Farm Security Administration Photographs of Florida

Like the rest of the South, rural Florida was desperately poor during the depression. Per capita income in the state dropped from $510 in 1929 to $298 in 1933, and 157 banks permanently closed their doors between 1928 and 1940. Many of the FSA photographs illustrate how poor men, women, and children lived, worked, and survived during hard times. Balancing images of the impoverished are those of ordinary tourists, of the middle-class residents of small towns and villages, and of the well-to-do in cities along the southeastern coast. Together with photographs depicting soil erosion, the misuse of farmlands in northern counties, and the decline of the fishing, wood pulp, and timber industries, the Florida FSA collection offers a brilliant composite portrait of the sunshine state in the grip of the Great Depression.