6th Grade: Unit 3
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Supplemental Book
Unit 3
th
6 Grade
6th Grade: Unit 3
DATE
1928
October 24,
1929
2
EVENT
Herbert Hoover elected 31st President of the United States
The stock market crashes.
On a day called "Black Thursday," stock market prices start to drop. The stock market "crashes" when prices
keep dropping and by the end of November, the stock market loses $30 billion.
1930
Hoovers says the worst is over.
President Herbert Hoover tells Americans that the economy will start to improve within the next 60 days. The
Great Depression is actually just getting started.
Severe drought and Dust Bowl conditions began to ruin farmers’ land, a condition that lasted until 1935.
February
1931
Food riots break out in the United States.
Food riots start in cities across the United States. Hungry Americans smash grocery store windows, take food,
and run away because they do not have any other way of getting food to eat.
Workers marched on Detroit, and “foreign workers” were deported.
1932
Roosevelt promises a "new deal."
While campaigning for president of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt promises Americans "a new deal."
The programs he creates after he is elected will be called The New Deal.
Stocks reached their lowest point.
November
1932
Franklin D. Roosevelt elected 32nd President of the United States.
Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected president for the first time. Many Americans did not think that President
Hoover did enough to help them and hope that Roosevelt will end the Depression.
1933
The Emergency Banking Act is passed.
Congress passes the Emergency Banking Act. By the end of the month, almost all of the banks that had closed
when the Depression started are open again.
More than 11,000 of the nation’s 25,000 banks closed.
Roosevelt announced a three-day “bank holiday” to prevent a third run on banks and to shore up the banking
system.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was established to insure bank deposits.
Unemployment reached its highest level, at 25%.
The Civilian Conservation Corps is created.
The first New Deal program, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) is created. Thousands of young men go to
camps to work on projects such as building parks, building roads, and fighting forest fires..
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The Tennessee Valley Authority is created.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, another New Deal program, brings electricity and jobs to Americans living in
the southern part of the United States.
1935
The Works Progress Administration puts Americans to work.
The Works Progress Administration is created. It puts Americans to work doing many types of jobs such as
writing, acting, building bridges, and building airports.
Social security is created.
The Social Security Act is signed. The Act provides money every month for senior citizens.
1936
Dorothea Lange takes the Migrant Mother photo.
Photographer Dorothea Lange takes photographs of a poor family working at a pea-picking camp in California.
One of the photos, called "Migrant Mother," is one of the most famous photographs to come from the Great
Depression.
FDR was elected to a second term as president.
1937
The economy goes through another recession.
After showing some improvement, the economy starts to suffer again when more Americans lose their jobs.
Many people begin to lose hope that things will ever get better.
1938
FDR asked Congress for an additional $3.75 billion to stimulate the still floundering economy.
1939
The Grapes of Wrath is published.
The book "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck is published. The book is about a family that is forced to
leave home and try to find work in California during the Great Depression.
1940
FDR was elected to a third term as president.
December 6,
1941
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor.
Japan bombs American ships at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Thousands of Americans are killed in the attack.
December 7,
1941
The Great Depression ends.
The United States declares war on Japan and joins World War II. The war creates money and jobs, so the
Great Depression ends soon after the U.S. goes to war.
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Franklin D. Roosevelt Biography
32th President (1933-1945) This information is from the Whitehouse: Presidents of the United
States
Assuming the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt
helped the American people regain faith in themselves. He brought hope as he promised prompt,
vigorous action, and asserted in his Inaugural Address, "the only thing we have to fear is fear
itself."
Born in 1882 at Hyde Park, New York--now a national historic site--he attended Harvard
University and Columbia Law School. On St. Patrick's Day, 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt.
Following the example of his fifth cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt, whom he greatly
admired, Franklin D. Roosevelt entered public service through politics, but as a Democrat. He
won election to the New York Senate in 1910. President Wilson appointed him Assistant
Secretary of the Navy, and he was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1920.
In the summer of 1921, when he was 39, disaster hit - he was stricken with poliomyelitis.
Demonstrating indomitable courage, he fought to regain the use of his legs, particularly through
swimming. At the 1924 Democratic Convention he dramatically appeared on crutches to
nominate Alfred E. Smith as "the Happy Warrior." In 1928 Roosevelt became Governor of New
York.
He was elected President in November 1932, to the first of four terms. By March there
were 13,000,000 unemployed, and almost every bank was closed. In his first "hundred days," he
proposed, and Congress enacted, a sweeping program to bring recovery to business and
agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and
reform, especially through the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
By 1935 the Nation had achieved some measure of recovery, but businessmen and
bankers were turning more and more against Roosevelt's New Deal program. They feared his
experiments, were appalled because he had taken the Nation off the gold standard and allowed
deficits in the budget, and disliked the concessions to labor. Roosevelt responded with a new
program of reform: Social Security, heavier taxes on the wealthy, new controls over banks and
public utilities, and an enormous work relief program for the unemployed.
In 1936 he was re-elected by a top-heavy margin. Feeling he was armed with a popular
mandate, he sought legislation to enlarge the Supreme Court, which had been invalidating key
New Deal measures. Roosevelt lost the Supreme Court battle, but a revolution in constitutional
law took place. Thereafter the Government could legally regulate the economy.
Roosevelt had pledged the United States to the "good neighbor" policy, transforming the
Monroe Doctrine from a unilateral American manifesto into arrangements for mutual action
against aggressors. He also sought through neutrality legislation to keep the United States out of
the war in Europe, yet at the same time to strengthen nations threatened or attacked. When
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France fell and England came under siege in 1940, he began to send Great Britain all possible aid
short of actual military involvement.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Roosevelt directed
organization of the Nation's manpower and resources for global war.
Feeling that the future peace of the world would depend upon relations between the
United States and Russia, he devoted much thought to the planning of a United Nations, in
which, he hoped, international difficulties could be settled.
