A person in a long light coat, a cigarette in the mouth, plays a slot machine on a folding stand in front of a wall painted with a sailing ship and flowers — Open the full imageJPG, 492 × 640 px, 0.2 MB

Girl 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.

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-USF34-031411-D; digital ID LC-DIG-fsa-8b20475.

The Library of Congress title is “Girl playing slot machine in decorated barroom, Raceland, Louisiana.” Russell Lee made the photograph for the Farm Security Administration in September 1938. The wall behind the machine is painted with a sailing ship and flowers. The caption names neither the person nor the bar.

It is filed as a documentary view of how common the machines were, not for the individual shown. No record ties it to any operator. The copy stored here is the Library’s medium-size JPEG.

itemCouple 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.

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.