The Depression Years:

1
The Depression Years

• Traveling Dusty Highways with Woody Guthrie

2
Woody GuthrieEarly Years

• 1912 born in Okemah, Oklahoma to
  Charles and Nora Guthrie
• 1919 sister, Clara, dies in a fire
• 1927 mother is hospitalized at Central
  State Hospital for the Insane in Normal,
  Oklahoma father moves to Pampa, Texas
  leaving Woody on his own

3
Boom to Bust1929 - 1935
4
AmericaInstitutions Fail

• 1929 stock market crashes Great
  Depression begins
• 1930 3.2 million people unemployed 6,000
  people sell apples on the streets of New York
• 1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected
  president drought begins in the Midwestern US
• 1932 1933 hundreds of banks fail
  unemployment rate rises to 25
• 1934 three-day dust storm moves 350
  million tons of dirt from the western US to the
  east

5
Woody GuthrieLife on the Road

• 1929 Nora Guthrie dies Woody moves to
  Pampa, Texas to join his father
• 1932 Woody joins a musical group,
• The Corncob Trio
• 1935 Woody composes his first
  songbook begins to write Dust Bowl
  ballads

6
The Dust Bowl1935 - 1940
7
AmericaHomelessness Leads to Hopelessness

• 1935 Great Dust Storm strikes the Great
  Plains Dust Bowl migration starts as Okies
  move west to California
• 1937 laborers strike for better working
  conditions in various US cities
• 1940 14 of US workers are unemployed

8
Woody GuthrieSongs for the People

• 1937 moved to Los Angeles, CA had
• a radio show on KFVD
• 1938 wrote about living conditions in migrant
  work camps
• 1939 sang at migrant work camps
• 1940 recorded Dust Bowl Ballads on Victor
  Records recorded for the Library of Congress
  composed first version of This Land is your Land

9
The New Deal1933 - 1937
10
AmericaFederal Government Steps In

• 1933 1935 - CCC, CWA, WPA created by Congress
  giving jobs to millions Federal Deposit
  Insurance Corporation created to protect bank
  deposits
• 1935 Social Security established
• 1939-1941 manufacturing increases 50 as the
  nation prepares for World War II
• 1940 FDR elected to third term as president

11
Woody GuthrieFrom Radio to Recordings

• 1941 joins the Almanac Singers
  composes songs about the Grand Coulee Dam
• 1943 - Publishes Bound for Glory joins the
  Merchant Marine
• 1952 diagnosed with Huntingtons
  disease
• 1967 dies in Queens, New York

12
Bibliography

• Library of Congress, Prints Photographs
  Division, FSA-OWI Collection, LC-USZ62-120588
• Library of Congress, Prints Photographs
  Division, FSA-OWI Collection, LC-USF33-021002-M4
  DLC
• Library of Congress, Prints Photographs
  Division, FSA-OWI Collection, LC-USF34-018262-C
  DLC
• Judd, Nathan. The Answer to the Greenback
  Dollar. 1940. The Charles L. Todd and Robert
  Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, Library of
  Congress, American Folklife Collection, (April
  2003).
• Library of Congress, Prints Photographs
  Division, FSA-OWI Collection, LC-USW3-016663-E
  DLC