During the Great Depression, the Farm Security Administration hired documentary photographers like Marion Post Wolcott to take photographs of rural and small-town life across the country to highlight the effects of economic stagnation. The collection offers more than 164,000 black-and-white photos and 1,600 color photos taken from across the nation.
What’s interesting about this 1939 photo by Wolcott, described as “A Negro church in a corn field” near the South Carolina Crescent town of Manning in Clarendon County, is how it could have been taken just as easily today, 74 years later. According to the 2010 Census, almost 21 percent of Clarendon County residents live in poverty.