Volume 12 , Issue 18

Living History Farm History of 1930's

The Living History Farm website states, "Farming in the 1930s on the Great Plains was perhaps the most difficult occupation in the world. Farmers not only faced a global economic slow down of historic proportions, but they also faced one of the worst, longest droughts in America's history."

"People around the world had no money to buy the crops and animals that farmers produced, and the drought made it almost impossible to plant and harvest the crops in the first place. As a result, many farmers lost their farms. Many moved West out of the Great Plains of the United States, looking for any kind of work they could find. Many became migrant farm laborers on the West Coast."

Things were not easy with the drought and depression that deepened on the Great Plains. Let us not forget the bank failures, stock market crash and how all of this affected the farmers / ranchers and others during the 1930's. People were forced off their lands looking for work and a better life for their families.

Farming In the 1930s gives this interesting insight/history of the 1930s Dust Bowl / Depression, "As the 'double whammy' of drought and depression deepened on the Great Plains, more and more farmers gave up or were forced off of their land and lost their land to foreclosures. There was the relentless march of new tractors, which meant that the farmers who were able to scrape together enough money to buy a tractor could buy out their neighbors. Fewer farmers farmed more land."

This website continues to say, "Some went to cities. But many decided to head west. In fact, during the 30s hundreds of thousands left the plains for the West Coast. So many migrated from Oklahoma that they were dubbed "Okies" in the popular press. For years, California, Oregon and Washington had been growing. Many who were pushed off of the plains were pulled west because they had relatives who had moved to the coastal areas. And the boosters of California had advertised that the state offered a perfect climate and an abundance of work in the agricultural industry."

BUT -- When the Dust Bowl Refugees arrived on the West Coast, they were not given the welcome and hope many were searching.

Black Sunday - 14 april 1935

I doubt that the young people will remember the "Black Sunday" of 14 April 1935, when the most visible evidence of how the Dust Bowl days struck the Great Plains and blew its top soil all the way to the East coast.

This NW Okie did not experience it either, but my parents and grandparents stayed and lived through it. I have read, heard stories of that day when tons of topsoil were blown off barren fields and carried in dusty storm clouds for hundreds of miles. Even as far as the East Coast. Day became night.

The driest regions of the plains were found around Southeastern Colorado, Southwest Kansas and the Panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas.

It affected the entire region and the entire country. In 1932, 14 dust storms were recorded on the Plains. In 1933, there were 38 storms. By 1934, it was estimated that 100 million acres of farmland had lost all or most of the topsoil to the winds. It was April, 1935 that saw weeks of dust storms. The cloud that appeared on the horizon Sunday, 14 April 1935 was said to be the worst. Winds were reportedly clocked at 60mph just before it hit.

The livinghistoryfarm.org quoted Avis D. Carlson, who wrote in a New Republic article, "The impact is like a shovelful of fine sand flung against the face. People caught in their own yards grope for the doorstep. Cars come to a standstill, for no light in the world can penetrate that swirling murk... We live with the dust, eat it, sleep with it, watch it strip us of possessions and the hope of possessions. It is becoming Real."

The impact of "Black Sunday" was felt all over the united States. The dust storm arrived in Washington, DC all the way from the Great Plains. The dusty gloom spread over the nation's capital and blotted out the sun. Congress passed the Soil Conservation Act to help this from happening again.

I know that the label "Okie" came about during the depression and dust bowl days when residents of Nebraska, the Panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas, Arkansas, Western Kansas, eastern New Mexico, Southeastern Colorado headed west toward California. BUT -- That doesn't mean that we have to accept and look at the word "Okie" as something degrading.

What is so wrong with re-defining the term "Okie" and remembering the reasons for so many heading West? They were not all Oklahomans. Texas, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska and surrounding States were lumped into that term of "Okie."
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