Demonstration by unemployed workers in front of Communist Party Headquarters,  where a sign on the building reads “Unemployed!  Fight for the WORKERS’ SOCIAL INSURANCE BILL.”

The period of the Depression represented the heyday of American Communism–close to a million people supported the Communist Party’s militant stands for home relief, unemployment insurance, social security, and other reforms, though the number who actually joined the party was 100,000 or less.

Image from Charles Rivers Collection, NYU Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, photograph by Charles Rivers.

See this image in the Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives exhibit.