Post on 29-Jan-2016
Chapter 25
Section 3Life During the
Depression
Women’s Roles
Women worked in the homes, sewing their own clothes, baking their own bread, and canning their own vegetables.
Francis PerkinsFirst woman to serve in a president’s cabinet.
Hattie Caraway
First woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate.
Eleanor Roosevelt often was called her husband’s “ears and eyes.”
Dust Bowl“black blizzards
Dust Bowl continues…. What were the causes? Farmers had cleared acres for wheat farmingSevere drought in 1931Strong prairie winds blew the soil away
Hardest hit was western Kansas and Oklahoma, northern Texas, and eastern Colorado and New Mexico.
Thousands of the Dust Bowl farmers went bankrupt and had to give up their farms. About 400,000 farmers migrated to California and became migrant workers, moving from place to place to harvest fruits and vegetables.
In the South, more than half of the African American population had no jobs.
Seeking more opportunities, about 400,000 African Amer. Men, women, and children migrated to Northern cities during the 1930s.
President Roosevelt appointed a number of African Americans to federal posts. He had a group of advisers known as the Black Cabinet.
In 1939 opera singer Marian Anderson was denied permission to sing in Constitution Hall . Mrs. Roosevelt arranged her to present a concert at the Lincoln Memorial
The 1930s did bring some benefits to Native Americans. John Collier, introduced a set of reforms known as
the Indian New Deal
Collier halted the sale of reservation land, got jobs for 77,000 Native Americans and found funding to build new reservation schools.
The Indian Reorganization ActRestored tradition tribal government and provided money for land purchases to enlarge some reservations.
As the Great Depression deepened, resentment against Mexican Americans grew. Many lost their jobs. Politicians and labor unions demanded that Mexican Americans be forced to leave the U.S. Authorities gave them a one-way ticket to Mexico and rounded them up and shipped them south across the border.
The Depression produced 2 separate trends in entertainment and the arts.
Escapism – forget problemsSocial criticism – suffering
of Depression America
Radio became popular. Daytime dramas were called soap operas.
Adventure Programs: Dick Tracy The Lone Ranger Superman
Every week 85 million people went to the movie theaters.
Fleeing the Dust Bowl
Written by John Steinbeck
Civil War Era
Written byMargaret Mitchell
Photographer:Margaret Bourk-WhiteRecorded the plight of American farmers.
Photographer:Dorothea Lange took gripping photographs of migrant workers
Painters:Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton showed ordinary people confronting the hardships of Depression life.