THE “DIRTY THIRTIES”: FROM WHEAT BOOM TO DUST BOWL

1. THE “DIRTY THIRTIES”:FROM WHEAT BOOM TO DUST BOWL Florida International University students Michelle Narganes and Brian Villar present artifacts from The Wolfsonian-FIU library and a series of photographic images from the Library of Congress documenting the greatest man-made ecological disaster of the twentieth century.

2. It Began with a Prosperous Farming Industry Beginning in the late nineteenth century, farming families began to settle the Great Plains, plowing under the native grasses and planting wheat.

4. In the early twentieth century, with the encouragement of the Homestead Act and the low-cost of land, many more farming folk were attracted to this relatively barren and unforgiving region.

6. The demand for wheat during the First World War brought in handsome returns. Wheat prices fell precipitously after the war, however, forcing farmers to compensate by planting even more wheat in the ecologically-sensitive region.

9. Great Plains farmers were so desperate to increase income that they over plowed, overplanted, and overgrazed the land on the Great Plains.

11. Decades of poor agricultural techniques combined with natural cycles of drought to cause the environmental disaster of the dust bowl in the 1930s. 

13. During the so-called “dirty thirties,” numerous violent dust storms rolled across the Great Plains. The largest dust storm hit the Midwest on “Black Sunday,” April 14, 1935.

16. Living conditions in the region not only became difficult and actually life-threatening. Simple day-to-day chores were made impossible due to the frequent storms and near-constant dust particles suspended in the air. Young children and the elderly often died from the newly-coined respiratory illness, “dust pneumonia.”

19. Drought, dust storms, and desertification forced nearly 2.5 million people from the Great Plains area, the largest migration in US history in such a short period of time.

21. As soon as Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933, he began to enact policies designed to aid those affected by the dusters. Within his first 100 days as president he brought programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corp (C.C.C.) into being, charged with spearheading efforts in reforestation, combating soil erosion, and protecting the nation’s natural resources.

22. Right: C.C.C. Advertisement • Below: C.C.C. Sleeve Badge

23. C.C.C. Troop

24. The C.C.C. planted over 3 billion trees around the nation to hold the soil in place and to serve as a wind-break, particularly in the “dust bowl” states. Civilian Conservation Corp enrollees at work

25. One government official, Hugh Hammond Bennett, stressed the importance of soil conservation to Congress at the height of the crisis. His efforts led to the establishment of the Soil Conservation Service, which is still active today as the National Resource Conservation Service.

26. THE AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE IN THE C.C.C. (CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS) Florida International University student Robert Gueits investigates the idealize images and actual experiences of African American youths serving in the C.C.C. Camps located in the Southern states were segregated and under the command of white “officers.” But even in some of the desegregated camps in the North and West, both institutional and social discrimination were an inescapable part of camp life. The following photographs were produced to document the C.C.C. experience and are made available from the Library of Congress.

27. This propaganda poster depicts a smiling (but otherwise faceless) C.C.C. enrollee with an axe in his hand. The image emphasizes the outdoor work opportunities for unemployed youths that would take them out of the cities and put them to work in healthful wilderness environs.

28. This is a photograph of an African American C.C.C. enrollee. He is shouldering an axe as he works in the outdoors.

29. This photograph captures a group of African American boys doing hard manual labor in a “healthful” wilderness environment.

30. Another publicity photograph shows African American youths hard at work cutting lumber in a C.C.C. camp.

31. Just like their white counterparts, the photographs imply, African Americans did all sorts of work in the outdoors—planting trees, cutting timber, and roadwork. Here three Black C.C.C. recruits are photographed as they repair rail fences along the roadway.

32. This photograph shows African Americans in a C.C.C. machine shop learning a trade skill—in this case—welding.

33. Photographs were taken to document the fact that African Americans learned useful trades in the typical C.C.C. camp.

34. Although African American youths did enjoy new job opportunities in the C.C.C., not all of their experiences were uplifting. Many Black enrollees in non-segregated camps were assigned mess hall duties such as washing dishes, pealing potatoes, and throwing out the garbage. It was assumed that relegating black youths to such duties would minimize racial tensions and prevent hostile encounters.

35. ARTISTS ON THE LEFT Florida International University students Al Pena and Nicole Saltzmann examine the artwork of Socialist Lynd Kendall Ward (1905-1985), Giacomo Patri (1898-1978), and Communist Hugo Gellert (1892-1985). All three artists used their work to criticize the Capitalist system and call for transformative societal changes far beyond the “New Deal” programs put forward by the Roosevelt administration.

36. A committed Socialist, Lynd Ward saw the Great Depression as proof that the Capitalist system was economically moribund as well as morally bankrupt. Ward used his artistic talent as an engraver to create numerous block books or graphic stories without words. His powerful black & white images were intended to bridge linguistic and cultural barriers and to reach out to the semi-literate working classes of the world.

37. BUILDINGS Lynd Ward’s buildings have an overbearing and brooding quality to them. Like giant silent sentinels, they tower over those trapped within their high walls. Factories resemble prisons and the persons in the images appear lost within the labyrinth-like spaces created by the high angular walls.

40. URBAN ALIENATION There is an implicit irony in the skyscrapers that figure in Lynd Ward’s block prints: although constructed by working men, this new cityscape is dominated by Capitalist “robber barons” and working class families can find no place within.

42. CAPITALISTS According to Lynd Ward, the capitalist was driven by an insatiable appetite for money and power. In his artwork they act as wicked tempters of the innocent or as ruthless exploiters of the working class. They are evil and greed personified and are unflatteringly pictured as bloated and gluttonous “social parasites” sporting top hats.

44. A DYING BROOD Other of Lynd Ward’s images of businessmen deliberately link them to images of death and dying. While one gaunt figure in top hat resembles the Grim Reaper himself, other businessmen are likened to the moribund Capitalist system itself and are depicted as old, balding men on their deathbed.

46. STRIKES To emphasize the common plight of the working classes, Lynd Ward often depicted striking workers in tightly packed spaces, though union organizers and demonstration speakers might be singled out to invest them with the status of visionaries or martyrs. Banners and picket signs also figure prominently in his prints. These might be engulfed by dark clouds to indicate the dark struggles of the masses or highlighted by beams of “heavenly light.”

48. THE POLICE Lynd Ward’s work often called attention to the fact that the police were often used to attack demonstrators and to break up strikes during the Great Depression. Ward’s policemen have an automaton-like quality to them. Their faces betray little or no emotion at all as they mercilessly beat peaceful protestors and working person with their nightsticks.