As Americans experienced its most devastating crisis — the Great depression

The United States entered the Great depression, one of the most devastating in the history of economic crises in the late 1920s and all the 1930s, many Americans teetered on the brink of survival. Only with the outbreak of the Second world war, the US managed to get out of a protracted financial peak.

Often images of America in the years of the great depression faded, black and white and invariably generating the impression of a dull. However, these photos from the Library of Congress, created with the help of color slides by different photographers between 1939 and 1941, show the era and those who survived, in color, allowing a new look for one of the most studied periods of American history.

Trucks at the entrance of a starch factory in Caribou County Aroostook, Maine, the end of 1940. Lined up almost 50 trucks. Some had to wait a day to sort and weigh the delivered potatoes.

Boys fishing in the Bayou in Schriever, Louisiana, in the summer of 1940. Children from ethnic groups of Kaganov are near a school in Terrebonne, a project of the US Administration to protect farmers.

Shipping crates of peaches from the garden in the transshipment warehouse at the end of 1940, in the County of Delta, state of Colorado.

Farmers-homesteaders Faro and Doris Caudill in Pai town, new Mexico, the end of 1940.

Caudill family for dinner in their dugout in pie town, new Mexico, the end of 1940.

Collection of young corn on the field of Jim Norris in Pai town at the end of 1940, new Mexico.

The Vermont state fair is in town Rutlend the end of 1941.

The farmer-settler Jim Norris in Pai town, new Mexico, the end of 1940.

The distribution of surplus goods to St. Johns, Arizona, 1940.

Backstage women's show at the Vermont state fair in Rutlend, 1941.

To tie the ribbon on the tail of the calf was one of the attractions at the Rodeo fair in pie town in 1940, the state of new Mexico.

Day workers picking cotton near Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1939.

Residential quarter and eatery for the workers during the off-season in early 1941 in bell the Glade, Florida.

Men read the headlines on the corner of the newspaper "the Brockton enterprise" in Brockton, Massachusetts, 1940.

The cart with horses trying to pull a car stuck in the mud near pie Town, new Mexico, 1940.

Street Barker at the Vermont state fair in Rutlend in 1941.

The Delta County fair in Colorado, the end of 1940.

House on a background of plants, circa 1941-1942.