this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
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"Penny Auction" at a farm, with a noose as a warning to bank agents who might attempt to bid, Michigan, USA, Great Depression, 1936 (media.piefed.social)
submitted 1 week ago by PugJesus@piefed.social to c/historyphotos@piefed.social
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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 59 points 1 week ago (3 children)

The “West”, Kansas and all those farming states, was actually liberal back in the day. They understood the need for government aid and services. Farmers were still regular people, farming was hard work, you weren’t gonna be rich, and having help if things went badly was important.

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 49 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Shit, even West Virginia was a reliable Democrat state until the 1990s.

... conservative mass media and politicized religious revivalism has been a fucking plague.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Gotta be careful with liberal = democrat. The democrats absolutely were not the liberals of more modern times a century ago.

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 6 points 1 week ago

I mean, sure, but the Dems have been the (relatively, since standards here are fucked) economically left party since 1896 saw the last of the 'pro-business' hardliners marginalized, and the (again, relatively) socially left party since 1964 saw a definitive break with the Dixiecrats after ~15 years of distancing.

[–] knotRyder@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

It's just straight up modern slavery

[–] zuckey78@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I think it’s worth noting that many farmers THEN were what we would call “self employed” now. Farmers NOW are probably more closely aligned with the Starbucks barista - because they now work for Epstein class. The Man at the bank who owns the loan is no different than the CEO who writes the check. Both the barista and the farmer are being taken advantage of the Epstein class.

Politicians who have a spine now are putting themselves on record if whether they are standing publicly for the people (people living paycheck to paycheck, or season to season) or the financial class - the bankers; the tech-first, human-second Epstein class elite.

I wish I had the courage to speak out like they do…

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yep. They were family farms in the real sense. As self-made as it gets (while acknowledging here that a lot of land was stolen, offered for cheap or free by the government).

[–] zuckey78@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

That’s absolutely fair. The conversation of who owns the land, can land actually be owned, and what of the indigenous population is just as valuable.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 points 1 week ago

It really depends, "farmer" can mean like a seasonal farm hand or someone who owns a ton of land and works some of it sometimes. It's a super ambiguous word.

[–] Miaou@jlai.lu 1 points 1 week ago

Those people were probably as far as can be from being liberal. I get nowadays "liberal" doesn't mean anything in the USA but in a historical context this is misleading. 20th century fascism didn't rise in opposition to liberalism

[–] systemglitch@lemmy.world 50 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Back when Americans had a spine. That spine turned to jello.

[–] CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 32 points 1 week ago

Back when Americans trusted each other more than corporations

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 42 points 1 week ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_auction_(foreclosure)

[–] klu9@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago (3 children)

The nooses were probably quite off-putting to other kinds of people they might not want bidding too...

[–] DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca 72 points 1 week ago

You not know the history of point of these auctions, they didn't want anyone to bid after the opening bid.

Banks would foreclose on someone's place, and force them to auction off everything that they owned. The community would band together to buy everything back, for as close to a penny per item as possible, then give everything back to the person who the bank took it from.

[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 34 points 1 week ago

That wasn't the point at all here.

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

While this era overlapped with Jim Crow and the heyday of the KKK, the goal of a penny auction was to enable the original owner/farmer to clear his debts and re-buy/keep his farm. While they wouldn't have wanted any black person bidding either, there wasn't any likelihood of that happening. This was white-on-white threats of violence, against wealthy men greedy for more.

[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

there wasn't any likelihood of that happen

Ironically, from what I've recently heard, Cadillac started selling to black people during the Great Depression. Now, how did black people have money during the Great Depression? Well, it's because they weren't allowed to keep their money in banks, and had it in cash instead.

[–] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Kinda like how Jews tended to be bankers and other financial staff, because other religions refused to handle moneylending. Many hypocrites hated the Jew's acquisition of wealth, when said hypocrites refused to do the work.

[–] teft@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They didn’t refuse to be money lenders. Christians were religiously prohibited from money lending as you needed to charge usury to make a living lending money and usury is forbidden in christianity but not in judaism.

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Isn't that what they said?

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Also, black people.

[–] El_guapazo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I don't see anyone that looks like me. So I guess it was a community not open to people or color. This magnanimity should be for all peoples in the community.

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 3 points 1 week ago

It should be. While there were stories of solidarity even at the time, unfortunately, even in places without formal segregation, informal segregation of communities remained widely practiced.

[–] this_1_is_mine@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago

In this instance the community comes together to help the farmer keep the farm and get it out of the pockets of the predators from the banks. A lot of these penny auctions were the original owners buying back their farm.

I appreciate you wanting to feel included but this is just a piece about a particular time period that also included removing the established settlement of what became central park. And no I'm not talking about the hoover city.

Seneca village if you wanna read and actually have a good reason to be mad in this thread.