Great Depression and New Deal Primary Sources | Lorena Hickok

Excerpt from "The Unsung Heroes of the Depression"

Reprinted from One Third of a Nation:
Lorena Hickok Reports on the Great Depression
Edited by Richard Lowitt and Maurine Beasley
Published in 1981

"People, with voices, faces, eyes. People with hope. People without hope. People still fighting. People with all courage squeezed out of them. People with stories."

Lorena Hickok

"Go talk with preachers and teachers, businessmen, workers, farmers. Go talk with the unemployed, those who are on relief and those who aren't. And when you talk with them don't ever forget that but for the grace of God you, I, any of our friends might be in their shoes. Tell me what you see and hear. All of it." These were the instructions Harry Hopkins (1890–1946), chief of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, gave...