Documenting the Dust Bowl

Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie is arguably the most influential American folk musician of the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his folk ballads, traditional and children’s songs, and improvised works, often incorporating political commentary. Woody Guthrie is closely identified with the Dust Bowl and Great Depression of the 1930s. His songs from that time period earned him the nickname “Dust Bowl Troubadour.” Learning Objectives The student will: Analyze how musical artists provided commentary on social and political issues of the day.

During the Great Depression, FDR's administration sought to document the economic crisis. Roosevelt's Farm Security Administration (FSA) was put in charge of the effort, which employed some of the country's most talented photographers.

Learn about the lives of famous Dust Bowl chroniclers, including folk singer Woody Guthrie, writer and journalist Sanora Babb, and photographers Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein. The Dust Bowl was a region of the Southwestern Great Plains of the United States that fell into an ecologically disastrous state during the 1930s. A combination of aggressive and poor farming techniques, coupled with drought conditions in the region, created massive dust storms that drove thousands from their homes and created a large migrant population of poor, rural Americans. Learning Objectives Students will understand and analyze how and why the federal government documented and memorialized 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.

Sanora Babb, a journalist from "No Man's Land," returned to her childhood home and was struck by the way the catastrophe had leveled the social distinction between her old neighbors, who had lost everything.

Arthur Rothstein was 21 years old when he went to "No Man's Land" to take pictures for the federal government's Resettlement Administration. Over the course of seven years the government would amass over 200,000 images of America in the 1930s.