As the war drew to a close, Roosevelt's health deteriorated, and on April 12, 1945, while
at Warm Springs, Georgia, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
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The Great Depression
Digital History: President Hoover
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3436
When President Herbert Hoover took office, the unemployment rate was 4.4 percent.
When he left office, it was 23.6 percent.
Hoover’s efforts in providing relief during and after World War I saved millions of
Europeans, including Germans and Russians, from starvation and made him an international
hero. Yet little more than a decade later, many of his own countrymen regarded him as a
heartless brute who would provide federal aid for banks but not for hungry Americans.
Hoover was a proponent of "rugged individualism." But he also said, "The trouble with
capitalism is capitalists; they're too damn greedy."
Born into a hardworking Quaker family in Iowa, Hoover was orphaned before he was ten
years old and was sent west to live with relatives. He was admitted to the first class at Stanford
University, mainly because the new institution needed students. He rose quickly from mine
worker to engineer and entrepreneur. He was worth $4 million by the age of 40, and then
devoted himself to public service. He was elected president at the age of 54.
In the speech that closed his successful 1928 presidential campaign, Hoover, a self-made
millionaire, expressed his view that the American system was based on "rugged individualism"
and "self-reliance." Government, which had assumed unprecedented economic powers during
World War I, should, in his view, shrink back to its prewar size and avoid intervening with
business.
During the early days of the Great Depression, Hoover launched the largest public works
projects. Yet, he continued to believe that problems of poverty and unemployment were best left
to "voluntary organization and community service." He feared that federal relief programs would
undermine individual character by making recipients dependent on the government. He did not
recognize that the sheer size of the nation's economic problems had made the concept of "rugged
individualism" meaningless.
The president appealed to industry to keep wages high in order to maintain consumer
purchasing power. Nevertheless, while businesses did maintain wages for skilled workers, it cut
hours and wages for unskilled workers and installed restrictive hiring practices that made it more
difficult for under qualified younger and older workers to get a job. By April 1, 1933, U.S. Steel
did not have a single full-time employee.
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Many Republicans believed that a protective tariff would rescue the economy by keeping
out foreign goods. The Smoot-Hawley tariff, signed by Hoover in 1930, raised rates but
provoked retaliation from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and other traditional trading
partners. The United States found it much more difficult to export its products overseas.
Hoover persuaded local and state governments to sharply increase public works spending.
However, the practical effect was to exhaust state and local financial reserves, which led
government, by 1933, to slash unemployment relief programs and to impose sales taxes to cover
their deficits.
Hoover quickly developed a reputation as uncaring. He cut unemployment figures that
reached his desk, eliminating those he thought were only temporarily jobless and not seriously
looking for work. In June 1930, a delegation came to see him to request a federal public works
program. Hoover responded to them by saying, "Gentlemen, you have come sixty days too late.
The Depression is over." He insisted that "nobody is actually starving" and that "the hoboes...are
better fed than they have ever been." He claimed that the vendors selling apples on street corners
had "left their jobs for the more profitable one of selling apples." By 1932, comedians told the
story of Hoover asking the treasury secretary for a nickel so he could call a friend. Mellon
replies, "Here, take a dime and call all your friends."
Hoover was a stubborn man who found it difficult to respond to the problems posed by
the Depression. "There are some principles that cannot be compromised," Hoover remarked in
1936. "Either we shall have a society based upon ordered liberty and the initiative of the
individual, or we shall have a planned society that means dictation no matter what you call it....
There is no half-way ground." He was convinced that the economy would fix itself.
Only toward the end of his term in office did he recognize that the Depression called for
unprecedented governmental action. In 1932, he created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation
(RFC) to help save the banking and railroad systems. Loans offered under the program funded
public works projects and the first federally-supported housing projects. Originally intended to
combat the Depression, the RFC lasted 21 years and was authorized to finance public works
projects, provide loans to farmers and victims of natural disasters, and assist school districts.
When it was abolished in 1953, it had dispersed $40.6 billion. Its functions were taken over by
the Small Business Administration, the Commodity Credit Corporation, and other housing,
community development, and agricultural assistance programs.
Herbert Hoover was not an insensitive man. He was the first president since Theodore Roosevelt
to invite African American dinner guests to the White House. He said that the use of atomic
bombs against Japan "revolts my soul." He played a key role in launching the United Nation's
Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and CARE. Despite his staunch anti-communism stand,
he opposed U.S. involvement in Korea and Vietnam.
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Nevertheless, his reputation was forever clouded by the Depression. A dam that was to carry
Hoover's name was rechristened Boulder Dam. Washington's airfield, which was to be named for
Hoover, was renamed National Airport.
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Herbert Hoover and the Depression
Herbert Hoover had the bad luck to be President when the Great Depression started. It
was Hoover who had to come up with the programs to stop the Depression. If he failed, the
whole country would blame him for their trouble. If he succeeded, many Americans would think
he was a great president. You will learn who Hoover was, what he did to end the Depression, and
his reason for thinking his ideas would work.
Who Was Herbert Hoover?
President Herbert Hoover was probably the best prepared and most qualified of the three
presidents of the 1920’s. Born in 1874, he knew poverty from personal experience. His parents
died when he was young, and Hoover was raised by two of his uncles. Since they could not
afford to send him to college so Hoover worked his way through on his own. One of his jobs
took him deep below the ground in a coal mine for $2.50 a day. In school, Stanford University,
he studied engineering. He was such a good mining engineer that he made a million dollars
before he was 40. After that, Hoover thought he had more money than he and his family needed.
He decided to use his great administrative skills for the rest of his working life in government
service and private charity. During World War I, Hoover ran the official U.S. relief agency
helping the suffering people in Belgium. He was called back to the U.S. to head up the Food
Administration under the Democrat, President Woodrow Wilson. His work impressed people so
much that many Democrats wanted him to represent their party in the next Presidential election.
But, Hoover was a Republican and served as a very distinguished Secretary of Commerce under
Presidents Harding and Coolidge.
