"The storm took place at sundown; it lasted through the night, When we looked out the next morning, we saw a terrible sight, We saw outside our window where wheatfields they had grown, Was now a rippling ocean of dust the wind had blown." -- Woody Guthrie, The Great Dust Storm
We will start off with a little background information about the 1930's and what life was like at that time. Leading into the 1930's there was an 11% decline in Dow Jones industrial average which participated greatly in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, this day was forever called Black Thursday. The collapse of the stock market had many effects on the dust bowl it made it harder to purchase goods, put a lot of people out of their jobs, and caused very little money to circle through the economy in general.
In the dirty thirties there were many migrant workers coming up from Mexico looking for work on the many farms of the central United States. A migrant worker is a person who traveled from place to place picking ripe crops. They are absent from a permanent place of residence so that they may do seasonal work for the farmers. In the 1930’s the majority of workers were Mexican’s that came to California and other states to get away from the revolution that was happening.
A tenant farmer is someone who doesn't own the land they farm, it is rented out to them. They will pay the plantation owner in either cash or a share of the crop as a payment, so that the tenant farmer can use the land. Many farmers had challenges in their quest for independence, some remained debt free and saved enough money to buy their own land.
The many migrant workers and tenant farmers lost their jobs during the 1930;s because the dust bowl killed all of the crops. If there were no fields to work and no healthy soil for the tenant farmers to plant their crops in, there was no work for them. A lot of them ended up moving to California to work on the many plantations that were there.
Souces: http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/business/migrant-labor.html http://www.migrantclinician.org/issues/migrant-info/migrant.html
http://www.migrantclinician.org/issues/migrant-info/migrant.html
http://picturethis.museumca.org/timeline/depression-era-1930s/migrant-farm-workers/info
(1929-1939)
B. stock market crash October of 1929- start of the great depression
http://www.history.com/topics/great-depression
2. Black thursday is when Dow industrial average went down 11%, it participated in the Wall Street crash of 1929 and was a large factor leading into the Great Depression in the 1930’s.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/blackthursday.asp
3. Mass migration, increase of crime rate and the great plains lost population.
http://www.ushistory.org/us/48e.asp
4. They would plant their food/gardens in their backyards to save money during the great depression
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/garden/02depression.html
5. Franklin roosevelt was the creator and it was so significant because franklin tried to provided jobs to all those who were suffering during the great depression in the U.S.
6.Giggi Cortese which is now 81 has lived in Bridgeport all her life. Growing up during the Great Depression was hard she said but she gained strength from her family, friends
B.Dusko Condic grew up in Bridgeport in Chicago on the south side in a family of eight children. His mother was a widow. He says growing up in poverty during the Great Depression made him a stronger person.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97468008