Struggling%20to%20Get%20By%20(A)

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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

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Breadline
Hooverville
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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

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Dust Storm
Okies
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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 Wind won 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 publics distrust of big
  business and government

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The Wizard of Oz
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On the Air (D)

• Radio offered information and entertainment into
  peoples 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

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War of the Worlds
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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

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Superman
The Grapes of Wrath
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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
• Woods most famous work of art was American
  Gothic

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American Gothic
California at Last