Eleven-year-old Margo fulfills a class assignment by writing a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt asking for help to save her family's home during the Great Depression.

During the Great Depression, Marshall, an African American boy, uses lessons learned in arithmetic class and guidance from his mother to figure out how many beans are in a jar in order to win her a new sewing machine in a contest.

Through photographs, illustrations, and both factual and fictionalized anecdotes, shows what life was like in the United States during the Depression.

Our daily bread (King Vidor 1934) is a depression-era drama in which a young couple leads a group of unemployed people in making a communal farm succeed. Includes a prologue to the movie by King Vidor. The fake newsreels "California Election News #1 and #2 (1934), were secretly produced by MGM as "dirty tricks" in the film industry's political war against Upton Sinclair. The River (Pare Lorentz 1937) dramatizes the stripping of the Mississipi River...

"Beatrice Carraway has dreams. Although she's aged out of the childhood pageant circuit, she's intent on carrying her talents all the way to the big screen--if only she can escape the poverty of West Dallas first. But as the Great Depression drags the working class further and further under, Beatrice struggles just to keep herself, her mother, and her younger sister afloat. After a string of failed auditions, she feels defeated.And then in walks Jack...

"The Great Depression is raging across America and even the Vandermeers have fallen on hard times. In an attempt to stay afloat, Kay and her parents have started living in the guest cottage and getting Vandermeer Manor ready for renters. Money starts coming in when a mysterious man purchases some family heirlooms, but questions are raised when it comes to light that the wealthy benefactor has knowingly paid more money for the heirlooms than they are...

The story of the Joad family and their migration to California from their dust-bowl farm in Oklahoma during the Depression.

Presents an overview of the Great Depression through the words and writings of the time: more than twenty-five excerpts from speeches, poems, fiction and non-fiction works.