In the 1930s, people on the Great Plains endured one of America’s most destructive ecological disasters—the Dust Bowl. What caused fertile farms to turn to dust? How did people survive? What lessons can we learn from the Dust Bowl? We can find answers to these questions in the region’s history and geography. Centuries of human interaction with the environment intensified between 1850 and 1930 as farmers believed that they could overcome the area’s variable weather and climate. The 1930s disaster taught them that they were wrong. However, people survived the dust and the drought by forging new community ties and by embracing new government programs. People also discovered a new respect for the power of nature. The Dust Bowl experience demonstrates the complex relationship between humans and the dynamic Great Plains environment. Resources Related Readings: Sanora Babb. Whose Names Are Unknown. University of Oklahoma Press, 1979. Geoff Cunfer. On the Great Plains: Agriculture and Environment. Texas A&M University Press, 2005. Timothy Egan. The Worst Hard Time. Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Caroline Henderson. Edited by Alvin O. Turner. Letters From the Dust Bowl. University of Oklahoma Press, 2001. R. Douglas Hurt. The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History. Nelson-Hall, 1981. Pamela Riney-Kehrberg. Rooted in Dust: Surviving Drought and Depression in Southwestern Kansas. University Press of Kansas, 1994. John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath. Viking Press, 1939. Donald Worster. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. Oxford University Press, 1979. Music: Woody Guthrie. Dust Bowl Ballads. RCA Victor, 1940. On the Web: The Dust Bowl: A Film by Ken Burns http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/dustbowl/ The National Drought Mitigation Center http://drought.unl.edu/DroughtBasics/DustBowl.aspx Library of Congress Teacher’s Guide to the Dust Bowl Migration http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/primarysource- sets/dust-bowl-migration/ Documentaries: Ken Burns, director. Dust Bowl. Florentine Films, 2012. Chana Gazit, producer. American Experience: Surviving the Dust Bowl. Steward/Gazit Productions, 1998. Dan Tyrrell, producer. When Weather Changed History: Dust Bowl. The Weather Channel, 2008. The Geography and People of the Plains Living on the Plains depended on rainfall, but many people and animals thrived there. Bison shared the Plains with other animals and with different groups of indigenous people for thousands of years. Comanche, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and others called the Southern Plains home. After 1800, Native Americans had to share the Plains with other people. An increase in hunting led to the decline of the bison, and as the human presence in the region grew, towns and ranches occupied more of the Plains. Humans came to rely more on agriculture, and farming made them dependent on the rain. The fields, the grass, the bison, and the dramatic swings in weather inspired several distinct traditions of art based on the ecology and cultures of the Great Plains, from Native American artists to novelists like Willa Cather. Artists who captured the intense connection of people to their environment in the Plains spoke for the many migrants, farmers, and shop keepers who had little time to draw or write fiction. Bison herd at water, circa 1905 Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division FRONT COVER BACK COVER DUST, DROUGHT, AND DREAMS GONE DRY Farmer and sons walking in the face of a dust storm, 1936 Arthur Rothstein, photographer Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division A Traveling Exhibit and Public Programs for Libraries about the Dust Bowl Please visit ala.org/programming/dustbowl for a complete list of library host sites. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. ALA DUST BOWL BROCHURE.indd 1 6/11/14 11:30 AM
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Transcript
In the 1930s, people on the Great Plains
endured one of America’s most destructive
ecological disasters—the Dust Bowl. What
caused fertile farms to turn to dust? How did
people survive? What lessons can we learn
from the Dust Bowl?
We can find answers to these questions in
the region’s history and geography. Centuries
of human interaction with the environment
intensified between 1850 and 1930 as
farmers believed that they could overcome
the area’s variable weather and climate. The
1930s disaster taught them that they were
wrong. However, people survived the dust
and the drought by forging new community
ties and by embracing new government
programs. People also discovered a new
respect for the power of nature. The Dust
Bowl experience demonstrates the complex
relationship between humans and the
dynamic Great Plains environment.
Resources
Related Readings:
Sanora Babb. Whose Names Are Unknown. University of
Oklahoma Press, 1979.
Geoff Cunfer. On the Great Plains: Agriculture and Environment.
Texas A&M University Press, 2005.
Timothy Egan. The Worst Hard Time. Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
Caroline Henderson. Edited by Alvin O. Turner. Letters From the
Dust Bowl. University of Oklahoma Press, 2001.
R. Douglas Hurt. The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social
History. Nelson-Hall, 1981.
Pamela Riney-Kehrberg. Rooted in Dust: Surviving Drought
and Depression in Southwestern Kansas. University Press of
Kansas, 1994.
John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath. Viking Press, 1939.
Donald Worster. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s.
and accumulated like great snow drifts against buildings.
In response to the hostile conditions, farm families created
self-help groups to save their way of life. They made a virtue
out of staying on their farms through the dark years. Women
often added new duties to their already extensive work. Some
people left their farms and moved to the nearest urban center,
while others packed their meager belongings and went west,
especially to California. Many more farmers stayed. Historians
estimate that seventy to eighty percent of people in the region
of the Dust Bowl remained on their land. The intense physical
and psychological experiences of living through dust storms
inspired many artists to try to capture the essence of the
Dust Bowl. For example, Woody Guthrie sang ballads about
the suffering of ordinary folk on the Plains.
The Legacy of the Dust Bowl
Farmers who stayed in the Plains during the Dust Bowl
thought about the economics of agriculture and wondered
what the government might do to help. State and federal
programs to aid farmers in the Dust Bowl region increased in
the late 1930s. The Drought Relief Service, the Soil Erosion
Service, and the Agriculture Department all provided aid to
farmers. Government scientists tried to understand the causes
of the Dust Bowl, a tradition of investigation that continues
today. Scholars now have a better understanding of the
economic forces driving agriculture in the Plains during the
period, and scholars understand the endurance, cooperation, and
creative responses of local communities to the harsh conditions.
Our best bulwark against another ecological crisis on the
Plains remains our collective knowledge. How do we build
strong communities? How do we reimagine economic and
social systems that fit with the natural environment? The
history of the Dust Bowl can inform these discussions.
A man walks around his car during a dust storm, undatedH.H. Finnell CollectionCourtesy of Oklahoma State University Library, Special Collections & University Archives
(Background)
A Texas farm endures in the dust, 1938Dorothea Lange, photographerCourtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Agricultural fields and abandoned farmstead, eastern Montana, date unknownTerry Sohl, photographer Courtesy of United States Geological Survey
Prairie grasses being plowed under, Kansas, 1930sU.S. Soil Conservation ServiceCourtesy of Oklahoma State University Library, Special Collections & University Archives