Negro and white man sitting on curb talking, Muskogee, Oklahoma
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of black Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for blacks to be fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28 in 1933. To read more, click HERE.
Surgical Instruments used in performing lobotomies
Glore Psychiatric Museum
In I936 the first lobotomy was performed in Spain, and within two years similar operations were being performed by Drs. Freeman and Watts at the George Washington Hospital in Washington, D.C. By the end of I946 lobotomies had been used in more than two thousand mental cases.2 The theory of the operation is relatively simple. It proceeds upon the hypothesis that the frontal lobes are the centers of association in the brain-the focal point for sensory impressions. These impressions are carried by nerve path- ways from the frontal lobes to the thalamus at the base of the brain. There the impressions receive emotional tone and coloring. One result of this processing of impressions is to endow the individual with a sense of "social consciousness," transforming him from bystander to participant in the forces that affect his life. To read more, click HERE.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998018301/PP/