You can find primary sources and learning activities for teaching about the Great Depression on DocsTeach, the online tool for teaching with documents from the National Archives.
Access hundreds of primary sources related to the Great Depression and the New Deal on DocsTeach on a variety of topics, including:
- The Dust Bowl
- Breadlines
- Unemployment
- Fireside Chats
- The New Deal
- The Works Progress Administration (WPA)
- Banks and the Stock Market Crash
- The Bonus Army
- Migrant Labor
- The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)
- Social Security
If you’re looking for primary sources for another Great Depression topic, visit our document search page and type in your keyword. You can narrow down your results by historical era or document type.
DocsTeach also includes dozens of teaching activities about the Great Depression created by our educators at the National Archives and by teachers across the country.
In our newly published activity The Impact of the Great Depression: Photograph Analysis, students analyze a series of photographs taken by photographers around the United States documenting the impact of the Great Depression on people and society.
In another new activity, Analyzing FDR’s First Fireside Chat, students analyze the tone, mood, and rhetorical devices of the first of FDR’s famous radio addresses, this time about the banking crisis.
In the map-based activity Where Was the New Deal?, students identify three New Deal programs – the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and Works Progress Administration (WPA), locate where projects associated with each took place, and analyze their impact on each region.
Images:
- Migratory Cotton Picker with Her Baby, 11/1940. From the Records of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics.
- Soup Kitchen During the Depression, 6/1936. From the Collection FDR-Photos: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Photographs.
- Hold on to Your Social Security Card, 1941 – 1945. From the Records of the Office of Government Reports.
- Farm Security Administration-Resettlement Administration: Vernon Evans family leaving South Dakota drought area for west, 1935. From the Collection FDR-PHOCO: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Public Domain Photographs; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, NY.
- “The New Deal” Mural, ca. 1934. From the Collection FDR-PHOCO: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Public Domain Photographs.
- “Farmer and sons walking in the face of a dust storm”; Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 4/1936. From the Collection FDR-PHOCO: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Public Domain Photographs; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, NY.
- President Franklin D. Roosevelt Broadcasting his First Fireside Chat Regarding the Banking Crisis, from the White House, Washington, DC, 3/12/1933. From the Collection FDR-Photos: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Photographs; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, NY.
- “Squatter Camp” in Sacramento, California, 3/15/1940. From the Records of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics.