Chapter 25 Section 3 Life During the Depression

Women’s Roles Women worked in the homes, sewing their own clothes, baking their own bread, and canning their own vegetables.

Francis Perkins First woman to serve in a president’s cabinet.

Hattie Caraway First woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate.

Eleanor Roosevelt often was called her husband’s “ears and eyes.”

Dust BowlBowl “black blizzards

Dust Bowl continues…. What were the causes?  Farmers had cleared acres for wheat farming  Severe drought in 1931  Strong prairie winds blew the soil away

Hardest hit was western Kansas and Oklahoma, northern Texas, and eastern Colorado and New Mexico.

Thousands of the Dust Bowl farmers went bankrupt and had to give up their farms. About 400,000 farmers migrated to California and became migrant workers, moving from place to place to harvest fruits and vegetables.

In the South, more than half of the African American population had no jobs. Seeking more opportunities, about 400,000 African Amer. Men, women, and children migrated to Northern cities during the 1930s.

President Roosevelt appointed a number of African Americans to federal posts. He had a group of advisers known as the Black Cabinet.

In 1939 opera singer Marian Anderson was denied permission to sing in Constitution Hall. Mrs. Roosevelt arranged her to present a concert at the Lincoln Memorial

The 1930s did bring some benefits to Native Americans. John Collier, introduced a set of reforms known as the Indian New Deal Collier halted the sale of reservation land, got jobs for 77,000 Native Americans and found funding to build new reservation schools.

The Indian Reorganization Act Restored tradition tribal government and provided money for land purchases to enlarge some reservations.

As the Great Depression deepened, resentment against Mexican Americans grew. Many lost their jobs. Politicians and labor unions demanded that Mexican Americans be forced to leave the U.S. Authorities gave them a one-way ticket to Mexico and rounded them up and shipped them south across the border.

The Depression produced 2 separate trends in entertainment and the arts.  Escapism – forget problems  Social criticism – suffering of Depression America

Radio became popular. Daytime dramas were called soap operas. Adventure Programs: Dick Tracy The Lone Ranger Superman

Every week 85 million people went to the movie theaters.

Fleeing the Dust Bowl Written by John Steinbeck

Civil War Era Written by Margaret Mitchell

Photographer: Margaret Bourk-White Recorded the plight of American farmers. Photographer: Dorothea Lange took gripping photographs of migrant workers

Painters: Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton showed ordinary people confronting the hardships of Depression life.