From his position in the cabinet, Hoover spoke for and carried out the conservative
policies of Presidents Harding and Coolidge. He gained a reputation as a good organizer and
leader, and was a popular choice among Republicans to run for President in 1928. He is much
remembered for his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, that the policies
the Republican Party followed the past eight years would soon end poverty in America. Many
Americans believed him and voted him to a landslide victory of 21.4 million votes to 15 million
for the Democrat’s Alfred E. Smith.
President Hoover Faces the Depression
Unfortunately, Hoover did not end poverty in the U.S.A. as he predicted. In fact, he had
to face the worst Depression in American history. The stock market crashed on October 29,
1929, seven months after Hoover became president. The market kept declining for the rest of that
year. Many banks that held bad stocks or made bad loans had to close their doors. Businesses
laid off workers; many closed down completely. Millions of people could not find jobs.
Thousands of homeless people had no place to go, and no one to help them. Although farmers
could not sell surplus crops, hungry people in the cities could not afford to buy food.
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In facing these problems, Hoover was guided by principles which he believed all his life.
As a student working his way through college, as a successful businessman, and as a leader in
government, Hoover was a firm believer in trickle down and an opponent of government
coercion of any kind. He believed businessmen should be free to pursue their self interest, and
the government should not tell people what to do. He had been taught these ideas in college and
had watched America grow while following them. The fact that he himself had made his fortune
without government help reinforced Hoover’s belief that people should not look for handouts
from their government when they were in trouble.
Hoover's anti-Depression policies were based on his fundamental beliefs, and the theories
advocated by the best economists at the time.
Belief in Volunteerism
Hoover thought the Federal government did not have a right to force people to do
anything. He thought that using the government to solve basic economic problems would do
more to harm America's liberties than it would help its economy. He therefore relied on people’s
good will to do things for others. For instance, when the Depression started, Hoover called
business leaders to meet him in Washington. He then asked them to keep up production and not
to lay off workers or cut wages. He asked neighbors to help one another and not rely on
government aid. He thought that people would act on their own in a fundamentally altruistic way
to end the Depression.
Looking at the Sunny Side
President Hoover believed that it was necessary to maintain a positive outlook. He
thought there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the American economy. All that was
needed Hoover thought was to restore peoples’ confidence in the economy. Once Americans
regained their confidence, Hoover believed, stock prices would rise, factories would open, and
people would go back to work.
Hoover made many optimistic statements. He told the people that there was nothing
basically wrong with the economy. He told them the Depression was a recession and would soon
be over. He repeatedly stated his belief that prosperity was just around the corner.
Saving Business
Voluntarism and optimism failed to stem the tide of business collapse. Unwilling to
follow laissez-faire, Hoover now asked Congress at least to save the major economic institutions
of the land, the banks, insurance companies, railroads, etc. Congress responded by establishing
the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and Hoover later defended this departure from laissezfaire:
Disaster has been averted in the saving of more than 5,000 institutions and the knowledge that
the adequate assistance was available to tide others over the stress. This was done not to save a
few stockholders, but to save 25,000,000 of American families, every one of whose very savings
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and employment might have been wiped out and whose whole future would have been blighted
had those institutions gone down.
No Relief
While Hoover broke precedent to spend $2 billion to save banks and railroads from
collapse, he was unwilling to spend any federal money for direct relief. Once the federal
government accepted the responsibility of helping America’s unemployed, Hoover reasoned,
neighbors, communities, cities, and states that had been shouldering this burden would no longer
feel obligated to help. Thus government aid would destroy the feeling of neighborly cooperation
and self-help so fundamental to the American way of life. Belief in these principles rather than
cruelty or indifference to suffering led Hoover to approve a measure providing $45 million to
save cattle in Arkansas but oppose a $25 million grant to save Arkansas farmers. As late as May,
1932, Hoover vetoed a public works bill that would have provided thousands of jobs throughout
the country.
Balance the Budget
Behind Hoover’s reluctance to spend federal dollars on the unemployed lay his belief in
the need to keep the budget balanced. A deficit in the budget could only be met with more taxes
and more federal bond issues. That makes balancing the budget hopeless. The country also
understands that an unbalanced budget means the loss of confidence of our people in the credit
and stability of the government and that the consequences are national demoralization and the
loss of ten times as many jobs as would be created by this program. Hoover had two more
reasons for balancing the budget. He did not think it was fair for people to run a debt that their
children and grandchildren would have to pay back. He also believed if the government kept on
borrowing money it would be much harder for businesses to borrow and start producing again.
Trickle Down
Hoover’s concern with balancing the budget, saving financial institutions, opposing
relief, and restoring business confidence were part of his philosophy that revival of prosperity
depended primarily on business recovery. His policies were directed at helping business.
Prosperity, Hoover believed, trickles down from business men to the public at large. The major
job of government, Hoover once said, “was to bring about a condition of affairs favorable to the
beneficial development of private enterprise.” This had also been the philosophy which had
governed the policy makers of the 1920’s, and which at that time was widely accepted by the
American people. It is your task here to decide whether the policies which flow from this
philosophy are adequate to deal with the problems of the 1930’s.
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The Human Toll
After more than half a century, images of the Great Depression remain firmly etched in
the American psyche: breadlines, soup kitchens, tin-can shanties and tar-paper shacks known as
"Hoovervilles," penniless men and women selling apples on street corners, and gray battalions of
Arkies and Okies packed into Model A Fords heading to California.
The collapse was staggering in its dimensions. Unemployment jumped from less than 3
million in 1929 to 4 million in 1930, to 8 million in 1931, and to 12 1/2 million in 1932. In that
year, a quarter of the nation's families did not have a single employed wage earner. Even those
fortunate enough to have jobs suffered drastic pay cuts and reductions in working hours. Only
one company in ten failed to cut pay, and in 1932, three-quarters of all workers were on parttime schedules, averaging just 60 percent of the normal work week.
