so it was a time of major change. i hope that people will find out the color photographs are just part of a larger view of the country at that time. i hope they will go to our website. there they can see the 14 million pictures, references, discussions of the pictures that are digitized images. online, and weon have discussions of the others. so, many of those are in the public domain at a high enough resolution they can be downloaded and used for reproduction in books. is the first of a two-part look at the farm security administration and office of war information color photographs. during the great depression and

world war ii, photographers working for the u.s. government were signed to travel the united states and document living and working conditions and later war protection -- production efforts. in 1939, the photographers began using kodachrome color film. in this second of a two part american artifacts, beverly brannan tells the stories about the collection and photographers. beverly: we are in the center andt of the prints photographs division of the library of congress. the library has a collection of color photographs from the 1930's and 1940's. they started as an experiment with color film. kodak was just putting its color film in the market. sent it out to photographers at institutions to give it a try, to see if they could create a market for it. the pictures were free. so they were appealing to newspapers, magazines, publishing agencies, book

publishers. i was familiar already with the black and white photographs. farm are about 171,000 security administration and office of war information black-and-white photographs. and i had been working with those for a few years. there was not much emphasis placed on the color transparencies, because they were hard to handle. they were unique items. only one of each. at the time, in the 1970's, it was really difficult to make a copy. it was very expensive to make a photograph. you had to make another print from the color transparency. people did not want to pay that extra money. shelfese just sat on a for a long time. and then sally stein, who's a photo historian, began doing a project about color film.

wantede to the library, to see these color transparencies. i was one of the people who helped serve her. at the time, the library did not have a way of making duplicates that was affordable for researchers. so, she brought a photographer with her to help make copies on a set up in our division. and i became intrigued. began looking at them more and more. but initially i thought, these are interloper pictures. they don't really belong. it took a while for me to realize they did the long, that there are pictures made of a same outing, that photographers would carry a 35mm camera, they lex, and they rolofelx would carry cameras loaded with color film, not just black and white. that they would use these

interchangeably. in some instances there are black and white pictures that are new duplicates of the color pictures you find online now in 1940's set.and one of my favorite topics is stores. stores serve as community gathering places. they are equalizers. everybody has to go to the store at some point. during the 1930's and 1940's, they were usually mom and pop st ores, where the same owner, the same clerks were there year in, year out. people came, got what they needed to buy, and usually had a chat about the neighborhood, the products they were buying. and some people would just hang out in stores before after work, just up by for a community orientation. so, i like that aspect of them. i also like the fact that many

of them are quite colorful. the stores are painted bright colors maybe to attract customers, to stand out on a block of otherwise brick or concrete buildings. these were bright places that would attract attention. before so many things got electronic, one of the functions of the newspaper office was to inform people on the street of the latest headlines before the newspaper got printed. they would make hand lettered signs about the latest events. this picture shows exactly that -- people standing outside the stores, the newspaper office, reading headlines. was a place where people could congregate and comment on the news served a function similar

to stores in a way that citizens would begin talking to each other. no obligation to maintain a relationship, but you could express your opinion and move on. john vachon, he made pictures of andes, particularly in ohio lincoln, nebraska. linconln, nebraska where -- was where he got his feet under him. before that, he had been trying to copy the styles of different photographers. he really liked walker evans, one of the more artistic of these documentarians. when he got out to the nebraska, he found himself thinking. how would walker evans take this picture? and then how would i take this picture? and that is when he made this transition from trying to remember all the instructions

other people had given him to just listening to his own mind, make the pictures like he wanted to make them, and continued to do that for the rest of his life. he stayed in photography to his dying day. john vachon went to texas to photograph ways that the american workers were making the transition to war materiel as a basis for the economy. this shows the many workers at a factory. previously, factories had been shut down. there were no jobs. see many people working. and you see it is a mixed race group of people working there, which probably would not have happened before. there were such a need for everybody to be put to work. as the the united states got

closer and closer to war involvement in world war ii, then -- the funding for farm programs diminished. for defenseing programs increased. we needed documentation for the need for war and to show how the money was being spent to get us into the war in helping our european allies. the people in charge of the program shifted from agriculturalists to advertising people by and large. so, the pictures look different. delano was one of the more prolific of the office of war information photographers. he came just at the end of the fsa, beginning of the office of war. funding for the agency.

