Episodes
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Reaping the Whirlwind
S1 E2 - 1h 55m
Black Sunday was only halfway through the decade-long crisis. The storms continued. The Great Depression still affected people. Government programs were instituted to help. Learn what FDR’s administration did to try to keep the southern Plains from becoming a North American Sahara desert. Find out why some residents finally decided they had to give up and move somewhere else and how some held on.
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The Great Plow-Up
S1 E1 - 1h 55m
The grasslands of the southern Plains were rapidly turned into wheat fields. Then following the early years of the drought, storms killed crops and livestock and literally rearranged the landscape. The worst storm of them all was on April 14, 1935—Black Sunday—a searing experience for everyone caught in it, including a young songwriter from Pampa, Texas, named Woody Guthrie.
Extras + Features
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Reform
S1 -
In the summer of 1936, Roosevelt takes a whistle-stop tour across the Midwest and Northern Plains to see the crisis himself. He inspires enthusiastic, but weary, audiences. At the same time, Hugh Bennett, head of the Soil Conservation Service, begins instituting his program of agricultural reform and offering incentives to those farmers who will adopt the new farming methods.
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Trying To Get Ahead
S1 -
Calvin Crabill talks about how his father drove a tractor at night to try to get ahead.
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Black Sunday
S1 -
Sunday April 14, 1935 became known as Black Sunday.
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CA Work
S1 -
People who moved to CA were known as Okies. They faced lots of discrimination from the local residents.
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Lessons Learned
S1 -
What have we learned from the Dust Bowl?
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Robert Boots McCoy Talks About Dust Storms
S1 -
Robert Boots McCoy talks about dust storms.
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Making The Dust Bowl | Eyewitnesses
S1 - 6m 45s
Ken Burns, Dayton Duncan, Julie Dunfey and Susan Shumaker talk about making The Dust Bowl, and how they discovered the incredible people to interview.
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Dale Coen Reads a Poem
S1 -
Dale Coen reads a poem he thinks his mother wrote.
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The Wheat Bubble Burst
S1 -
The stock market crashed on what came to be called Black Tuesday. In response to the lower wheat prices more wheat was planted.
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Photographers of the Dust Bowl
S1 - 4m 41s
During the Great Depression FDR's administration sought to document the economic crisis. Roosevelt's Farm Security Administration (FSA) was put in charge of the effort, which employed some of the country's most talented photographers.
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Woody Guthrie
S1 -
Woody Guthrie moves to Los Angeles in the second half of the 1930s and supports himself with odd jobs. He finally gets a radio show of his own and a newspaper column called “Woody Sez” and gains a reputation as a radical for sympathizing with the migrants.
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Low Valued Wheat
S1 -
Even thought wheat prices had plummeted, farmers went back to work in the fall.
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