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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Robert Boots McCoy Talks About When The Rains Returned
S1 -
Robert Boots McCoy talks about when the rains returned.
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First Look | Just Like Midnight
S1 - 20s
Survey the causes of the worst man-made ecological disaster in U.S. history: the catastrophic dust storms of the 1930s.
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Robert Boots McCoy Talks About Wheat Prices
S1 -
Robert Boots McCoy talks about wheat prices.
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The Dust Bowl Intro
S1 -
The Dust Bowl was a decade-long natural catastrophe of biblical proportions and the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history. It is the classic tale of humans pushing too hard on nature and nature pushing back during a period of economic boom and bust in the 1920s and 1930s.
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Arthur Rothstein
S1 - 3m
Arthur Rothstein was 21 years old when he went to No Man's Land to take pictures for the federal government's Resettlement Administration.
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Okies
S1 -
Woody Guthrie sings “I Ain’t Got No Home” and talks of how the migrant families traveling to California inspired him. The immigrant population explodes in California as thousands of people move there to find work and a better life. Those from the Dust Bowl, whether they are from Oklahoma or not, are called “Okies.”
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Two Midnights and a Jug
S1 -
The dust storms start rolling into the southern Great Plains.
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New Deal Programs
S1 -
Help came to the Great Plains by way of New Deal programs.
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Mr. Huff
S1 - 4m 33s
Raymond Huff, Superindendent of Schools of Union County hired the entire town to build the new high school in Clayton, NM. He used the WPA to save the County.
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Sanora's Return
S1 - 3m 26s
Sanora Babb, a journalist from No Man's Land, returns to her childhood home and is struck by the leveling of social distinction between her old neighbors.
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Tex Pace
S1 - 5m 8s
Tex Pace left the panhandle for CA and convinced his family to follow him. He lived and worked in Visalia, CA in a new work camp. He met his wife Dorothy at a camp talent show and got married at the local movie theater.
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