period. it was a time of major change. i hope people will find out that the photographs are part of a larger view of the country at the time. on our website, they will see 14 million pictures of images, descriptions of images. we have descriptions online of the others. many are in the public domain at high enough resolution to be downloaded to be used for reproduction in books. >> this program is the first of t look at the farm security administration and color photographs.

depressionhe great and world war ii, the photographers were assigned to travel the united states and documents living and working conditions, and later war production efforts. in 1939, photographers began using color film. in this second part, the library of congress curator beverly brannan tells stories of the collection. ms. brannan: we are in the vault of the library of congress. the library has a collection of color photographs from the 1930's and 1940's. it started as an experiment with color film. kodak was just putting its color film on the market and send it out to photographers and 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, that kind of thing. familiar already with the black and white photographs. and i have been working with those for a few years. it was not much emphasis placed on the color transparencies because they were hard to handle. , as thereunique items was 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 didn't want to pay that extra money. so, these just sat on the shelves for a long time. stein, who is a photo historian, began doing a

project about color film. andcame to the library wanted to see these color transparencies. i was one of the people who helped serve her. at the time, the library didn't have a way of making duplicates that was affordable for researchers. so she brought a photographer with her to help make copies on a standard setup and hour division. and i became intrigued and 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 that they did the long, that there are pictures made on the same outing. the photographers would carry a 35mm camera, and they would carry several other cameras. and they would carry cameras loaded with color film, not just

black and white. in some instances, there are black-and-white pictures that are near duplicates of the color pictures you find online now in the 1930's and 1940's sets. one of my favorite topics is stores. stores served as community gathering places. they are equalizers. everybody has to go to the store at some point. during the time we are talking about, they were usually mom and pop type stores where the same owners, the same clerks were there year in, year out. people came, bought 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 or after work, just stop by for a little 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. and 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 that printed. they would make hand-lettered ands with the headlines brief phrases about the latest events. this picture shows exactly that. people standing outside the store, the newspaper office, reading the headlines, finding out what is going on. a place where people could congregate and comment on the news.

they served a function similar to stores and away. citizens were just began talking to each other, no obligation to maintain a relationship, but you could express her opinion and move on. he made pictures of stores, particularly in ohio and lincoln, nebraska. hecoln, nebraska was where served out his own feet under him. tryingthat, he had been to copy these styles of other photographers. he really liked evidence. nebraska,e got out to 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 the transition from trying to

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

as the united states got closer and closer to war, and involvement in world war ii, the funding for farm programs diminished. for defenseing programs increased. documentation for the need for war and to show how the money was being spent to get us into the war and helping our european allies. the people in charge of the programs shifted from agriculturalists to advertising people, by and large. so the pictures looked different. jack was one of the more office of ware information photographers. he came just at the end of the period, beginning of the

office of war funding for the agency. he had been trained as a painter. he was a very good photographer. he was a people person. he could go into almost any situation and people would be telling him about their most secret thoughts. their deepest desires. photographld focus -- them quite comfortably and they would all go away happier for the occasion. so he also liked stores, as i do. waysotographed them in that are like works of art. in europeinternship before world war ii. went to many museums, too many art galleries and had a great, 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. lithuaniactuals in before they came to america when he was about 12 years old. he didn't remember much about his early childhood, but they settled in the philadelphia area. ,is father had been a professor but he couldn't speak english, so he had to work in a furniture store for a relative. his mother had been a dentist, but was not able to practice here. so, they lived a very simple lifestyle. they lived in an area with lots of coal miners. jack became very sympathetic to life of coal miners and did quite a few projects making pictures of people who worked

with their hands. and related well to common citizens in the united states. was very little-known that the prime security administration had offices -- the farm security administration had offices in puerto rico and st. croix. put arrigo had been a u.s. when itrate since 1898, went from spanish ownership to the united states. businesspeople had gone there rum,developed industries -- tobacco, various other kinds of projects -- but the people themselves were not well cared for. there was a hurricane in the 1920's that destroyed much of the cropland, and in the 1930's, people were actually starving to death. the united states went to teach

