Great Depression: The Dust Bowl

Free ebook including primary sources from the Library of Congress.

Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection is an online presentation of selections... documenting the everyday life of residents of Farm Security Administration (FSA) migrant work camps in central California in 1940 and 1941.

The collection as a whole consists of approximately 18 hours of audio recordings (436 titles on 122 recording discs), 28 graphic images (prints and negatives), and 1.5 linear feet of print materials including administrative correspondence, field notes, recording logs, song text transcriptions, dust jackets from the recording discs with handwritten notes, news clippings, publications, and ephemera. This online presentation provides access to a selection of items from this collection including 371 audio titles, 23 graphic images, a sampling of the dust jackets, and all the print material in the collection.

primary sources from Library of Congress; photographs, audio

What if you had lived in the Dust Bowl?

You are about to embark on an experience that will show you what life was like on the southern Great Plains during the Dust Bowl. On your journey you will learn about the changing market and weather conditions and be asked to make decisions about whether to play it safe and keep your farm the same size or expand it for a greater profit. You will also meet several of your "neighbors," who are doing their best to make it. Some will stay on the land, trying to scrap out a living. Others will say "enough" and head west. What choices will you make?