Struggling to Get By (A)

1. Struggling to Get By (A) • People without jobs were often going hungry • Bread lines Sometimes a block long, this was a line in which you could receive free food • Soup Kitchens  Private organizations would set these up to give meals to the poor • Many people were evicted from their homes and farms and were homeless for the first time in their lives • Hoovervilles shantytowns consisting of shacks on unused or public lands; named after Herbert Hoover since he was often blamed for the economic crisis • Hobos homeless wanderers that searched the country for a better life; often they would sneak onto trains to travel the nation

2. Breadline Hooverville

3. The Dust Bowl (B) • A major drought hit the Great Plains, and without grass or wheat to hold the soil, it turned to dust • Dust Bowl  Barren wheat fields from Dakotas to Texas caused by drought, heavy winds, and lack of prairie grass • Winds whipped the dust into the air, blackening the sky for hundreds of miles • Humans and animals would die of suffocation if caught outside during a dust storm • People began to move west in hopes of a better life • Okies migrants from the Oklahoma area that settled in California • Once in California, many remained homeless and lived in roadside camps

4. Dust Storm Okies

5. Hollywood (C) • During the 1930s, 60 million Americans went to the movies every week • Popular stars included Shirley Temple, Jackie Coogan, Judy Garland, and Groucho Marx • King Kong Released in 1933, was one of the first movies to use special effects • Walt Disney  Produced the first feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) • In 1939, MGM produced the Wizard of Oz, colorful musical that lifted the depressed spirits of the era • Also in 1939, Gone with the Windwon nine academy awards, including one for Hattie McDaniel, who became the first African American to win one for her role in Gone with the Wind • Many films of the era also provide a social commentary of the public’s distrust of big business and government

6. The Wizard of Oz

7. On the Air (D) • Radio offered information and entertainment into people’s homes • Tens of millions of people listened to the radio daily • Comedians like Jack Benny, George Burns, and Gracie Allen, along with adventure tales of the Green Hornet and the Lone Ranger were very popular • Soap Operas  daytime radio dramas in which middle class families face illnesses, conflict and other problems • Given their name because the programs were often sponsored by laundry soap • On one famous occasion in 1938, audiences had a hard time discerning reality from fiction when they believed that Orson Welles narration of the War of the Worlds was really happening

8. War of the Worlds

9. Literature (E) • John Steinbeck  novelist who gave a face to the journalists’ tales of poverty and misfortune throughout the nation • Grapes of Wrath (1939)  Story of the Joad family fleeing from the Dust Bowl to California after losing their farm • William Faulkner  developed the technique of showing what his characters are thinking and feeling before they speak • Americans were first exposed to the lighter tones of comic strips and comic books, like Dick Tracy and Superman

10. Superman The Grapes of Wrath

11. Art (F) • Programs like the Federal Art Project, Federal Writers’ Project, and the Federal Theater Project offered a variety of job opportunities to artists • Photographers roamed the nation with the new 35mm camera, capturing images of the depression • Henry Luce  Created Life magazine; displayed striking photographs from the time • Dorothea Lange & Maraget Bourke-White  photographers that truly showed how the Great Depression and affected the average America • Thomas Hart Benton & Grant Wood  Painters whose styles were called the regionalist school • Work emphasized traditional American values, especially those of the mid-west and south • Wood’s most famous work of art was American Gothic

12. American Gothic California at Last