al.us/
teacher/dep/dep4/dep.html
After the New Deal programs began to be implemented in 1933, relief in the form of help to supply basic necessities began to flow down to the states from the federal government. Relief committees were set up on the county level to purchase and distribute food to the needy. Following the principle of offering "a hand up, not a hand out," government programs of relief concentrated on supplying only essential foods to the truly destitute. What supplies would you have ordered?
Author: Alabama State Archives
 

Rondal Partridge: Photographer of the Great Depression
http://newdeal.feri.org/
classrm/partrid.htm
Examine and interpret photgraphs taken by Depression Era photographer Rondal Partridge. See for yourself how the Great Depression affected people's lives.
 

Roosevelt and the Supreme Court: Constitutional Issues 
http://www.nara.gov/
education/teaching/
conissues/separat.html
This activity asks students to examine documents from the National Archives relating to Franklin Roosevelt's attempt to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court. Students analyze the main ideas of the documents and determine the constitutional issues which made the president's action controversial. 
Author: Digital Classroom - National Archives
 

Spelling "Help" in a New Way
http://www.archives.state.al.us/
teacher/dep/dep6/dep.html
The New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt created a host of new federal agencies popularly known as "alphabet" agencies because they were referred to by their initials. Charged with a variety of tasks intended to offer economic relief, recovery, and reform, a handful of these agencies were created to put people to work on public projects. Young people were especially targeted in an effort to provide employment and job training while improving American communities. Analyze the purpose and results of these programs through primary doucments and news articles. Did the New Deal work?
Author: Alabama State Archives
 

TVA: A Construction Controversy
http://newdeal.feri.org/
classrm/clastva2.htm
The controversy surrounding the Tennessee Valley Authority was profound and complicated. It raised constitutional, economic, social, philosophical and ethical issues. Once students become familiar with the facts and the issues by reading and studying the material in the collection and other material you provide, they will be in an excellent position to debate these issues. 
Author: Stanlee Bimberg
 

The New Deal: North Carolina's Reconstruction?
http://www2.ncsu.edu/
ncsu/cep/ligon/am/
ncdepr~1.htm
You are a representative of the WPA and your assignment is to write a report on a North Carolina resident who lived during both the Reconstruction and Depression eras. Using the American Life Histories, 1936-1940 from the American Memory Collection and additional print and electronic sources, you "interview" one of these older Americans to create a historically accurate, sensory rich illustration of what it was like to be an American in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 
Author: Jackie Brooks and Deborah Pendleton
 

Tuskegee Tragedy
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/
wired/BHM/tuskegee_
quest.html 
Imagine that you're a poor person living during the hard economic times of the Great Depression. Your government offers you free medical care. Sounds good. But what if the real reason you're approached is because you have a disease. But instead of giving you medical care, the doctors are really just watching what happens when this disease goes untreated. Suppose a miracle then happens and a treatment is found for your disease. Instead of giving you the new medicine, the doctors continue the experiment of watching the disease go untreated. Years pass, some of your friends who were also in the study die, some pass the disease to their wives and children. Compare this real event with other issues of government control such as concentration camp experiments, abortion and gun control. 
Author: Tom March
 

Understanding the TVA Documents
http://newdeal.feri.org/
classrm/clastva3.htm
This activity takes you through 10 key doucments related to the building of the Tennessee Valley Authority. These guided reading activities help you zero in on the controversies surrounding the positions of each writer.
 

Unhappy Returns of Social Security
http://www.fee.org/education/
lessons/9902/dolan.html
The Social Security Act was the centerpiece of the New Deal social programs. Yet, when the first monthly benefit checks were mailed in 1940, few could have predicted its growth from just over 200,000 beneficiaries to a roll of over 43 millionÑabout one beneficiary for every 3.4 workers in the economy. The concept behind Social Security was not only to mandate retirement saving throughout the life of the worker, but to pay a guaranteed income in retirementÑnot from returns on capital investments, but from the pockets of the younger workers. 
Author: Harry Dolan
 

Using Oral History - Great Depression in the U.S.
http://memory.loc.gov/
ammem/ndlpedu/
lessons/oralhist/
ohhome.html
Using excerpts from the from the American Memory Collection of the Library of Congress 1936-1940, study social history topics through interviews that recount the lives of ordinary Americans. Based on these excerpts and further research in the collections, develop your own research questions. Then, plan and conduct oral history interviews with members of your communities. 
Author: American Memory

Students are able to describe the monetary issues of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that gave rise to the establishment of the Federal Reserve and the weaknesses in key sectors of the economy in the late 1920s.

They understand the explanations of the principal causes of the Great Depression and the steps taken by the Federal Reserve, Congress, and Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt to combat the economic crisis.

They are able to effectively discuss discuss the human toll of the Depression, natural disasters, and unwise agricultural practices and their effects on the depopulation of rural regions and on political
movements of the left and right, with particular attention to the Dust Bowl refugees and their social and economic impacts in California.

They understand the effects of and the controversies arising from New Deal economic policies and the expanded role of the federal government in society and the economy since the1930s (e.g., Works Progress Administration, Social Security, National Labor Relations Board, farm programs, regional development policies, and energy development projects such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, California Central
Valley Project, and Bonneville Dam).

They are able to trace the advances and retreats of organized labor, from the creation of the American
Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations to current issues of a postindustrial, multinational economy, including the United Farm Workers in California.