marion

what i find surprising is all of these photos, were taken by the war department. what else did they photograph ? we were under government spies , all these years. wonder what will show up after,we are dead,and buried??

They were doing a survey of agricultural resources and conditions, and looking for spots away from the coasts to evacuate if they had to.

Agricultural resourse surveys, yes. And documenting the condition of American farmland. Notice in these photos how the vegetation is very sparce. That is because the topsoil has been eroded away after a hundred years of neglecting the soil. Up until the late 1930's many farmers simply removed the trees from the forrests and planted crops on the naturally rich soil. After a few years the natural nutrients were depleted and crops wouldn't grow so the farmer moved to "new ground" and left the old fields. Since there wasn't enough nutrients in the soil to support plants, the soils eroded. During and after WWII fertilizers became more affordable and farmers started practicing better farming techniques.

It looks to me like these photos might have been taken in the southern pinelands, which can have sandy soil and support the type of flora you see pictured.

I love the little girl in the dress. Also, I like the little baby with the overalls. One of his overalls is hanging off of his little shoulder. It is so adorable.

Man, this is some Jim Crow shotgun shack grinding poverty. Nothing adorable about it.

I am interested in writing a book (a historical novel) about slavery and Harriet Tubman. May I please use this photograph in my book, please? Of course, you will be named with the photograph! Looking forward to hearing from you! Thank you and have a blessed day!

To the seeker without frontiers: The picture has the status of “no known copyright restrictions,” in this case because the photo was made by the U.S. federal government, which are not eligible for U.S. copyright protection. You can find out more about the “no known copyright restrictions” status on this Flickr page: www.flickr.com/commons/usage/. We also offer information in our rights overview, “Copyright and Other Restrictions That Apply to Publication/Distribution of Images: Assessing the Risk of Using a P&P Image”—sometimes there are other types of rights to consider, in addition to copyright so best to review this as well. The Library of Congress is generally not in a position to grant or deny permission to publish images from its holdings because in most cases it does not hold rights to the images.