Picture, if you will, the Great Depression. Unless you actually lived through it, or close enough, chances are your mind might conjure up images of bread lines, bleak Dust Bowl landscapes or hungry, huddled families, and they’re probably in black and white.

That’s what makes these Depression-era photos taken by photographers working for the United States Farm Security Administration (FSA) and the Office of War Information (OWI) so striking. The International Business Times ran them in two installments in the spring, but their historical value hasn’t changed since then, and many of the images are quite arresting.

Click here to see the first batch and here to view the second.

(All images from Library of Congress)

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