The economic collapse was terrifying in its scope and impact. By 1933, average family
income had tumbled 40 percent, from $2,300 in 1929 to just $1,500 four years later. In the
Pennsylvania coal fields, three or four families crowded together in one-room shacks and lived
on wild weeds. In Arkansas, families were found inhabiting caves. In Oakland, California, whole
families lived in sewer pipes.
Vagrancy shot up as many families were evicted from their homes for nonpayment of
rent. The Southern Pacific Railroad boasted that it threw 683,000 vagrants off its trains in 1931.
Free public flophouses and missions in Los Angeles provided beds for 200,000 of the uprooted.
To save money, families neglected medical and dental care. Many families sought to
cope by planting gardens, canning food, buying used bread, and using cardboard and cotton for
shoe soles. Despite a steep decline in food prices, many families did without milk or meat. In
New York City, milk consumption declined by a million gallons a day.
President Herbert Hoover declared, "Nobody is actually starving. The hoboes are better
fed than they have ever been." But in New York City in 1931, there were 20 known cases of
starvation; in 1934, there were 110 deaths caused by hunger. There were so many accounts of
people starving in New York that the West African nation of Cameroon sent $3.77 in relief.
The Depression had a powerful impact on families. It forced couples to delay marriage
and drove the birthrate below the replacement level for the first time in American history. The
divorce rate fell, for the simple fact that many couples could not afford to maintain separate
households or to pay legal fees. Still, rates of desertion soared. By 1940, there were 1.5 million
married women living apart from their husbands. More than 200,000 vagrant children wandered
the country as a result of the break-up of their families.
The Depression inflicted a heavy psychological toll on jobless men. With no wages to
punctuate their ability, many men lost power as primary decision makers. Large numbers of men
lost self-respect, became immobilized and stopped looking for work, while others turned to
alcohol or became self-destructive or abusive to their families.
In contrast to men, many women saw their status rise during the Depression. To
supplement the family income, married women entered the work force in large numbers.
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Although most women worked in menial occupations, the fact that they were employed and
bringing home paychecks elevated their position within the family and gave them a say in family
decisions.
Despite the hardships it inflicted, the Great Depression drew some families closer
together. As one observer noted: "Many a family has lost its automobile and found its soul."
Families had to devise strategies for getting through hard times because their survival depended
on it. They pooled their incomes, moved in with relatives in order to cut expenses, bought dayold bread, and did without. Many families drew comfort from their religion, sustained by the
hope things would turn out well in the end; others placed their faith in themselves, in their own
dogged determination to survive that so impressed observers like Woody Guthrie. Many
Americans, however, no longer believed that the problems could be solved by people acting
alone or through voluntary associations. Increasingly, they looked to the federal government for
help.
Copyright 2012 Digital History
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The Effects of the Great Depression on the People: Unemployment
No economic crisis in American history had been as severe as the Great Depression. It
began in October 1929 in New York City at the time of the stock market crash. With the
population of the United States at about 125 million, in 1929 fewer than two million were
unemployed countrywide; in 1930, eight million had no jobs; in 1931, thirteen million were
without work. The jobless rate would peak in 1932-33 at sixteen million men, or about one third
of the national labor force, as the economic crisis rippled from banking to manufacturing.
Construction all but stopped. Even established industries, like railroads and publishing,
failed. Many unskilled laborers were turned out of work; many white-color workers fell into the
ranks of the unemployed masses; and the professional class was also hit by this tragedy. One out
of three Brooklyn doctors went out of business. Six out of seven architects had to find other
means of employment to support themselves and their families.
The newly rich returned the shiny new motorcars they’d bought on credit and the
working poor were evicted. Everyone knew someone who had lost his livelihood. Some men,
embarrassed that they no longer heard work, pretended they still did. They left their houses in
the morning dressed up in suits, briefcases empty.
Unemployment also hit the farmers. In the Midwest, an area well known for farming, the
people suffered major losses due to unpredicted change in the weather. In the summer of 1931,
crops withered and died. There had always been strong winds and dust on the Plains, but now
over plowing created conditions for disaster. The land became parched, the winds picked up- and
the dust storm began. They rolled in without warning, blotting out the sun and casting entire
towns into darkness. Afterward, there was dust everywhere- in food, in water, in the lungs of
animals and people. Farmers packed up, left their land, and moved westward.
Excerpt from PBS Kids website:
http://www/pbs.org/wnet/newyork/laic/episode6/topic1/e6_tl_sl-ec.html
http://www.pbs.org
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“Blocks for Tots: A Short History of a Single Family Business”
After he came home from World War I, Mr. Frank Connors went into business for
himself. Using money he saved during the War, he started a toy company that made small
building blocks for children ages 3-5. He called his company, Blocks for Tots. Business was
good right from the start. Connors was making substantial profits which he used to buy more
efficient machines. This helped him keep labor costs low and profits high. While doubling
production, he was able to reduce his work force from 15 workers to 11. Though he gradually
increased wages, his profits grew at a much faster pace.
In the later 1920’s, Mr. Connors began to buy stock with his business profits. HE
speculated on stocks that increased in value quickly, and borrowed money (using margin) to buy
more stocks. When the stock market crashed in 1929 the value of his stocks decreased by
%5,000, and Connors was forced to sell them to supply his broker with more margin. He lost
another $2,000 when his bank was forced to close its doors, and what little money he had left
went to pay for the labor saving machinery he could no longer use. Losing all the money he
made in business was more than a little bit upsetting. After all, he had done what everyone said
he should do. He started a business on his own- he built his business up. He put his money in the
stock market which everyone else seemed to be doing too. He made sure to keep enough money
in a safe bank account in case his business went sour.
As bad as things were in 1920, they kept getting worse for Connors. He learned that
workers who don’t’ have jobs do not buy toys for their kids. The toy business became really
slow. There were hardly any new orders, even for Christmas. As much as he hated to do it,
Connors fired five workers and cut the wages of those who stayed. Even with a smaller work
force, Blocks for Tots kept losing money.
