Websites with general information on the 1930s

• http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/front.html
  This web site features information on 1930s dress, radio programs, comic strips, films, books, articles from many magazines including Survey Graphic, and other items related to 1930s culture. Index is here: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/INDEX/index.html
• http://vlib.iue.it/history/USA/ERAS/20TH/1930s.html
  Everything you wanted to know about the 1930s, and then some. This website offers hundreds of links to websites with information on the Depression, culture, crime, the New York World’s Fair, pop music, books, films, cars, art and many other topics.
• www.loc.gov/folklife/
  The Library of Congress American Folklife Center’s Archive of Folk Culture contains rich and numerous online resources, many of which are from the Depression and the Writers’ Project period. See a list of them at www.loc.gov/folklife/onlinecollections.html
• www.angelfire.com/retro/lisawebworld/30s.html
  Website with information on 1930s popular culture.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1930s
  Wikepedia offers many interesting facts about the 1930s and links to other websites.
• http://library.thinkquest.org/J002606/1930s.html
  Information on American elementary schools in the 1930s.
• www.thepeoplehistory.com/1930s.html
  What things cost in the 1930s, and more information about the decade.
• http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s2/Time/timefr.html
  A 1930s timeline with notable events by month.

Collecting stories

• www.folklife.si.edu/resources/pdf/interviewingguide.pdf
  The Smithsonian Folklife and Oral History Interviewing Guide (there is a paper copy of this guide in the back of this site support notebook).
• http://storyarts.org/classroom/roots/family.html
  Teaches elementary school students how to collect family histories: interview questions, tips, and links to other helpful websites.
• www.storycorps.net/diy/wp-content/uploads/do-it-yourself-guide.pdf
  StoryCorps Do-it-yourself Guide to interviewing and recording people’s stories.
• www.loc.gov/vets/kit.html
  The Veterans’ History Project at the Library of Congress features some excellent guidelines for interviewing people and collecting their stories.

Comics of the 1930s

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Comic_strips_started_in_the_1930s
  Wikipedia offers a compendium of comic strips that began in the 1930s.

Food

• www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/tri098.html
  www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4176589
  These two websites focus on the Federal Writers’ Project “America Eats” project. One is an NPR Kitchen Sisters program with streaming interviews and readings from the “America Eats” archives at the Library of Congress; the other depicts photographs of eating and cooking food at social gatherings such as picnics, barbecues, and food festivals in locations including California, Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi. The recently published book by Pat Willard,  America Eats: On the Road with the WPA (New York: Bloomsbury, 2008) traces the FWP research done for the America Eats project and is sprinkled throughout with heirloom recipes (Root Beer, Pickled Watermelon Rinds, Chess Pie, Son-of-Gun Stew) and never-before-published vintage photos.

Radio in the 1930s

• www.otr.net/
  “Old Time Radio” contains many downloadable radio shows from the 1930s.
• http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/RADIO/audio_guide.html
  An ongoing effort to represent the audio landscape of the 1930s.
• www.oldtimeradiofans.com/
  Download free old time radio shows.

WPA Posters, Photographs, Murals

• http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/
  The black-and-white photographs of the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection are a landmark in the history of documentary photography. Color photos are at: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsachtml/fsowhome.html Most of these photos are in the public domain.
• http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wpaposters/wpahome.html
  “By the People, For the People, Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943.”
• www.wpamurals.com/
  A guide to WPA murals in every state, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Toys and Games

• From the History Channel website
  • 1928 The Mickey Mouse character is created by Walt Disney. Two years later, Charlotte Clark began making stuffed Mickey Mouse dolls, and Disney's legendary merchandising was born.
     
  • 1929 The yo-yo is popularized in the United States after entrepreneur Donald Duncan sees the toy being demonstrated in Los Angeles. Duncan bought a small yo-yo company for $25,000 and 30 years later sales of Duncan yo-yos reach $25 million dollars.
     
  • 1931 Alfred M. Butts, an unemployed architect from Poughkeepsie, New York, invents a word game called the Criss Cross Game. In 1948, Butts sold the rights to the game to entrepreneur James Brunot, who trademarked it under the name Scrabble. Scrabble went on to sell more than 100 million sets worldwide, including one to two million each year in North America alone.
     
  • 1935 Parker Brothers introduces Monopoly. By offering a way to “get rich quick” to Americans struggling through the Great Depression, Monopoly quickly becomes a bestseller, eventually attracting more than 480 million players all over the world.
     
  • 1938 Piano tuner and camera buff William Gruber is the mastermind behind the View-Master three-dimensional viewer, which is first sold only through photography stores. Later, after acquiring the licensing rights to all Disney characters, View-Master hit the jackpot, offering 3-D images of stills from Disney movies and TV programs and views of the Disneyland amusement park.
     
  • Early 1940s Affordable, detailed model airplanes begin to be mass-produced. Originally designed to help manufacturers sell airplanes to the military, they begin to make practical toys with the introduction of plastic. Before plastic, models were made with balsa wood provided in kits. Otherwise, consumers had to cut their own wood pieces to fit a provided pattern.
     
• Toys From The 1930s (from www.thepeoplehistory.com)
  The 1930s was the inverse of the 1920s in terms of prosperity. With the onset of the depression, a lot of the ingenuity of the past couple of decades in toy design was sidelined, if only because so few children could afford to own something new and expensive.
  
  But, dozens of toys and games that we still consider amazing fun by today’s standards were developed in the 1930s. Forbes Magazine named the 3-D view master as the biggest toy of the decade, showing once again how technology was so influential in wowing children in any decade to a new toy.
  
  Likewise, pop culture tie ins finally found the grip they needed to boast new toys and mass marketed options. The Golden Age of Comic Books exploded in 1938 with the introduction of Action Comics and Superman and tie ins were soon to follow, along with the bucket loads of x-ray glasses, and hand held radios sold on the back pages of early comic books. Some might say the 1930s were the beginning of cheap, easily broken toys for that very reason (and for their inexpensive price point). The first movie character ever made into a doll was Scarlett O’Hara in 1939, by Madam Alexander.
  
  One of century’s best selling and most lasting legacies though started in the 1930s though with board games. Monopoly, Sorry, and Scrabble were all invented in the 1930s. While Scrabble took a few decades to get an audience, Monopoly was an immediate success and has been one of the best selling board games in America ever since.