Causes of the Great Depression

The stock market crashed on October 29, 1929, a day that would come to be known as "Black Tuesday." The crash punctured a speculative bubble that had been building throughout the 1920s, throwing one-and-a-half million Americans out of work. In three years, that number would triple. In response to the lower wheat prices, more wheat was planted. Learning Objective: Students will understand how the agricultural response to the Great Depression fueled the already dire ecological situation in the Great Plains, leading to the Dust Bowl.

The Great Depression was a decade-long period of severe economic distress in the United States, beginning with Black Tuesday stock market crash in October of 1929. Fifteen million Americans were unemployed at the height of the depression, and nearly half of the country’s banks had failed. During this same period, the Dust Bowl in the Southwestern Great Plains of the United States would drive thousands of poor, rural migrants out of their homes in search of food, shelter, and work. In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt launched a New Deal plan to restore public confidence, reform the banking industry, create jobs, and rebuild the country’s infrastructure. The activities within this media gallery ask students to perform an analysis of primary source images of the time period, screen a video segment, and answer discussion questions. Learning Objective: Students will analyze how photographers/photography captured the everyday struggles of Americans during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.