Diego Rivera’s Vaccine Mural in Detroit in the 1930s

A Mexican artist immortalized American ingenuity and industry during the Great Depression.

Back in 1929, the United States — along with much of the world — started experiencing an economic depression not seen since (though the 2008 “Great Recession” did rival it). The economy in Detroit, Michigan, was hit hard. According to Linda Downs of the Center for Public Art History:

“When the Mexican artist Diego Rivera arrived in Detroit in 1932 to paint these walls [at the Detroit Institute of Arts], the city was a leading industrial center of the world. It was also the city that was hit the hardest by the Great Depression. Industrial production and the workforce were a third of what they had been before the 1929 Crash.”

Linda Downs explains that Diego Rivera, a Mexican artist, arrived six days after a protest at the Ford Motor Company River Rouge plant resulted in police shooting six people. Known as the Ford Hunger March Massacre, the incident resulted in the United Auto Workers union being formed, and leading to more progressive employment conditions by the time World War II broke out. All of this influenced Diego Rivera, an outspoken Marxist and defender of workers’ rights, in the works that would become the Detroit Industry Murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Automobiles were not the only industry in Detroit. The 1930s were the beginning of some big discoveries in the biological and…