What's New: Library Unveils 100 Hours of Digitized Conversation About the Great Depression

In March of 1992, many years after photographer Dorothea Lange's 1936 image of a migrant mother in California became one of the most iconic images from the Great Depression, a camera crew sat down with two daughters of the subject of Lange's photo. "We're talking to Norma Rydlewski and Katherine McIntosh about their mother and their experiences," the interviewer explained. "I guess what I'd like to get first of all is [a] sense of what kind of woman your mother was. What does it take to live through that?" Among the scores of interviewees whose reflections on the Great Depression comprise a newly accessible WU Libraries resource are two daughters of Florence Owens Thompson, the subject of Dorothea Lange's iconic photograph. For about 40 minutes, Rydlewski and McIntosh shared their stories with Blackside, Inc., a film company founded by 1961 Washington University graduate Henry Hampton. In the footage and transcript of that conversation, now accessible for the first time along with many more such interviews through WU Libraries, the family%u2019s daily challenges come to life. The sisters describe not only their strong, beautiful mother but everything from field work and playing with dirt clods as children to early union meetings and the economical "saving grace" that was World War II.