Photographer Jack Delano first began to document life under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal in 1939 for the Works Progress Administration. From 1940 to 1943, he worked for the Farm Security Administration and traveled along the Atlantic coast taking photographs of the people and places affected by the Great Depression. In the summer of 1940, he arrived in Delaware during the produce-harvesting season.

During the Depression, most migrant workers were black and poorly paid. Delano followed one particular group of migrant workers from Florida to Delaware, where they worked for the Cannon Canning Company on farms in Bridgeville and Staytonville harvesting apples and beans. This photo series documents the crude barracks and outdoor cooking facilities at the migrant camps, which Delano-always concerned about social issues and the human condition--characterized as "crowded and unsanitary." Without Delano's FSA photographs and his memories, the experiences of this rural underclass in Delaware may have been lost to history.