America during the red scare was a very different place. The main fears of the day were not the goings on of the Middle East or the walls between countries; rather, people feared the loyalties of their own neighbors. As the Cold War with Russia emerged at the end of World War II, the lure of communistic thought sent shivers down the spines of patriotic Americans. Everywhere one looked someone was being accused of socialist ties, communist sentiments and worst of all, spying for the Russians. One of the most highlighted cases from the post war period was that of Alger Hiss.
As Chambers affirmed his commitment to the Communist ideology, Hiss held a number of important offices in the United States government. Work with the department of Agriculture and State Department led Hiss to serve as Roosevelt’s assistant during the Yalta Conference in 1945 and Secretary General of the newly formed United Nations. In 1949, Hiss left public office to work towards international peace as the president of the Carnegie Endowment. A rich and diverse career would have been Hiss legacy if Chambers and his associates hadn’t made him the target of an FBI espionage investigation.
After two grand jury trials, the first resulting in a hung jury, Hiss was sentence to five years in prison after being found guilty of spying for the Russians. Documents from the Yalta conference in 1945 indicated a Russian American spy was with FDR at the conference.
Born May 26, 1895 in New Jersey, Dorothea Lange became a pioneer of Depression era photography, giving a real face to the plight of thousands of displaced Americans. Her photos still hang on the walls of America’s greatest museums, a testament to her skill as a photographer and the life she chose to live.
Having studied photography at Columbia University, Lange began her career as a portrait photographer in New York. Itchy feet would make her move quickly and her nation wide travel shows in all of her works. She was in San Francisco when the Depression began to close its grip tightly around the plain states and as the dust bowl grew, she made her way into its depth and began shooting.
“While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.”
- Dorothea Lange
In 1935, the government had introduced a number of programs to provide employment for the disposed including many of the nation’s artists. Lange was hired by the Farm Security Administration to go out into the countryside and take pictures of the people and places struck by the Dustbowl, the high unemployment and indeed the rampant starvation of the period. Her pictures are poignant black and white studies that, as Lange liked to say “let you see without the camera.”
In her time, Lange married a painter and an economist exemplifying her fascination with both art and the realities of the world. A depiction of a homeless mother with her two small children wondering if the husband would ever return, her pictures of broken down cars discarded on the trail west, picket lines and bread lines, migrant workers, ruined homesteaders, immigrants, farmers, and every kind of human condition was the subject of her photography. Lange was a part of the documentary film movement that was taken place in America during the 30s when the dreams of the 20s had fallen flat and the nation became a land of realists.
After the Depression, Lange moved on to photographing World War II on the home front. Her subjects went from breadline to internment camp and the faces of migrant farmers were replaced with interred Japanese Americans. Later she traveled to Ireland and Vietnam and her work appeared on the cover of “LIFE” magazine several times. In her final years she taught photography at the California School of Fine Arts and co-founded the photography magazine “Aperture.” Lange passed away after long illness in October of 1965.
One of my favorite Americans will always be Dorothea Lange. She used the camera lens to document real American life on a large scale during a time when the country suffered greatly. Her pictures continue to grace the pages of school books that discuss the depression as her blunt earthy portrayals of life during that era remain unsurpassed by government statistics or even newspaper headlines. Rockwell has his place in depicting the different aspects of American culture but Lange will always remain for me a pioneer of documentary art and a great example as photography as advocate for the people.
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Tags: 1930s America, 1935, American photography, Depression, Depression Era photography, documentary film movement, Dorothea Lange, homesteaders, immigrants, Lange, LIFE magazine, migrant mother, migrant workers, Photography, the dustbowl, World War II, World War II photography, WWII
It was the boxing match of the decade, perhaps even the century. In the summer of 1938, it was a symbol of freedom versus dictatorship. The heavyweight championship of boxing was held at Yankee stadium and was the second meeting for the two pugilists. African American Joe Louis and Caucasian German Max Schmeling faced off in front of a crowd of 70,000 with many more listening on the radio. In fact, the famous fight drew the largest radio audience in history at that time. 
But of course, it was far from wonderful in Nazi Germany for a large minority population. Since Hitler’s rise to power German Jews had felt the full weight of economic discrimination and social isolation. In the five years before the famous match in New York, and just one year before the outbreak of World War II, ghettos, restrictive laws, concentration camps, secret arrests and disappearances was commonplace in the German Jewish community. American Jews were well aware of the racism that was spreading like a virus across Europe.
70 million tuned in to hear the blow by blow account of the short match consisting of a single round that lasted only two minutes and four seconds. Because Joe Louis had wanted revenge and he got it. The pounding began almost immediately after the starting bell rang. Perhaps Joe was remembering everything Schmeling had said about him after that first meeting. Calling him amateur in his style and mocking his inexperience, Schmeling was unprepared for the man he met in the ring on June 22, 1938. 
The fight was quick because Louis didn’t give Schmeling the chance. Americans both black and white, Jewish and non Jewish cheered Louis on as he struck the German with blow after powerful blow. Each time Schmeling tried to get back up, Louis knocked him down again and the crowd cheered for an American hero as they booed and hissed at the German. The fight was a distraction from the heavy burden of the depression and a focus for the growing resentment against Nazi Germany. And Joe Louis did his job well, forcing Schmeling into a knock out count situation he couldn’t return from. The referee reached “10,” the fight was over and the crowd roared in the stadium and across the land. 
