Fourth of July, near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Rural filling stations become community centers and general loafing grounds. The men in the baseball suits are on a local team which will play a game nearby. They are called the Cedargrove Team – July 4, 1939.
This casual photograph was captured by Dorothea Lange as part of her desperate, vital mission to document rural grit for the Farm Security Administration. It beautifully showcases how community sports served as an essential, low-cost social lifeline keeping rural communities grounded through the twilight of the Great Depression.
Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