he had been trained as a paint er. he was a very good photographer. he was a people person. he could go into almost any situation and people would begin telling him about their most secret thoughts. their deepest desires. and he would photograph them quite comfortably, and they wo uld all go away happier for the occasion. so, he also like stores. saw them as community centers, photographed them in ways that are like works of art. he had an internship in euyr rope, when too many museums, to many art galleries and had a quite well-trained eye and was able to photograph in a style that was extremely polished and

yet, because of his proletarian background, he was making pictures of common, ordinary people. his parents were intellectuals in lithuania before they came to america when he was about 12. he didn't remember much about his early childhood, but he, they settled in the philadelphia area. his father had been a professor, but he could not speaking wish. so, he had to work in the furniture store. his mother had been a dentist but was not able to practice. they lived a very simple lifestyle. they lived in an area with lots of coal miners. jack became very sympathetic to madefe of coal miners, and pictures of people who worked

with their hands. and related well to common citizens in the united states. very little-known that the farm security administration had offices in puerto rico and st. croix. puerto rico had been a u.s. 898 when ite since 198 went from spanish ownership to the united states. business peoplhad gone there rum,eveloped industries, tobacco various other kinds of projects, but the people themselves were not well-care for. -- cared for. their was a hurricane in the 1920's that destroyed much of the crop land. in the 1930's, people were starving to death. to united states went

teach them better farming techniques, to build housing that would not blow away with the hurricane, because they were livingi in huts made out of poles and sugarcane. it was a very rough life. in fact, it was an enormously high infant mortality rate. there was no milk for the children. they were taking coffee instead of milk, waste is not have good nutritional value. for young children trying to build bodies. kind of was this extreme poverty he wanted to address. jack is the only one who got down there and made these photographs in part because, while he was there, pearl harbor occurred and the united states entered world war ii. and he couldn't stay as long

because he had to get back to sign up to go into the military. so, he did some work and send corey. -- in st. croix. but while he was there, he fell in love with the culture, decided after the war, he was going back and that is exactly what happened. he went back and lives out the rest of his life in puerto rico where he worked initially for these government kinds of projects. and then he became the head of public television in puerto rico, working for the puerto rican government. i went down to visit him a few years before his death. when we went out to dinner, it was like going out with a movie star. people would come from across the street to shake his hand, thank him for making pictures of their relatives, their families. in he walived a full life puerto rico, working always for

the common people in puerto rico. he made pictures that i think are just works of art. jack delano's favote painters. he kept this picture over his bed. that he just loved showing people at work. he thought that the dignity of work was one of the most important things in life. the picture here shows a woman overing both -- stooping her garden to tend it. the colors are just luminous. you cannot see the woman's face, jack has made this picture, you get the idea that this woman works very hard, that she tends things carefully, and beauty.ye for many of us have romance with the

railroads. i think this is one of the more beautiful pictures of a train engine. washed.ing carefully you can see water streaming down from above. somebody is washing it with a brush. light on the train shows jack delano's ability to make art out of everything he saw. elano made probably most of the railroad photographs in the farm security administration collection. he was center to document american transportation as part of preparation for world war ii. he started off in chicago and took the train out west. did a big loop through arizona,a, new mexico, back up to chicago again. he got along very well with the people working on the railroad.

they let him ride in the engine, document their lives. he went home for dinner with some of them. photographed them at home with their families. railroad man.f a he photograph people using lanterns in the rail yards. that is how theyommunicated in the days before walkie-talkies or electronics. they used these lights, like a morse code. the movement of the light had a certain meaning in the captions online usually indicate what is being communicated with those light patterns. jack traveled most of the time by himself doing those pictures, but occasionally, his wife would join him. he said they would go to a hotel at night and makeup songs about the trips they had just made on the train. and he would play the harmonica,

she would sing. and they entertained themselves while they were traveling on the roads that way. part of what he did was to photograph women at work. he was very sympathetic to women workers. his mother supported the family by running a black market dentistry office in their home. his father was never able to adapt to u.s. life very well. could hardly sell furniture at the store. so, his mother was the one who made the money they lived on. he was very sympathetic to other women working. he made beautiful portraits of women. so, it was a natural that he would go into the railyards and photograph the women network. one of this better-known picturs is of women having lunch at one of these railyards. they look there he differed from

the women who were photographed by the office of war information. the women in jack's pictures are not wear lipstick. they have their hair doneup in rags. to keep dust, dirt out of their hair. they are dressed very simply, they have on simple, sensible shoes. they are wearing overalls. they are having their sandwiches from wax paper. they've foled around -- they have folded around the sandwiches. it was just the way you would expect people in rough and tumble jobs to be looking. not dramatically lit. just straight on pictures. the women were taking over men's jobs because so many men had been sent to the front or they were working in military situations on the home front. opened up her

women who had been excluded from the previously. there was a lot of sentiment that women were not physically fit to do factor works, that they were just mentally not able to grasp what was involved, that they should be home taking care of men. and then when push came to shove, they had to go out. somebody had to do this work. and most of them acquitted themselves very well. but when the war was over, they were forced back into the home or secretarial jobs are things that had traditionally been lower paying jobs for women. this woman is painting the emblem on an airplane that is going to be used in the war. she looks like a fashion model. she has on mascara and lipstick

