I found this on CNN's website, and found it rather interesting. I know it's kind of a long read, but well worth it. Just thought I would share 
In black and white. For decades that's how most people have recalled the Great Depression and World War II. In textbooks, on TV and in family scrapbooks -- photos from this important period in American history are almost always black and white.
That is what makes the Library of Congress' new exhibit so startling. History springs to life in brilliant color and detail -- small human details that black-and-white images cannot show -- like the color of a railroad worker's kerchief and her matching nail polish. Click through the gallery to see what little secrets these vibrant images will reveal about life in the 1930s and '40s.
The New Deal photographers who captured these early color images are better known for their black-and-white work. But they also explored the potential of the new Kodachrome slide film as they created a visual record of America's farm life and, later, its home front.
This image, taken at a square dance in McIntosh County, Oklahoma, provides a glimpse into the social lives of young people in 1939.
About a dozen photographers originally went to work for the Farm Security Administration, set up to help poor farmers buy equipment. Their portrait of poverty and dreariness, especially in the Appalachians, shocked many Americans.
In this 1940 image, a man sits in front of a store advertising "live fish for sale" in Natchitoches, Louisiana.
Beverly Brannan, the library's curator of documentary photos, said a great deal of conservation and stabilization had to be done before the prints in the exhibit, "Bound for Glory: America in Color, 1939-1943," could be made and displayed.
In this image, a young boy stands on the streets of Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1942 or 1943.
"When I look at the struggle coming up out of these pictures," writes Paul Hendrickson in the show's catalog, "I feel somehow as if I'm combing through my own and the country's ancestral attic with Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck."
This photograph, snapped in St. Johns, Arizona, in 1940, shows people gathered to collect surplus supplies.
Many of these powerful images capture ordinary moments in the lives of everyday Americans struggling through the economic hardships of the period.
This 1940 image captures the Caudill family sharing a meal in their dugout home in Pie Town, New Mexico, in 1940. Doris Caudill, in blue gingham and apron, reaches past a plate of biscuits, perched atop a red syrup can. Her husband, Faro, with tousled hair and a bandaged thumb delicately picks at his plate with the other hand.
The collection also contains many images of Americans as they gear up for war. Here, Irma Lee McElory carefully paints an American insignia on the wing of a military plane in August 1942. McElroy worked at the naval air base in Corpus Christi, Texas, where her husband was a flight instructor.
All of the color photos -- as well as more than 160,000 black-and-white images from the period -- can be viewed on the Library of Congress Web site.
At left, three dust-covered crewmen strike a jaunty pose in front of their M-4 tank at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in June 1942, just six months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The Library of Congress holds 1,600 color images covering both the Depression and World War II, and it is exhibiting 70 of them as digital prints at the Thomas Jefferson Building, across the street from the Capitol, through January 21, 2006.
In this 1942 image, a soot-covered worker at a carbon black plant in Sunray, Texas, smokes a cigarette after a long day on the job.
Admission to the show in Washington is free. After closing, it is scheduled to go on display at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, from September 2 to November 12, and at the University of Kentucky Art Museum, Lexington, Kentucky, January 21 - April 8, 2007.
This image captures children at school in rural San Augustine County, Texas, in 1943.
In black and white. For decades that's how most people have recalled the Great Depression and World War II. In textbooks, on TV and in family scrapbooks -- photos from this important period in American history are almost always black and white.
That is what makes the Library of Congress' new exhibit so startling. History springs to life in brilliant color and detail -- small human details that black-and-white images cannot show -- like the color of a railroad worker's kerchief and her matching nail polish. Click through the gallery to see what little secrets these vibrant images will reveal about life in the 1930s and '40s.
The New Deal photographers who captured these early color images are better known for their black-and-white work. But they also explored the potential of the new Kodachrome slide film as they created a visual record of America's farm life and, later, its home front.
This image, taken at a square dance in McIntosh County, Oklahoma, provides a glimpse into the social lives of young people in 1939.
About a dozen photographers originally went to work for the Farm Security Administration, set up to help poor farmers buy equipment. Their portrait of poverty and dreariness, especially in the Appalachians, shocked many Americans.
In this 1940 image, a man sits in front of a store advertising "live fish for sale" in Natchitoches, Louisiana.
Beverly Brannan, the library's curator of documentary photos, said a great deal of conservation and stabilization had to be done before the prints in the exhibit, "Bound for Glory: America in Color, 1939-1943," could be made and displayed.
In this image, a young boy stands on the streets of Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1942 or 1943.
"When I look at the struggle coming up out of these pictures," writes Paul Hendrickson in the show's catalog, "I feel somehow as if I'm combing through my own and the country's ancestral attic with Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck."
This photograph, snapped in St. Johns, Arizona, in 1940, shows people gathered to collect surplus supplies.
Many of these powerful images capture ordinary moments in the lives of everyday Americans struggling through the economic hardships of the period.
This 1940 image captures the Caudill family sharing a meal in their dugout home in Pie Town, New Mexico, in 1940. Doris Caudill, in blue gingham and apron, reaches past a plate of biscuits, perched atop a red syrup can. Her husband, Faro, with tousled hair and a bandaged thumb delicately picks at his plate with the other hand.
The collection also contains many images of Americans as they gear up for war. Here, Irma Lee McElory carefully paints an American insignia on the wing of a military plane in August 1942. McElroy worked at the naval air base in Corpus Christi, Texas, where her husband was a flight instructor.
All of the color photos -- as well as more than 160,000 black-and-white images from the period -- can be viewed on the Library of Congress Web site.
At left, three dust-covered crewmen strike a jaunty pose in front of their M-4 tank at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in June 1942, just six months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The Library of Congress holds 1,600 color images covering both the Depression and World War II, and it is exhibiting 70 of them as digital prints at the Thomas Jefferson Building, across the street from the Capitol, through January 21, 2006.
In this 1942 image, a soot-covered worker at a carbon black plant in Sunray, Texas, smokes a cigarette after a long day on the job.
Admission to the show in Washington is free. After closing, it is scheduled to go on display at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, from September 2 to November 12, and at the University of Kentucky Art Museum, Lexington, Kentucky, January 21 - April 8, 2007.
This image captures children at school in rural San Augustine County, Texas, in 1943.
Sell Patches & Pills 
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