At home, Mrs. Connors cut back on the expenses. The family no longer ate meat every
day. They stopped going to the movies twice a week. The children no longer got their allowances
and Mrs. Connors stopped buying new clothes. The children had to wear “hand me downs” from
neighbors.
Despite all his efforts to cut corners, Connors’ business kept losing money, and in
August, 1931, he shut it down. Now unemployed, Connors moved to Richmond, Indiana where
he could live on his wife’s family farm. At least no one would starve. Connors himself was able
to get a low paying job on a government project. His children went to school in Richmond,
instead of Chicago. That was just was well. Chicago had run out of money to pay its teachers and
its schools had closed.
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Hoovervilles
As the Depression worsened and millions of urban and rural families lost their jobs and
depleted their savings, they also lost their homes. Desperate for shelter, homeless citizens built
shantytowns in and around cities across the nation. These camps came to be called Hoovervilles,
after the president. Democratic National Committee publicity director and longtime newspaper
reporter Charles Michelson (1868-1948) is credited with coining the term, which first appeared
in print in 1930.
Hooverville shanties were constructed of cardboard, tar paper, glass, lumber, tin and
whatever other materials people could salvage. Unemployed masons used cast-off stone and
bricks and in some cases built structures that stood 20 feet high. Most shanties, however, were
distinctly less glamorous: Cardboard-box homes did not last long, and most dwellings were in a
constant state of being rebuilt. Some homes were not buildings at all, but deep holes dug in the
ground with makeshift roofs laid over them to keep out inclement weather. Some of the homeless
found shelter inside empty conduits and water mains.
Retrieved from: http://www.history.com/topics/hoovervilles
© 1996-2013, A&E Television Networks, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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Great Depression
Informational Text
Political Cartoons
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Breadlines
Many people lost their jobs, savings, and property. There was no unemployment
insurance. Almost no government relief reached the people during this time. Some people- even
those who had made a fortune in the stock market’s heyday- now struggled simply to survive.
Many stood in bread lines that were as long as city blocks. The men were wedged so tightly
together that no one passing by could squeeze through.
All who stood in bread lines experienced humiliation. But those in the back of the line,
who often didn’t get anything to eat at all, experience much more than humiliation. They
experience hunger, suffering, and fear for the survival of their families. Whenever garbage trucks
came to the dumps near the Hoovervilles, hundreds of women and children would run out to
scavage for food in the freshly dumped refuse. Living in the city made food-gathering harder. In
the countryside they might have had some luck gleaming something to eat, but in larger cities it
was difficult.
Excerpt from PBS Kids: Learning Adventures in Citizenship website:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/newyork/laic/epidsode6/topic1/e6_tl_s3-hv.html
Breadlines during Depression
During the Great Depression thousands of unemployed residents who could not pay their
rent or mortgages were evicted into the world of public assistance and bread lines. Unable to find
work and seeing that each job they applied for had hundreds of seekers, these shabby,
disillusioned men wandered aimlessly without funds, begging, picking over refuse in city dumps,
and finally getting up the courage to stand and be seen publicly – in a bread line for free food. To
accommodate them, charities, missions, and churches began programs to feed them. Men who
experienced the waiting in line recall the personal shame of asking for a handout, unable to care
for oneself or to provide for others.
Retrieved from: http://blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu/his1005spring2011/2011/03/13/bread-linesduring-the-great-depression/
6th Grade: Unit 3
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Children During Depression
6th Grade: Unit 3
22
Children During Depression
Children’s Letters to the President
During the Great Depression, many children wrote to the president and the first lady for support
and guidance. Here are a number of their letters:
Ten year old Ohio girl
Please help us my mother is sick three year and was in the hospital three month and she came out
but she is not better and my Father is peralised and can not work and we are poor and the
Cumunity fun gives us six dollars an we are six people four children three boy 15, 13, 12, an one
fril 10, and to parents. We have no one to give us a Christmas presents please buy us a stove to
do our cooking and to make good bread.
Please excuse me for not writing it so well because the little girl 10 year old is writing.
Source: Robert S. McElvaine, ed., Down and Out in the Great Depression, 116.
A twelve year old girl
Barboursville, W. Va.
August, 23, 119341
Dear President & Wife;
This is the first time I or Any of my people wrote Any president. And I am here to ask you for
$8.00 to get me a winter coat. This may seem very strange for a girl 12 years old to do but my
father is a poor honest working Laundry man and he works on a percentage a week we have 10
in our family and my father does not have enough money to get him a bottle of Beer. He is a
democrat and did all he could to have you voted. The N.R.A. [National Recovery
Admonistration] is coming along fine. As little as I am I know just as much about depression as a
grown person. I’m 12 years old and am in the 8th grade curly hair Brunette & brown eyes & fair
complexion & weigh 76 lbs. Hoping to hear from you soon I remain your true Democrat
J.A.G.
P.S. We would have loved if Mrs. Roosevelt when she was visiting Logan t come around to our
small town she was only about 60 miles from here.
6th Grade: Unit 3
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A child in Kansas
Galena, Kansas
February 5, 1936
Mr Mrs Franklin D Roosevelt
Dear sir I am riling you about my Little Brother who sick see if could get you help send him to
some hospital I see in paper where help other Little children I don’t see how could Be any worse
of then my Little Brother is my Little Brother be 5 years old June he cant walk are talk Are he
cant feed his self he suck a Bottle only when mother feed him he just sit propt in chair that is all
the county DR said is just had him took where Be operated he thought get all rite some says he
got Pralizes of Bone some say it from his spine he had Ricket when he Little never grew very
much he had very Big now my dady had got any money send to hospital I thought rite ask you
help send him mamma take up Capper hospital if had money pay way up there.. hate see go
through Life wy he is my dady was in Relif roll Last Year… I am just m years old go stone
school cherkee Gouty Kansas nad out county seat Clombis Kansas and out county Dr name is Dr
H.H.B. Clumbis Kansas if don’t Believe about my Little Brohter you write and ask him… that
reason riling you see help raise money for mamma take him away
Hoping hear from you soon
6th Grade: Unit 3
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Reader’s Theatre
The Great Depression:
A Child’s View of the Great Depression
Characters
Child 1 (Sarah)
Child 2 (Andy)
Child 3 (Thomas)
Mother
Father
Narrator
NARRATOR:
Today we are going to take a look at how the Great Depression affected
families.
