Fireside chats dust bowl3/31/2024 Because they occurred in the midst of the Great Depression, dealing with the dust storms was all the more difficult. The destructive wind storms that hit the plains of the American West in the 1930s rank among the greatest natural disasters of all times. Help your students understand the problems Americans were facing during the Great Depression. Introduce this dramatic era in our nation's history to today's students through photographs, songs and interviews with people who lived through the Dust Bowl. The ballads of Woody Guthrie, the novels of John Steinbeck and the WPA photographs of artists such as Dorothea Lange have embedded images of the Dust Bowl in the American consciousness. Woody Guthrie (1912-1967), from "Dust Storm Disaster " We rattled down the highway to never come back again." We loaded our jalopies and piled our families in, It covered up our tractors in this wild and windy storm. It covered up our fences, it covered up our barns, Was now a rippling ocean of dust the wind had blown. We saw outside our windows where wheat fields they had grown When we looked out this morning we saw a terrible sight: This storm took place at sundown and lasted through the night, You could see that dust storm coming, the cloud looked deathlike black,Īnd through our mighty nation, it left a dreadful track. There struck the worst of dust storms that ever filled the sky: Hoffman."On the fourteenth day of April of nineteen thirty five, Their vision also inspired the next generation of American artists.Ī Dust Bowl of Dog Soup: Picturing the Great Depression features 50 photographs and prints from SCMA’s permanent collection by artists including Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Marian Post Wolcott, Martin Lewis, Peggy Bacon and Irwin D. These government-funded artists documented and, more importantly, shaped how people saw and felt about the Depression, bringing them out of the isolation of their own plights and opening their eyes to the suffering of others. These images brought home the harsh reality of the “other America,” while depictions of life in urban settings revealed the troubles next door. Hoffman’s etchings and photographs such as Arthur Rothstein’s famous image of a farmer walking from his house in a dust storm enabled people to imagine sand between their teeth and coal dust in their eyes. These artists helped to convince the American people - and Congress-of the urgent need to bring about the recovery of the heartland.Īrtist Irwin D. His straight talk promised hope and comfort to an ailing nation and highlighted what the government was doing to remedy the country’s ills.Īmong the innovative social programs that were launched at this time were the Resettlement Administration/Farm Security Administration (RA/FSA) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which hired photographers and artists to make the travails of rural Americans visible. Roosevelt’s conversational and intimate fireside radio chats brought him into people’s homes. The challenge was to find support for investments into programs and services directed primarily to the recovery of rural America, which most city folk had not experienced firsthand. In 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression, President Roosevelt needed to generate enthusiasm for his New Deal.
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