During the decade-long drought that turned the southern Plains into the Dust Bowl, the hardest hit area was centered on Boise City, Oklahoma, in a part of the Panhandle formerly known as No Man’s Land. And the worst storm of all hit on Palm Sunday, April 14, 1935—a day remembered as Black Sunday. Here the storm sweeps over a farmstead on its way toward Boise City.
Airs Tuesdays, April 23 & 30, 2013 at 8 p.m. on KPBS TV
THE DUST BOWL, a two-part, four-hour documentary by Ken Burns, premiered November 18-19, 2012. It was written and co-produced by longtime Burns collaborator Dayton Duncan.
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FSA photographer Dorothea Lange came across Florence Thompson and her children (pictured) in a pea pickers' camp in Nipomo, California, in March 1936. During the decade of Great Depression, California's population grew by more than 20 percent, an increase of 1.3 million people. More than half of the newcomers came from cities, not farms; one in six were professionals or white collar workers. Of the 315,000 who arrived from Oklahoma, Texas, and neighboring states, only 16,000 were from the Dust Bowl itself. But regardless of where they actually came from, regardless of their skills and their education and their individual reasons for seeking a new life in a new place, to most Californians - and to the nation at large - they were all the same. And they all had the same name: Okies.
Courtesy of Library of Congress
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As a black blizzard rolls in to Ulysses, Kansas, two women and a girl pose for a photograph before taking shelter.
Courtesy of Historic Adobe Museum
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In Lakin, Kansas, three children prepare to leave for school wearing goggles and homemade dust masks to protect them from the dust in 1935.
Courtesy of Joyce Unruh; Green Family Collection
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When Harry Forester lost his farm to the dust and Depression in Oklahoma, the family converted its truck into a modern-day covered wagon and migrated to California in 1936, where Forester had found work. Two of his daughters (Louise, front row, left, in cap; and Shirley, second row, second from right) help tell the story of their father's broken dreams and the journey to a new life.
Courtesy of Forester Family Collection
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The huge Black Sunday storm - the worst storm of the decade-long Dust Bowl in the southern Plains - as it approaches Ulysses, Kansas, April 14, 1935. Daylight turned to total blackness in mid-afternoon.
Courtesy of Historic Adobe Museum
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FSA photographer Arthur Rothstein captured this photograph of Art Coble and his sons, south of Boise City, Oklahoma, in April 1936. It became one of the iconic photographs of the Dust Bowl and one of the most reproduced photos of the twentieth century.
Courtesy of Library of Congress
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The huge Black Sunday storm - the worst storm of the decade-long Dust Bowl in the southern Plains - just before it engulfed the Church of God in Ulysses, Kansas, April 14, 1935. Daylight turned to total blackness in mid-afternoon.
Courtesy of Historic Adobe Museum
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An abandoned farm north of Dalhart, Texas, 1938. FSA photographer Dorothea Lange took the picture.
Courtesy of Dorothea Lange; Library of Congress
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During the decade-long drought that turned the southern Plains into the Dust Bowl, the hardest hit area was centered on Boise City, Oklahoma, in a part of the Panhandle formerly known as No Man’s Land. And the worst storm of all hit on Palm Sunday, April 14, 1935—a day remembered as Black Sunday. Here the storm sweeps over a farmstead on its way toward Boise City.
Courtesy of Associated Press
What if you had lived in the Dust Bowl?
You are about to embark on an experience that will show you what life was like on the southern Great Plains during the Dust Bowl. On your journey you will learn about the changing market and weather conditions and be asked to make decisions about whether to play it safe and keep your farm the same size or expand it for a greater profit. You will also meet several of your "neighbors," who are doing their best to make it. Some will stay on the land, trying to scrap out a living. Others will say "enough" and head west. What choices will you make? Get started
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Survey the causes of the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, when the frenzied wheat boom of the “Great Plow-Up,” followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s, nearly swept away the breadbasket of the nation.
See vivid interviews with 26 survivors of those hard times, combined with dramatic photographs and seldom-seen movie footage, that bring to life stories of incredible human suffering and equally incredible perseverance.
The documentary is also a morality tale about our relationship to the land that sustains us — a lesson we ignore at our peril.
Episode One: "The Great Plow Up" repeats on Tuesday, April 23, 2013 at 8 p.m. - In the first episode, feel the full force of the worst man-made environmental disaster in America’s history as survivors recall the terror of the dust storms, the desperation of hungry families and how they managed to find hope even as the earth and heavens seemed to turn against them.
Episode Two: "Reaping The Whirlwind" repeats on Tuesday, April 30, 2013 at 8 p.m. - In the second episode, experience the gradual relief as the families of the plains seek new lives in California and government conservation efforts — and a break in the drought in 1939 — eventually stabilize the soil and bring the farms back to life, but with dangers of another Dust Bowl facing future generations.
Ken Burns (PBS) is on Facebook, and you can follow @KenBurns on Twitter.
Survey the causes of the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, when the frenzied wheat boom of the “Great Plow-Up,” followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s, nearly swept away the breadbasket of the nation. See vivid interviews with 26 survivors of those hard times, combined with dramatic photographs and seldom-seen movie footage, that bring to life stories of incredible human suffering and equally incredible perseverance. The documentary is also a morality tale about our relationship to the land that sustains us — a lesson we ignore at our peril.
In the introduction to episode two, Woody Guthrie sings "The Great Dust Storm" as historians and survivors talk about the conditions of living in the Dust Bowl during the Depression. View music credits.
