1935-Black Sunday

According to the Great Plain Drought Area Committee Report (Doc. D), in 1879, 10 million acres of crop were harvested. 20 years later, in 1899, 50 million acres of crops were harvested, 5 times more crops than in 1879. In 1929, that number more than doubled to a 105 million acres of crops that were harvested. How did happen? Farming technology advanced rapidly from 1879 to 1929. In “The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan (Doc. C), Egan wrote, “A tractor did the work of ten horses. With his new combine, Folkers could cut and thresh the grain in one swoop, using just a fraction of the labor.” The new farming technology made farming faster and it required less labor. Farmers had this new technology and used it to plow more land. Millions of acres were being plowed and farmed on and with the dry soil and no grass to keep it on the ground the dust became airborne and started grouping together and creating terrible storms.

The Dust Bowl, battering the Midwest for nearly a decade with high winds, bad farming techniques, and drought, became a pivotal point in American history. The wind storm that seemed relentless beginning in the early 1930’s until its spell ended in 1939, affected the lives of tens of thousands of Americans and the broader agriculture industry. The catastrophic effects of the Dust Bowl took place most prominently around the Great Plains, otherwise known as the farming belt, including states such as Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas, which were hit extraordinarily hard. Millions of farming acres destroyed by poor farming techniques was a major contributor to what is considered to be one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in American history. This period resulted in almost a decade of unstable farming and economic despair. Thousands of families sought government assistance in order to survive. Luckily, government aid to farmers and new agriculture programs that were introduced to help save the nation’s agriculture industry benefited families and helped the Great Plains recover from the Dust Bowl. Furthermore, the poor conditions in the farm belt were also compounded by the Great Depression as it was in full swing as the Dust Bowl began to worsen. In addition, World War I was also underway which caused a high demand for agricultural products, such as wheat, corn, and potatoes to be at its peak, which lured many people to the farm belt with the false expectation that farming

The ‘Dirty Thirties’ is perhaps one of the most known time periods in American History. During the 1930s, the worst and longest drought occurred in the United States, this was also know as the Dust Bowl. According to Christopher Klein, the Dust Bowl is considered both a man-made and natural disaster. In fact, many events contributed to the Dust Bowl such as poor farming techniques, a severe drought, and economic depression.

In the years leading to 1930, the Great Plains experienced a healthy amount of rain. The drought began in 1930 when the rain ceased. That year proved tough for farmers in the Great Plains, but they had no idea what was yet to come. In 1931, dust storms began to sweep through the Great Plains. Behind the dust, families stayed hidden inside their homes using wet clothes and such to guard the window sills and door frames. The families affected by the Dust Bowl were trapped inside of their homes for the six years of raging dust storms. The Great Depression was a number of years that consisted of workers being laid off, no job openings available, and an overall economic low in the United States. The Great Depression, which started in the years leading up to the drought, resulted in poor living conditions, including little to no income, scarce food, and unclean water. The Dust Bowl amplified those conditions for the affected families. (Steinbeck, Lewis, “Dust Bowl”

For example, in February much of the United States had recorded frigid temperatures and North Dakota hit an all-time extreme record low of minus sixty degrees (Hutchinson, 35) . In contrast to the high temperatures, in the summer of 1936 strong upper-atmosphere high pressure systems locked over North America which caused very high temperatures. All but two states experienced protracted temperatures in excess of 100 degrees. Seventy-five percent of those states experienced temperatures that exceeded 110. The high for Kansas in 1936 was in Alton which reached 121 degrees in July. Conditions were so severe that federal officials warned that America’s agricultural belt was in real danger of being transformed into a desert. The heat wave cost $1 billion in crop and livestock losses. On July 15th of 1936, the Chicago Tribune estimated that 1,000 people a day were dying and continued at that pace for several days.

The Dust Bowl began in the 1930s and lasted a decade. It was sometimes referred to as the “Dirty Thirties”, which was the name given to the worst natural and manmade disaster in U.S. history. The lives of thousands, both young and old, were lost due to the damaging effects of the dust. The Dust Bowl started in the Midwest and affected Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico and part of Nebraska. However, the physical damage was felt throughout the nation, when the winds took the dust beyond these states. What natural and manmade causes created this human tragedy? How did it contribute to the decline of the economy and the era known as the Great Depression? How did the people of the United States persevere through this tragedy, and will we have to go through another devastating era like this again?

The Jewish poet Heinrich Heine once said, "Where books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too." Did you know that the Chinese government uses “The Great Firewall” of China to monitor and prohibit any dissent against the Chinese government?(Mark Jacob and Stephan Benzkofer) These kind of actions are called acts of censorship and most of them are against the 1st amendment, law prohibiting that Congress can’t pass a law that establishes religion, or restricts the freedom of speech in America . Censorship is when a government or social group regulates the content in movies, books, and other types of media, and prohibits content they consider obscene or inappropriate. Another instance of censorship is when 20,000 books were burned in 1933 by the Germans in the beginning of the Nazi regime(Holocaust Encyclopedia). The grave incidents that happened on May 10, 1933 were a direct result of the German propaganda against anything Jewish and non-socialist.

