African American day laborers standing near and on the back of farm trucks parked on the side of a road near the Hallan Bridge while drivers bid and offer them between 50 cents and one dollar to work as cotton pickers on Mississippi and Arkansas plantations, Memphis, Tennessee, October 1939.

The FSA (Farm Security Administration) is famous for its well known influential photography program that portrayed the challenges of rural poverty. Creating false perceptions of individuals (A prime example of situational manipulation), photographers were hired to report and document the plight of poor farmers. In 1935–44, eleven photographers would come to work on this project. They were: Arthur Rothstein, Theo Jung, Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Carl Mydans, Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, John Vachon, and John Collier. In total, the black-and-white portion of the collection consists of about 175,000 black-and-white film negatives.