CHILD 1:
I’m hungry.
CHILD 2:
We’re all hungry, Sarah.
CHILD 3:
Why don’t we have any food around here?
CHILD 2:
There’s no money…you know that, Tommy.
CHILD 1:
Why isn’t father working anymore?
CHILD 2:
Look around you. Nobody’s father is working anymore.
CHILD 1:
Why can’t we just take money out of the bank?
CHILD 2:
The banks have closed.
CHILD 3:
Why can’t they open them?
CHILD 2:
Mama said they’re out of money because they made some bad deals.
NARRATOR:
Banks loaned money to businesses and people who couldn’t pay them
back. The banks also invested in the Stock Market, and those stocks lost
their value. When people started losing money, they ‘ran’ to the banks
trying to get their money out. Of course, the banks didn’t have the money
to pay them. Today, banks have insurance so that this kinds of crash can’t
happen again.
MOTHER:
Maybe we should try moving to another part of the country to find work.
6th Grade: Unit 3
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FATHER:
There’s nothing anywhere. Did you hear about what’s happening to the
farmers? They’re calling it the Dust Bowl because of the drought there.
They’re all moving to California to see if they can find work there.
CHILD 1:
Are we going to have to move?
MOTHER:
I think so, Sarah, because we have no money to pay rent.
CHILD 3:
Where will we go?
FATHER:
I talked to your grandma. We can sleep on the kitchen floor there.
CHILD 1:
The floor? I don’t want to go!
CHILD 2:
All of us on the floor?
MOTHER:
It is better than begin out on the streets like so many other people. Have
you seen those cardboard cities- they call them Hoovervilles- people living
in the streets with just pieces of cardboard over them.
FATHER:
We’re lucky your grandmother said she would take us in.
CHILD 2:
When will we leave?
MOTHER:
We will have to go very soon.
CHILD 3:
What can we take with us?
FATHER:
There isn’t room for us to take anything but the shirts on our backs. Be
grateful we will have a roof over our heads.
CHILD 1:
What about food? Does Grandmother have food for us?
MOTHER:
We will find food. Your father will be able to stand in the bread lines. I
will be able to find sewing work where your grandmother lives. And you
children might be able to find a job in the factory.
FATHER:
I will look for work, too. It’s easier for women and children to find some
jobs because they get paid less. But I won’t sit and do nothing.
6th Grade: Unit 3
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CHILD 2:
What about school?
MOTHER:
Maybe later, maybe if things change. Right now, we must all find a way to
live.
NARRATOR:
The children who grew up during the Great Depression learned at an early
age about responsibility and finding ways to survive. They grew up very
quickly. How do you think you would have been able to manage during
the Depression?
The End
Retrieved from: http://toolboxforteachers.s3.amazonaws.com/homecourt-site/GreatDepression_Readers-Theater.pdf
6th Grade: Unit 3
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The Great Depression: Mexican Americans
The depression hit Mexican American families especially hard. Mexican Americans
faced serious opposition from organized labor, which resented competition from Mexican
workers as unemployment rose. Bowing to union pressure, federal, state and local authorities
"repatriated" more than 400,000 people of Mexican descent to prevent them from applying for
relief. Since this group included many United States citizens, the deportations constituted a gross
violation of civil liberties.
Excerpt from the Digital History website
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/learning_history/children_depression/human_meaning.cfm
Digital History: Mexican Americans
In February 1930, in San Antonio, Texas, 5,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans gathered at
the city’s railroad station to depart the United States for settlement in Mexico. In August, a
special train carried another 2,000 to central Mexico.
Most Americans are familiar with the forced relocation in 1942 of 112,000 Japanese Americans
from the West Coast to internment camps. Far fewer are aware that during the Great Depression,
The Federal Bureau of Immigration (after 1933, the Immigration and Naturalization Service) and
local authorities rounded up Mexican immigrants and naturalized Mexican American citizens
and shipped them to Mexico to reduce relief roles. In a shameful episode, more than 400,000
repatriodos, many of them citizens of the United States by birth, were sent across the U.S.Mexico border from Arizona, California, and Texas. The Mexican-born population in Texas was
reduced by a third. Los Angeles also lost a third of its Mexican population. In Los Angeles, the
only Mexican American student at Occidental College sang a painful farewell song to serenade
departing Mexicans.
Even before the stock market crash, there had been intense pressure from the American
Federation of Labor and municipal governments to reduce the number of Mexican immigrants.
Opposition from local chambers of commerce, economic development associations, and state
farm bureaus stymied efforts to impose an immigration quota, however, rigid enforcement of
existing laws slowed legal entry. In 1928, United States consulates in Mexico began to apply
with unprecedented rigor the literacy test legislated in 1917.
After President Hoover appointed William N. Doak as secretary of labor in 1930, the Bureau of
Immigration launched intensive raids to identify aliens liable for deportation. The secretary
believed that removal of undocumented aliens would reduce relief expenditures and free jobs for
native-born citizens. Altogether, 82,400 were involuntarily deported by the federal government.
Federal efforts were accompanied by city and county pressure to repatriate destitute Mexican
American families. In February 1931, Los Angeles police surrounded and raided a downtown
6th Grade: Unit 3
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park and detained some 400 adults and children. The threat of unemployment, deportation, and
loss of relief payments led tens of thousands of people to leave the United States.
