Between 1935 and 1944, the Farm Security Administration (FSA) spurred a unique documentary project. The government outfit, organized as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, provided aid to rural families during the Great Depression. The global economic crisis spanned 1929 to 1939 and was compounded in North America by the Dust Bowl, a severe drought exacerbated by poor agricultural practices and strong winds. Many farmers and their families were forced to migrate as, in some cases, their livelihoods essentially blew away.

Roy E. Striker, head of the Information Division of the FSA, had the foresight to hire a group of renowned photographers to chronicle the realities of the living conditions in rural parts of the U.S. Throughout its 9-year run, the FSA tapped the likes of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, Jack Delano, Marion Post Wolcott, Gordon Parks, John Vachon, and Carl Mydans, among other luminaries.

Initially, the project focused on documenting cash loans made to individual farmers as a visual record of the good money could do, along with suburban development initiatives. The second phase took a more ambitious approach by dispatching photographers to the rural South to focus on the lived experiences of sharecroppers, along with migratory laborers in the West and Midwest. Later, the project expanded to include rural and urban documentation and World War II.

Arguably, the most iconic image captured by a FSA photographer during this time is Dorothea Lange’s 1936 portrait, often referred to as “Migrant Mother,” which depicts a destitute pea-picking family in California. But the images that Stryker chose to eventually publish, selected from tens of thousands of negatives overall, focus on a relatively narrow view of life during this time, presenting the period as a predominantly white struggle.

For Art Bridges Foundation curatorial associate Tamir Williams, Ph.D., this omission presents a unique opportunity to highlight “how Black Southerners created spaces of resilience, refuge, and identity amid widespread economic hardship and systemic oppression.” Stunning black-and-white images transport us back to an era almost beyond imagining—if it weren’t for the extraordinary record of daily life captured through the eyes of Rothstein, Evans, Lee, and more.

In a collaboration between Art Bridges and Museum of Art + Light, a new exhibition titled Crafting Sanctuaries: Black Spaces of the Black Great Depression South revolves around more than three dozen rarely seen images from the FSA archive that shed light on Black spaces during the Great Depression. Photos of homes, churches, schools, and barbershops demonstrate how “interior and public gathering spaces became canvases for self-determination and cultural preservation.”