"Hunger marchers" leaving Philadelphia's Reyburn Plaza for the state capital to demand relief from the Pennsylvania State Legislature, summer 1936.

Credit: Courtesy of Temple University, Urban Archives, Philadelphia, Pa

Suffering from high rates of unemployment, cities across the Commonwealth witnessed angry demonstrations, hunger marches, and mass picketing in the early 1930s. In 1936, unemployed organizations joined in a march on Harrisburg where they occupied the Senate Gallery and demanded that the legislature reform the state welfare system.