Still, the New Deal offered Mexican Americans some help. The Farm Security Administration
established camps for migrant farm workers in California, and the CCC and WPA hired
unemployed Mexican Americans on relief jobs. Many, however, did not qualify for relief
assistance because they did not meet residency requirements as migrant workers. Furthermore,
agricultural workers were not eligible for benefits under workers' compensation, Social Security,
and the National Labor Relations Act.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3448
6th Grade: Unit 3
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African Americans and the Great Depression
In 1929, the Great Depression devastated the United States. Hard times came to people
throughout the country, especially rural blacks. Cotton prices plunged from eighteen to six cents
a pound. Two thirds of some two million black farmers earned nothing or went into debt.
Hundreds of thousands of sharecroppers left the land for the cities, leaving behind abandoned
fields and homes. Even "Negro jobs" -- jobs traditionally held by blacks, such as busboys,
elevator operators, garbage men, porters, maids, and cooks -- were sought by desperate
unemployed whites. In Atlanta, Georgia, a Klan-like group called the Black Shirts paraded
carrying signs that read, "No jobs for blacks until every white man has a job." In other cities,
people shouted "Blacks back to the cotton fields. City jobs are for white men." And in
Mississippi, where blacks traditionally held certain jobs on trains, several unemployed white
men, seeking train jobs, ambushed and killed the black workers. The only group in the early
years of the Depression that concerned itself with black rights of rural blacks was the Communist
Party. The Party successfully fought to save the lives of the "Scottsboro Boys," nine black youths
falsely charged with rape in Alabama. Eight were sentenced to death. The Communists also
organized interracial unions and demonstrations for relief, jobs, and end to evictions.
Between Roosevelt's election in 1932 and throughout most of his first term, neither the president
nor the Congress paid much attention to the suffering of blacks. The President did not want to
antagonize the Southern Senators who controlled the Senate and who could block his efforts to
end the Depression. By the end of Roosevelt's first term, the president's thinking began to change
thanks, in part, to the efforts of his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Roosevelt became profoundly
aware of the injustices suffered by African Americans. She began to speak out publicly on behalf
of blacks and against race prejudice. She became a go-between between civil rights activists and
the President. As a result, Roosevelt began to publicly speak out against lynching and granted
influential black leaders such as Mary McLeod Bethune access to the White House; these
advisors were known as the "Black Cabinet." Federal agencies began to open their doors to
blacks, providing jobs, relief, farm subsidies, education, training, and participation in a variety of
federal programs. The United States Supreme Court began to hand down decisions favoring
black challenges to segregation. For the first time since Reconstruction, the federal government
actively supported blacks and made a concerted effort to incorporate them into the mainstream of
American life. Black voters responded to the change of heart of the Roosevelt administration by
switching their political allegiance from the Republican Party to the Democratic. And black
civil-rights organizations began to increase their activity and demands for their rights as citizens
of the United States.
-- Richard Wormser PBS.org
6th Grade: Unit 3
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The Great Depression: African Americans
Economic hardship and loss visited all sections of the country. One-third of the Harvard class of
1911 confessed that they were hard up, on relief, or dependent on relatives. Doctors and lawyers
saw their incomes fall 40 percent. But no groups suffered more from the depression than African
Americans and Mexican Americans. A year after the stock market crash, 70 percent of
Charleston's black population was unemployed and 75 percent of Memphis's. In Macon County,
Alabama, home of Booker T. Washington's famous Tuskegee Institute, most black families lived
in homes without wooden floors or windows or sewage disposal and subsisted on salt pork,
hominy grits, corn bread, and molasses. Income averaged less than a dollar a day.
Conditions were also distressed in the North. In Chicago, 70 percent of all black families earned
less than a $1,000 a year, far below the poverty line. In Chicago and other large northern cities,
most African Americans lived in "kitchenettes." Six-room apartments, previously rented for $50
a month, were divided into six kitchenettes renting for $32 dollars a month, assuring landlords of
a windfall of an extra $142 a month. Buildings that previously held 60 families now contained
300.
Excerpt from the Digital History website
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/learning_history/children_depression/human_meaning.cfm
Digital History: African Americans and the New Deal
Until the New Deal, blacks had shown their traditional loyalty to the party of Abraham Lincoln
by voting overwhelmingly Republican. By the end of Roosevelt's first administration, however,
one of the most dramatic voter shifts in American history had occurred. In 1936, some 75 percent
of black voters supported the Democrats. Blacks turned to Roosevelt, in part, because his
spending programs gave them a measure of relief from the Depression and, in part, because the
GOP had done little to repay their earlier support.
Still, Roosevelt's record on civil rights was modest at best. Instead of using New Deal programs
to promote civil rights, the administration consistently bowed to discrimination. In order to pass
major New Deal legislation, Roosevelt needed the support of southern Democrats. Time and
time again, he backed away from equal rights to avoid antagonizing southern whites; although,
his wife, Eleanor, did take a public stand in support of civil rights.
Most New Deal programs discriminated against blacks. The NRA, for example, not only offered
whites the first crack at jobs, but authorized separate and lower pay scales for blacks. The
Federal Housing Authority (FHA) refused to guarantee mortgages for blacks who tried to buy in
white neighborhoods, and the CCC maintained segregated camps. Furthermore, the Social
Security Act excluded those job categories blacks traditionally filled.
The story in agriculture was particularly grim. Since 40 percent of all black workers made their
living as sharecroppers and tenant farmers, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA)
acreage reduction hit blacks hard. White landlords could make more money by leaving land
6th Grade: Unit 3
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untilled than by putting land back into production. As a result, the AAA's policies forced more
than 100,000 blacks off the land in 1933 and 1934. Even more galling to black leaders, the
president failed to support an anti-lynching bill and a bill to abolish the poll tax. Roosevelt feared
that conservative southern Democrats, who had seniority in Congress and controlled many
committee chairmanships, would block his bills if he tried to fight them on the race question.
