The Dust Bowl

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The Dust Bowl

• An Introduction to the Dust Bowl and Migrant
  Workers in the 1930s

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• During the 1930s, the Great Plains region of the
  United States suffered from severe drought and
  wind erosion.
• Hardest hit were the Oklahoma and Texas
  panhandles, along with neighboring sections of
  Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico.

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Powerful dust storms swept across the dry land,
covering entire towns with dirt and debris.
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For nearly ten years, the drought and dust storms
continued, destroying farms and forcing people to
abandon their land.
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When they lost their farms, people packed their
possessions and left home.
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John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath, 1939
Families, tribes, dusted out, tractored
out..they streamed over the mountains, hungry
and restless -- restless as ants, scurrying to
find work to do -- to lift, to push, to pull, to
pick, to cut -- anything, any burden to bear, for
food.
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The Dust Bowl exodus was the largest migration in
American history.
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Of those millions, over 200,000 moved to
California.
By 1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the
Plains states.
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When they reached California,
people set up tents and camps to live in.
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• Those who made it to California didnt always get
  a warm welcome.
• Native Californians distrusted migrants, calling
  them Okies and Arkies, regardless of where
  they were from.
• Groups of vigilantes often attacked the migrant
  workers, accusing them of being thieves or
  Communists.

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John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath, 1939

• They said, These goddamned Okies are dirty and
  ignorant. These goddamned Okies are thieves.
  They'll steal anything. They've got no sense of
  property rights. They bring disease, they're
  filthy. We can't have them in the schools. We
  can't get these Okies get out of hand.

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Most migrants found work in the fields,
harvesting fruits, nuts, and vegetables.

• To support their families, many migrants worked
  long hours in the fields, picking fruit, nuts,
  and vegetables.

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The sheer number of migrants looking for work
kept the price of labor very low.

• For a whole days labor, migrant workers usually
  earned less than 1.00.

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Throughout the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl
migrants struggled to survive and worked hard
establish their own communities.By the time
World War II began, the nations economy had
improved considerablysome Dust Bowl migrants
even left California to fight in the war abroad.
Many of the descendents of the Dust Bowl still
reside in California today.
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CREDITS

• Photographs

http//images.google.com/ http//images.yahoo.com/
http//www.picturehistory.com/ History
Background
http//memory.loc.gov/ammem/afctshtml/tsme.html
http//http//www.usd.edu/anth/epa/dust.html
http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/peopleeven
ts/pandeAMEX06.html http//www.english.uiuc.edu
/maps/depression/dustbowl.htm Music Woody
Guthrie, Dust Bowl Ballads, Dust Bowl Blues.
1940 Text Steinbeck, John. The Grapes
of Wrath. New York Penguin, 1939