them better farming techniques to build housing that wouldn't blow away with each hurricane because they were living in huts made out of sugarcane. it was a very rough life. in fact, there was an all muslim high infant mortality rate. there was no milk for the children. they were drinking coffee instead of milk. which does not have good nutritional value for young children trying to build bodies. and it was this kind of extreme poverty that he wanted to address. one who got only 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 as he had hoped because he had to get back to sign up to go into the military. so, he did some work in st. croix, he did some work in puerto rico, but while he was there, he fell in love with the culture. war he wasafter the going back, and that is exactly what happened. he went back and lived out the rest of his life in puerto rico, where he worked initially for these government kinds of ofjects, that he became head 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, thanked him for making pictures of their relatives, their families. and he lived a very full life in puerto rico, working always for

the common people in puerto rico. picturesoix, he made that i think are just works of art. jack's favorite painters. he kept the picture over his bed in his house 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 stooping over her garden to tend it. the colors i think are just luminous. you can't see the woman's face, but the way jack has made this picture, it does get the idea that this woman works very hard, that she tends thanks carefully, and has a nine -- eye for beauty. many of us have a romance with

the railroads. i think this is one of the more beautiful pictures of a train engine being carefully watched and cared for. you can see water streaming down from above. somebody is washing it with a brush, but the color combination, light on the train, shows jack's ability to make out art of everything -- make art out of everything he saw. jack made probably most of the road photographs in the prime security administration collection. he was sent 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 , newoop through california mexico, arizona, backup to chicago again. he got a long way 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, photograph them at home with their families. show the life of a railroad man. he photographed people using lanterns out in the railyards. that is how they communicated in the days before walkie-talkies or electronics. they used these lights that were sort of like a morse code. the movement of the light had a certain meaning and the captions online usually indicate what is being communicated with those light patterns. jack traveled most of the time by himself during this pictures, but occasionally his wife would join him. he said that they would go to a hotel at night and make up songs about the trip they had just

made on the train. and he would play the harmonica, she would sing, and they entertain themselves while they were traveling on the road. part of what he did was to photograph women at work. he was very sympathetic to women workers. familyher supported the by running a black market dentistry office in their home. his father was never able to adapt to uslife very well. -- u.s. life very well. so his mother was the one who made the money that 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 at work paid one of his better-known pictures is of women having lunch at one of these railyards.

they were very different from the women who were photographed by the office of war information. the all -- women in jack's pictures are not wearing lipstick. they have their hair done up in bandannas or bags to keep dust, dirt out of their hair. they are dressed very simply. they have on simple, sensible shoes. they're wearing overalls. sandwichesving their on wax paper. they folded around the sandwiches. -- they for it around the sandwiches -- they fold it around the sandwiches. it is just as you would expect rough-and-tumble people living. the women were taking over men's jobs because so many men had been sent to the front or they were working and military situations.

so, these jobs opened up for women who had been excluded previously paired there was a lot of sentiment that women were not physically fit to do factory work, 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 adjusted themselves very well. but when the war was over, they were forced back into the home rule -- role or things that had traditionally been lower paying jobs for women. painting the emblem on an airplane that is going to be used in the war. she looks like a fashion model. her hair is well kept. she has probably mascara and

lipstick and nail polish. she isn't wearing gloves to protect your hands from the paint. so by the end of the day, she is probably going to look pretty grubby, but this is a post photograph. it is beautifully lit, beautifully composed. it was made by palmer. palmer trained as an advertising photographer. he used lots of lights. he 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 forceful. gradually, roy stryker's style 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. they are just works of art in their own right. but you have to wonder sometimes about how much manipulation went into them. way is not a very realistic for people to go about dirty work. this is a photograph by alfred palmer appeared the woman is -- palmer. the woman is working on wires, but comments tell us that she is not really working on wires. that it is a post -- posed photograph. she has on a very stylus -- stylus -- stylish dress. that may be as a concession to the fact that c is supposed --

that she is supposed to be working. it is a very different aesthetic used for some type of pictures. rosie the riveter was a phenomenon surrounding world war ii when women went to take over jobs previously done by men. there wass a lot of -- a lot of animosity toward women coming into the work list. the government lost a publicity campaign to show that women could do these jobs, that they were capable of doing them entering them with a smile. so, that is what the rosie the riveter term suggests. palmer did a lot of work in hollywood before he came to work for the office of war information. this shows up in the dramatic lighting and a lot of his pictures. this one, very dramatic looking.

