Honoring Dorothea Lange, the American documentary photographer and photojournalist who, through her snapshots and commentary, recorded the consequences of the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression and WWII in California.

Snapshots in black & white illustrate the human suffering and struggle to survive of farmers fleeing the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, and the internment of Japanese American citizens.

A walk through the past brings us back to today. Here we are, 95 years years after the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. Poverty is spiking in the country with the highest concentration of billionaires in the world, the U.S.A. Through the machinations of the billionaires and fossil fuel corporations, the White House has rolled back progress in dealing with the climate crisis. Remember the suffering and loss caused by the Dust Bowl? Remember the devastation caused by the Great Depression? I don’t. I wasn’t even born yet. But we have much to learn from that bleak period. Much that applies to our times, to 2026 and beyond. For information on those times, see my blog post https://oshahayden.com/honoring-dorothea-lange-95-years-later/

After experiencing the live performance of Last West Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, this is what floated up for me. https://svma.org/exhibition/last-west/

For more: https://oshahayden.com/

RELEVANT HISTORY

The DUST BOWL

“Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were plowed and planted.

Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually, the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.

With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.”

“In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.”

“In his 1939 book The Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land."

Library of Congress US History

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