Newspaper Project: The Dust Bowl

Students travel back in time to 1935. They are on the staff of a hometown newspaper in the heart of Oklahoma. Their job is to create the “Dust Bowl” issue of the paper.

Standards
Social Studies
Grade 10

History, Benchmark F
The United States in the 20th Century
10. Analyze the causes and consequences of major political, economic and social developments of the 1930s with emphasis on:

b. The Dust Bowl.

Language Arts
Grade 10

Writing Process
All indicators apply.

Writing Applications, Benchmark D
4. Write informational essays or reports, including research, that:

a. Pose relevant and tightly drawn questions that engage the reader.
b. Provide a clear and accurate perspective on the subject.
c. Create an organizing structure appropriate to the purpose, audience and context.
d. Support the main ideas with facts, details, examples and explanations from sources.
e. Document sources and include bibliographies.

Writing Conventions
All indicators apply.

Research, Benchmarks B, C, D and E
2. Identify appropriate sources and gather relevant information from multiple sources (e.g., school library catalogs, online databases, electronic resources and Internet-based resources).

3. Determine the accuracy of sources and the credibility of the author by analyzing the sources’ validity (e.g., authority, accuracy, objectivity, publication date and coverage, etc.).

4. Evaluate and systematically organize important information, and select appropriate sources to support central ideas, concepts and themes.

5. Integrate quotations and citations into written text to maintain a flow of ideas.

6. Use style guides to produce oral and written reports that give proper credit for sources and include an acceptable format for source acknowledgement.

7. Use a variety of communication techniques, including oral, visual, written or multimedia reports, to present information that supports a clear position about the topic or research question and to maintain an appropriate balance between researched information and original ideas.

Procedure

1. If possible, have the students watch a video about the Dust Bowl so they will have a better understanding of it. An example of an appropriate video might be “Surviving the Dust Bowl” from the PBS American Experience Series.
   
   If this is not possible, read them the following information from the American Experience Web site:

Lured by the promise of rich, plentiful soil, thousands of settlers came to the Southern Plains, bringing farming techniques that worked well in the North and East. The farmers subsequently plowed millions of acres of grassland, only to have the rains stop in the summer of 1931. The catastrophic eight-year drought that followed led observers to rename the region “The Dust Bowl.”

The Dust Bowl exodus was the largest migration in American history. By 1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the Plains states; of those, 200,000 moved to California. When they reached the border, they did not receive a warm welcome, as described in this 1935 excerpt from Collier’s magazine. “Very erect and primly severe, [a man] addressed the slumped driver of a rolling wreck that screamed from every hinge, bearing and coupling. ‘California’s relief rolls are overcrowded now. No use to come farther,’ he cried. The half-collapsed driver ignored him — merely turned his head to be sure his numerous family was still with him. They were so tightly wedged in that escape was impossible. ‘There really is nothing for you here,’ the neat trooperish young man went on. ‘Nothing, really nothing.’ And the forlorn man on the moaning car looked at him, dull, emotionless, incredibly weary, and said: ‘So? Well, you ought to see what they got where I come from.’ ”

The Los Angeles police chief went so far as to send 125 policemen to act as bouncers at the state border, turning away “undesirables.” Called “the bum brigade” by the press and the object of a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, the LAPD posse was recalled only when the use of city funds for this work was questioned.

Arriving in California, the migrants were faced with a life almost as difficult as the one they had left. Many California farms were corporate-owned. They were larger and more modernized than those of the southern plains, and the crops were unfamiliar. The rolling fields of wheat were replaced by crops of fruit, nuts and vegetables. Like the Joad family in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, some 40 percent of migrant farmers wound up in the San Joaquin Valley, picking grapes and cotton. They took up the work of Mexican migrant workers, 120,000 of whom were repatriated during the 1930s. Life for migrant workers was hard. They were paid by the quantity of fruit and cotton picked, with earnings ranging from 75 cents to $1.25 a day. Out of that, they had to pay 25 cents a day to rent a tar-paper shack with no floor or plumbing. In larger ranches, they often had to buy their groceries from a high-priced company store.

The sheer number of migrants camped out, desperate for work, led to scenes such as that described by John Steinbeck in his novel, The Grapes of Wrath. “Maybe he needs two hunderd men, so he talks to five hunderd, an’ they tell other folks, an’ when you get to the place, they’s a thousan’ men. This here fella says, ‘I’m payin’ 20 cents an hour.’ An’ maybe half a the men walk off. But they’s still five hunderd that’s so goddamn hungry they’ll work for nothin’ but biscuits. Well, this here fella’s got a contract to pick them peaches – or chop that cotton. You see now? The more fellas he can get, less he’s gonna pay. An’ he’ll get a fella with kids if he can.”

As roadside camps of poverty-stricken migrants proliferated, growers pressured sheriffs to break them up. Groups of vigilantes beat up migrants, accusing them of being communists, and burned their shacks to the ground. To help the migrants, Roosevelt’s Farm Security Administration built 13 camps, each temporarily housing 300 families in tents built on wooden platforms. The camps were self-governing communities, and families had to work for their room and board.

When migrants reached California and found that most of the farmland was tied up in large corporate farms, many gave up farming. They set up residence near larger cities in shacktowns called Little Oklahomas or Okievilles, on open lots local landowners divided into tiny subplots and sold cheaply, for $5 down and $3 in monthly installments. They built their houses from scavenged scraps, and lived without plumbing and electricity. Polluted water and a lack of trash and waste facilities led to outbreaks of typhoid, malaria, smallpox and tuberculosis.

Over the years, they replaced their shacks with real houses, sending their children to local schools and becoming part of the communities, although they continued to face discrimination when looking for work, and were called “Okies” and “Arkies” by the locals, regardless of where they came from.

This excerpt is from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/peopleevents/pandeAMEX08.html

2. Armed with this information, divide the students in the class into groups of three.

3. Each group is to create a newspaper about the Dust Bowl that contains at least seven of articles listed on the handout The Dust Bowl Newspaper.

4. Students may use their texts or Web resources. Some Web resources are listed at http://www.WesternReservePublicMedia.org/decades.

5. Students may create their newspaper using poster board or electronic programs such as Publisher or PageMaker.

Material

• Poster board, glue
• Markers
• Textbook or Internet resources
• Computer access

Resources

• About the Dustbowl http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/depression/dustbowl.htm

• American Experience: Dustbowl http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/

• The 1930’s Dustbowl http://www.ptsi.net/user/museum/dustbowl.html

• People and Events of the Dustbowl http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/peopleevents/index.html

• Timeline of the Dustbowl http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/timeline/index.html

• Voices from the Dustbowl — Some text versions of oral histories http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/afctshtml/tshome.html

Evaluation

Newspaper Rubric