the man looks as if 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 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 accomplish a mission for you. 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 atrial and bit -- with a drill and bit, but he probably is a worker. his clothes are stained with oil

and dirt, whatever. he is very muscular looking. he looks at home in his hardhat. yet he is wearing a ring. i don't know. [laughter] i don't know if construction workers wear rings. perhaps he was a hollywood actor standing in. he certainly looks the part of someone who would scare off the enemy, who would be showing that the united states was not just the weak and the poor who had been 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 were put up against. marjorie collins was a new yorker. when she joined the office of war information, she said she didn't want to be caught up in

doing war propaganda. she wanted to document life as it was in america. she went into this camouflage area. they were crating camouflage for defense purposes. they were studying ways of interpreting aerial photographs. so she ended up doing a very good job of what she said she didn't want to do, but it was very helpful for us to have these kinds of pictures. it is a little surprising to see the man there with his pipe standing over the work. and it is a little surprising to see a woman working with them in such close proximity, but there we have it in color. agencies began priding -- providing photographs

filmwspapers, magazines, footage, the newsreels that were popular at the time. kept a very tight grasp on the operation, as long as he was in charge of it. the photographers reported to him when other agencies wanted pictures made. his photographers made the pictures and he charts the other agencies per diem. this is one where he stayed in business as long as he did. he was a bureaucrat. understood that those other places could pay for the travel and his photographers would then have to touch his agency only for the days they made his pictures. as he was diminishing in importance to this agency, he realized that his strategy was about to backfire on him because

the national archives had come into existence during the time that he was working. the regulation was that government pictures, government photographer pictures, had to go to the national archives. and 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 the his agent.de under they would be dispersed to whoever paid for the travel money for their photographers -- his photographers to get there. but he was still low enough connected that he was able to owi strings to get the fsa, collection to come to the library of congress. intook the president to step to say that they could be kept together, but he did have the

connections to get to the president to get this favor. about 1945, 1946, a person was hired to reorganize the collection. initially, it has been divided by state. and apparently it was a cumbersome system to locate photographs and get them back with a came from. for the transition, they hired paul vanderbilt, who was trained as a librarian. he microfilmed to the collection by job. they sorted out the prince by -- prints by photographer and by assignment. microfilmedo them -- them, and then disperse them. 1945, they made that transition. they type to the captions for the photographs that were on those amounts. -- mounts. they had been handwritten.

these people used a simplified language so that there was consistency of word use, paste of the captions on, and have been in use since 1946 or so. announcer: this weekend on the c-span networks, politics, books, and american history. on c-span tonight at 8:00 p.m., speeches by 2 republican presidential candidate. first, scott walker visits president reagan's alma mater. then the louisiana governor bobby jindal at the national press club. p.m., 2ay at 6:35 profile interviews. first, former new york governor george pataki talks about his candidacy.

then former senator rick santorum talks about his time in congress. his 2012 presidential run and why he is running again. on c-span2's ""booktv -- "booktv," discussing the book "scarlet letters," that are just progressives have become intolerant to opposing political views. and sunday at 9:00 p.m., minnesota senator amy clover star -- amy klobuchar. tv" onrican history c-span3 tonight at 8:00 p.m., paul christopher anderson teaches a class on how former south carolina confederate viewed reconstruction in the wake of the civil war. he discusses how some white southerners justified and even romanticized their defeat and motives for fighting. and sunday afternoon at 2:00 p.m., the landmark u.s. supreme court decision in a loving v

virginia ruled it was unconstitutional to prohibit interracial marriage. peter examines the context and legacy of loving v virginia and how it affected similar legal challenges. get our complete schedule at c-span.org. in november, 1841, the ship creole was bound for new orleans when slaves aboard rebelled and diverted the ship to the bahamas , then under british control. coming up next, arthur downey, author of "the creole affair: the slave rebelllion that led the u.s. and great britain to the brink of war." at atails the incident legal and diplomatic battle that ensued. the national archives in washington posted this program. it is just under an hour. >> our topic for today is the -- "the creole affair --