30 Photos of That Time When America Was a Truly Scary Place

On October 29, 1929, known as the Black Tuesday, the stock market collapsed. It was the start of the Great Depression — a period of hardship, fear, and national disillusionment.

Looking back at that era, 85 years ago, it’s hard to imagine what it was like to live through it. This series of rare photos below gives us a quick glimpse of that period.

On October 24, 1929, the stock market in the U.S. began to fluctuate wildly.

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Five days later, the market had collapsed completely. They called it:

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This stock trader jumped to his death after losing everything on Black Tuesday.

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A shanty town in New York’s Central Park. Many other shanty towns were popping up all over the country.

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Panic on the floor of the US Stock Exchange.

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The first few banks didn’t collapsed until 1930. But there were runs on them nonetheless the moment the crash happened.

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You’ll see signs like this.

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Or this.

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Jobs were scarce. Hundreds of men lined up to apply for a single position.

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The midwest was also devastated by severe drought and dust storms. Here’s a photo of the National Mall in Washington D.C. in 1935.

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Sights like this were increasingly common.

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What these people lived through during the Great Depression is simply unimaginable. Let’s take a lesson from it and remember to appreciate the good things we have today.