and nail polish. she isn't warinearing gloves. by the end of the day, she's probably going to look very grubby. but this is opposed post photograph, beautifully lit and composed. it was made by alfred palmer. alfred palmer trained as an advertising photographer. he used lots of light, wanted his product to look good. he wanted people to buy whatever it was he was photographing. his type of photography became very popular when the united states began gearing up to enter world war ii. we wanted to look strong and forcefulhen we met the axis powers. ker'sradually, roy stri style of documentation of looking natural was phased out and alfred palmer became the

leading voice for the office of war information. his pictures would make people believe what they saw. art in just works of their own right, but you have to wonder sometimes about how much manipulation went into them. this is not a very realistic way for people to go about dirty work. this is the photograph by alfred palmer. the woman is working on wires, tell usents on flickr she is not really working on wires. a posed photograph. you suspect that because she is so beautifully groomed. she has on a very stylish dress. she does have on work gloves, which not all the women working in the situations, wore but that may be the concession to the

fact that she is supposed to be working. it was a very different some rosiesed for the riveter type pictures then there was for other. rosie the riveter was a phenomenon surrounding world war ii when women went to take over jobs previously done by men. of there was a lot animosity toward women coming into the workplace. the government launched a publicity campaign to show that women could do these jobs. they were capable of doing them and doing that with a smile. so, that's what the rosie the riveter term suggests. a lot of workdid in hollywood before he came to work for the office of war information. the dramatic in lighting and a lot of his pictures. this one very dramatic looking.

the man looks as though he is going off to do something very, very serious. dark sectionthis behind him that looks like it is propelling him into the light. he does look look like he probably performs these functions on a regular basis. i don't know what he is doing, where he is going, but he certainly looks like the kind of person you would want to to accomplish a mission for you. some of alfred palmer's pictures are so staged-looking that it stretches the imagination that this man would be out working sky, this dramatic looking working with the drill andbit. but he probably is a worker. oilclothes are soiled with and dirt, whatever.

he's very muscular looking for he looks at home in his hardhat. yet he is wearing, a ring. i don't know. construction workers wear rings. perhaps he is a hollywood actor standing in, but he certain he looks the part of someone who , who scare off the enemy would be showing the united states was not just the weak and beenoor who had photographed by the earlier phase of the farm security administration, that we were not a people who could be easily brought to ground by the italians, germans and japanese. that we would put up a good fight. new yorker. a when she joined war information, she said she did not want to be

caught up in dng propaganda. she wanted to document life as it was in america. but she went into this camouflage area. they were creating camouflage maps for defense purposes. they were studying ways of interpreting aerial photographs. so she and of doing a ver-- end of whating a good job she said she did not want to do. but it was helpful for us to have these kinds of pictures. it was a little surprisingo see the man there with his pipe standing over the work. and it's a little surprising to see a woman working with them in such close proximity, but there we have it in color. gradually, agencies other than roy striker's began providing photographs for newspapers,

magazines, film footage, the newsreels that were popular at the time. roy striker had kept very tight grasp on the operation as long as he was in charge of it. the photographers reported to agencies wanted pictures make it has photographers made the pictures, and he charged the other agencies per diem. this is one way he stayed in business. he was a wily bureaucrat. understood that those other places could pay for the travel and his photographers would then have to charges agency only for the days they made his pictures. diminishing in importance to this agency, he strategy was his

about to backfire on him, because the national archives had come into existence during the time he was working. the regulation was the governmentpictures, photographers pictures had to go to the national archives. and they had to go to the records of the agency that paid for them. so that meant he would no longer have his time capsule of all of under hises made aegis. they would be disbursed to whoever paid for travel money. it took the president to step in to say that they could be kept together, but he did have to -- have connections to get to the

president to get this waiver. a person was9446, hired to reorganize the collection. initially, it had been divided apparently it was a cumbersome system to locate photographs and get them back where they came from. the transition, they hired paul vanderbilt, who trained as a librarian. he microfilmed the collection by job. they sorted out the rpints -- p rints by photographer and by assignment, microfilmed them and dispersed them and filed them i reading room. it took a few years to make that transition.

there is consistency of wird yse use.word they have been in use in our reading room since 1946 or so. >> with the sudden death of president harding, vice president calvin coolidge takes office. grace coolidge was in a norm is the popular first lady and influence the taste of american women by becoming a style icon. although she married a man known spokeent cal, she never to the press that used her office to bring attention to issue she cared about. grace coolidge this sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's original series first ladies, influence and image, examining the public and private lives of

the women who filled the position of first lady and their influence on the presidency from martha washington to michelle obama. tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span 3. tonight on q&a, stanford luscombe professor deborah rody talks about her book "the trouble with lawyers," which takes acquittal look at -- a critical look at the legal education in the united states. >> i think we need a different model of legal education. we need that includes one-year programs for people doing routine work. two year programs as an option for people who want to do something specialized in the third year. full years for people who want the full general practice legal education that we now have. you know, it is crazy to train in the same way somebody who's doing routine divorces in a

small town and in the midwest and somebody doing mergers and acquisitions on wall street. debt level for a law student is $100,000.