The 1940 Census -- So Big the AP Wrote an Article!

In this photo provided by the National Archives at College Park, an enumerator interviews a woman for the 1940 Census. Veiled in secrecy for 72 years because of privacy protections, the 1940 U.S. Census is the first historical federal decennial survey to be made available on the Internet initially rather than on microfilm. (AP Photo/National Archives at College Park) 

Talk about big!  It seems everywhere one turns there is news about the impending release of the 1940 Census on April 2^nd!

It’s not often that my local newspapers carries an AP article about anything genealogy-related and definitely not a piece in the main news section!  Though the title varies a bit (in the N&O it is “U.S. to open 1940 Census details”) depending on which newspaper published it, the meat of the article remains the same.

“It was a decade when tens of millions of people in the U.S. experienced mass unemployment and social upheaval as the nation clawed its way out of the Great Depression and rumblings of global war were heard from abroad.

Now, intimate details of 132 million people who lived through the 1930s will be disclosed as the U.S. government releases the 1940 census on April 2 to the public for the first time after 72 years of privacy protection lapses ...”

Read the full article.

Do check for events being held at a local library, archive, genealogy meetings, etc!

Feel free to do a “shout out” here for a 1940-census themed event in your community!

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