A man in a white shirt and light trousers pulls the handle of a slot machine on a folding wooden stand in a barroom with painted walls, a woman in a light blouse beside him and another person at the right edge — Open the full imageJPG, 456 × 640 px, 0.0 MB

Couple playing slot machine, Raceland, Louisiana (1938)

Farm Security Administration photograph by Russell Lee of two people at a slot machine in a barroom at Raceland, Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, in the autumn of 1938.

Date: 1938
Kind: photograph
Source: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Retrieved: 2026-10-12
Rights: The Library of Congress item record states: "No known restrictions." Collection: Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, a federal collection. Call number LC-USF33-011699-M4; digital ID LC-DIG-fsa-8a23913.

The Library of Congress title is “Couple playing slot machine, Raceland, Louisiana.” Russell Lee made the photograph for the Farm Security Administration in September or October 1938. The machine stands on a folding wooden stand against a wall painted with a mural. The caption names neither the people nor the owner of the machine or the bar.

The photograph is filed here as a view of slot machines in Louisiana in the 1930s. No record ties it to the Louisiana Mint Co., to Frank Costello or Phil Kastel, or to any other operator. Costello’s own account of his Louisiana slot-machine business is in his Part 7 testimony. The copy stored here is the Library’s medium-size JPEG.

itemGirl playing slot machine in decorated barroom, Raceland, Louisiana (1938)Farm Security Administration photograph by Russell Lee, captioned as a girl playing a slot machine in a decorated barroom at Raceland, Louisiana, September 1938.

itemPeople watching slot machine being played, Pilottown, Louisiana (1938)Farm Security Administration photograph by Russell Lee of onlookers around a slot machine at Pilottown, Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, September 1938.itemKefauver Part 7: Frank Costello on the Louisiana Mint Co. and slot machines (New York, 13 March 1951), pp. 915-927Asked what the Louisiana Mint Co. was, Costello answered "It was a mint machine, known as a slot machine," and agreed with counsel that Governor Huey Long had asked him to go into the slot-machine business in New Orleans.