The Great Depression

1929 - early 1940s

 economic boom of the "Roaring Twenties"
 Calvin Coolidge, 30th president - 1921-1929
 the Jazz Age
 women smoking, drinking, and wearing short
skirts
 average American busy buying automobiles and
household appliances, and speculating in the
stock market
 imbalance between the rich and the poor
 Henry Ford with a Model T
in 1921. About one million
Model T's were produced
that year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkqz3lpUBp0&feature=related
 The Jazz Age in literature
 F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby –
1925 - Valley of ashes - the downfall of
the American dream

“Pansy clubs”
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=rTQvDCYY5E8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3svvCj4yhYc
 Warner Bros. in the Pre-Code Era

Barbara Stanwyck, pimped

by her father, gets ready
to brain a would-be
customer in Babyface (1933)

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang - 1932

 On Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the
stock market crashed, triggering the Great
Depression, the worst economic collapse
in the history of the modern industrial
world.
 more than 15 million Americans (one-
quarter of the workforce) became
unemployed.
 President Herbert Hoover, underestimated
the seriousness of the crisis
 economic program to help finance
businesses and banks
 Foreclosure of farms
 The “Oakies” and “Arkies”
 FDR
 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, rich governor
from New York
 offered Americans a New Deal
 elected in a landslide victory in 1932
 Emergency Banking Relief Act
 liberal political alliance of labor unions,
blacks and other minorities, some farmers
and others receiving government relief,
and intellectuals.
 Eleanor Roosevelt championed black rights, and
New Deal programs prohibited discrimination.
 The Civil Conservation Corps (CCC) , The Federal
Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), created
in 1933, etc.
 The Great Depression and the New Deal
changed forever the relationship between
Americans and their government. Government
involvement and responsibility in caring for the
needy and regulating the economy came to be
expected.
 The Drought
 "If you would like to have your heart
broken, just come out here," wrote Ernie
Pyle, a reporter in Kansas.
 The Dust Bowl
 Kansas, Southeastern Colorado,
Oklahoma, the northern two-thirds of
Texas, and northeastern New Mexico
 Wheat crops, in high demand during
World War I, exhausted the topsoil
 Black Sunday (April 14, 1935)
 "The land just blew away; we had
to go somewhere."
 Kansas preacher, June, 1936
 Exodus to California
 John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath",
 Migrants took up the work of Mexican
migrant workers
 Mexicans lost citizenship
The Works Progress Administration
(WPA)

 Work relief program created by FDR and

his New Deal
 employees built bridges, roads, public
buildings, public parks and airports.
 Social Security Act of 1935 - system of
insurance for the aged, unemployed and
disabled based on employer and employee
contributions
 References
 http://history1900s.about.com/library/photos/blygd21.ht
m
 http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_displa
y.cfm?HHID=442
 http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/
overview.htm
 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/tguide/
index.html
 http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/17/04b_warner.html
 http://faculty.pittstate.edu/~knichols/jazzage.html