The timeline of the dustbowl characterizes the fall of agriculture during the late 1920s, primarily the area in and surrounding the Great Plains. The Dust Bowl was created by a disruption in the areas natural balance. “With the crops and native vegetation gone, there was nothing to hold the topsoil to the ground” (“Dust Bowl and” 30). Agricultural expansion and dry farming techniques caused mass plowing and allowed little of the land to go fallow. With so little of the deeply rooted grass remaining in the Great Plains, all it took was an extended dry season to make the land grow dry and brittle. When most of the land had been enveloped by the grass dust storms weren’t even a yearly occurrence, but with the exponentiation of exposed land, the winds had the potential to erode entire acres. This manmade natural disaster consumed such a large amount of the South's agriculture that it had repercussions on the national level. The Dust Bowl was a “97-million-acre section

In the 1930s, there was a period of time known as the Dirty Thirties, or in other words the Dust Bowl. This period of time consisted of severe dust storms that significantly damaged the economy and agriculture of the U.S and Canadian prairies. The many causes of this crisis is one that has been discussed and debated for many years. However, the main cause of this entire debacle is indeed due to the horrendous drought that destroyed everything in sight. In addition, the other causes included overproduction and improper farming by farmers, high heat and winds, and lastly the unfortunate plague of grasshoppers.

During the 1930s, the United States faced various struggles such as The Great Depression- a time in which farmers suffered severely through many challenges. One of the challenges faced by farmers was the Dust Bowl tragedy; a dust storm affecting many farms throughout the midwest. The tragic Dust Bowl was a consequence due to lack of rainfall in the dry prairie lands, decreasing crop growth, and overproduction in farming causing more exposed land. It occurred because of advancements in farming technology, drought in the Great Plains, and the harvesting of grasslands.

The dust bowl, was a massive drought that began in 1931 and lasted for 8 years. Farmers, ranchers, and their families suffered more than any group other than the African Americans during the depression. “Black blizzards,” of dirt blew across the landscape and created a new illness known as “dust pneumonia.” Dust storms rolled through the Great Plains, creating huge, chocking clouds that

Tuesday, October 29, 1929 – otherwise known as Black Tuesday, is the day of the stock market crash. This crash caused a sudden and drastic change in the economy while also starting The Great Depression which lasted from1929--1940. Because of The Great Depression, President Hoover was disliked across the country, so when the people were electing a new President they choose Franklin Roosevelt. The new President was exceptionally eager to put in new laws and programs into effect to pull the country out of the depression. Although Franklin Roosevelt's policies gave the public relief, his New Deal only helped the public in a purely phycological way. Not only did the New Deal worsen the economy, it also was hastily put together, and it effected people fleeing the Dust Bowl for "better jobs" in California.

The Segregation Story, 1956 at Segregated Drinking Fountain, Mobile Alabama, 1956. The photograph is in the 1950’s when white and colored people were not treated equal. The young black girl was thirsty, but she was not allowed drink from the white only family but the colored only water fountain do to segregation. The story the image communicates is that it was a segregation story, time were colored and white people were divided and not treated equally.

“Black Tuesday” is cited to be the day that the Stock Market Crashed on October 19, 1929, and it is believed to have been the beginning of the Great Depression (Schultz). This led to many catastrophes in the United States economic system that lasted ten years, from 1929-1939 (Schultz). During this time period consumer spending declined, unemployment increased, and a severe drought throughout the U.S led to a reduction in agricultural labor, which resulted in even more unemployment (Schultz). Nevertheless, out of this crisis President Roosevelt created programs, throughout his presidency, in hopes of bettering the United States economy. These programs would eventually be called the New Deal and Second New Deal programs. These programs were

Total unemployment rose from just over three percent in 1929 to just over twenty five percent in 1933, and did not increase back up to just over seventeen percent in 1939. By 1933 wages had fallen in every industry, with construction being affected the worst, where wages had dropped by half. Wages in 1933 were twenty five percent lower than in 1929. These decreases in wages caused decreases in purchasing across the board. Durable and nondurable sales alike decreased. Nondurable goods fell by forty one percent, where durable goods suffered the most and declined by sixty two percent. In the midst of the depression farmers also had a difficult time where usually they would have been able to survive. Unfortunately, the Great Plains were hit hard with both a drought and dust storms. The dust storms destroyed everything in their paths, leaving farmers without their crops. Small farmers were hit the hardest. Even before the dust storms hit, the invention of the tractor drastically cut the need for manpower on farms. The small farms were usually already in debt, borrowing money for seed and paying it back when their crops came in. When the dust storms damaged the crops, not only could the small farmer not feed himself or his family, he could not pay back his debt. Banks would foreclose on the farms and the farmer and his family would be both homeless and unemployed. Millions of people were out of work across the United States. Many people hit the road