Yet, the New Deal did record a few gains in civil rights. Roosevelt named Mary McLeod
Bethune, a black educator, to the advisory committee of the National Youth Administration
(NYA). Thanks to her efforts, blacks received a fair share of NYA funds. The WPA was
colorblind, and blacks in northern cities benefited from its work relief programs. Harold Ickes, a
strong supporter of civil rights who had several blacks on his staff, poured federal funds into
black schools and hospitals in the South. Most blacks appointed to New Deal posts, however,
served in token positions as advisors on black affairs. At best, they achieved a new visibility in
government.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3447
6th Grade: Unit 3
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AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
The historical roots of the Harlem Renaissance are complex. In part, they lay in the vast
migration of African Americans to northern industrial centers that began early in the century and
increased rapidly as World War I production needs and labor shortages boosted job
opportunities. Some of the reasons why several millions of African Americans migrated to
northern cities:





Basic civil rights were denied African Americans in the South and their lives were
often in danger.
Wages in the South were low and working conditions were poor.
Education possibilities in the South were limited for African Americans.
Opportunities for African Americans to achieve prominence were greater in the
North.
Jobs were growing rapidly in northern factories because of war production (WWI)
The target for the move north for African American artists and intellectuals was often
New York City, where powerful voices for racial pride such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus
Garvey, and James Weldon Johnson were concentrated. By the 1910s, Harlem had become a
spirited community that provided continuity and support for a diverse population pouring in from
the South and the Caribbean.
The Harlem Renaissance is also rooted in the disappointment that African Americans felt
with the limited opportunities open to them as the United States struggled to transform itself
from a rural to an urban society. Increased contact between African Americans and white
Americans in the workplace and on city streets forced a new awareness of the disparity between
the promise of U.S. democracy and its reality. African American soldiers who served in World
War I were angered by the prejudice they often encountered back at home, compared to the
greater acceptance they had found in Europe. A larger, better-educated urban population fully
comprehended the limitations that white-dominated society had placed on them. As African
Americans became increasingly disillusioned about achieving the justice that war-time rhetoric
had seemed to promise, many determined to pursue their goals of equality and success more
aggressively than ever before.
Organized political and economic movements also helped to motivate the Harlem
Renaissance by creating a new sense of empowerment in African Americans. The NAACP
boasted nearly 44,000 members by the end of 1918. In the early 1920s Marcus Garvey’s message
of racial pride drew hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women to his United Negro
Improvement Association and its Back-to-Africa movement. Other African Americans, including
many intellectuals, turned to socialism or communism. By 1920, large numbers of African
Americans of all political and economic points of view were plainly unwilling to settle for the
old ways any longer. One unexpected development had an impact on the form their demand for
change would take: urbane whites suddenly “took up” New York’s African American
6th Grade: Unit 3
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community, bestowing patronage on young artists, opening up publishing opportunities, and
pumping cash into Harlem’s “exotic” nightlife in a complex relationship that scholars continue to
probe. Fueled by all of these historical forces, an unprecedented outpouring of writing, music
and visual arts began among African American artists.
http://www.learner.org/courses/amerhistory/pdf/Harlem-Ren_L-One.pdf
The Harlem Renaissance: A Unit of Study for Grades 9-12, Nina Gifford
6th Grade: Unit 3
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Langston Hughes
A Harlem Renaissance Poet
Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. He published his
first poem in 1921 while attending Columbia University. After his poetry was promoted by
prominent figures in the literary world, Hughes published his first book, The Weary Blues, in
1926. The book had popular appeal and established both his poetic style and his commitment to
black themes and heritage. Hughes was also among the first to use jazz rhythms and dialect to
depict the life of urban blacks in his work. He went on to write countless works of poetry, prose
and plays, as well as a popular column for the Chicago Defender. He died on May 22, 1967.
I, Too
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed-I, too, am America.
Langston Hughes
Retrieved from: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-too/
6th Grade: Unit 3
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1930's Food and Groceries prices
Imagine you could go shopping for food and groceries in the 1930's these are some of the foods you may have
bought to feed a family
These are some of the things you may have seen advertised Below and how much food and
groceries cost in the 30's
Shoulder of Ohio Spring lamb 17 cents per pound Ohio 1932
Sliced Baked Ham 39 cents per pound Ohio 1932
Dozen Eggs 18 Cents Ohio 1932
Coconut Macaroons 27 cents per pound Ohio 1932
Bananas 19 cents for 4 Pounds Ohio 1932
Peanut Butter 23 cents QT Ohio 1932
Bran Flakes 10 cents Maryland 1939
Jumbo Sliced Loaf of Bread 5 cents Maryland 1939
Spinach 5 cents a pound Maryland 1939
Clifton Toilet Tissue 9 cents for 2 rolls Ohio 1932
Camay Soap 6 cents bar Ohio 1932
Cod Liver Oil 44 cents pint Wisconsin 1933
Tooth paste 27 cents Wisconsin 1933
Lux Laundry Soap 22 cents Indiana 1935
Suntan Oil 25 cents Pennsylvania 1938
Talcum Powder 13 cents Maryland 1939
Noxzema Medicated Cream for Pimples 49 cents Texas 1935
Applesauce 20 cents for 3 cans New Jersey
Bacon, 38 cents per pound New Jersey
Bread, white, 8 cents per loaf New Jersey
Ham, 27 cents can New Jersey
Ketchup, 9 cents New Jersey
Lettuce, iceberg, 7 cents head New Jersey
Potatoes, 18 cents for 10 pounds New Jersey
Sugar, 49 cents for 10 pounds New Jersey
Soap, Lifebuoy, 17 cents for 3 bars New Jersey
Sugar $1.25 per 25LB Sack Ohio 1932
Pork and Beans 5 cents can Ohio 1932
Oranges 14 for 25 cents Ohio 1932
Chuck Roast 15 cents per pound Ohio 1932
White Potatoes 19 cents for 10LBs Ohio 1932
Heinz Beans 13 cents for 25oz can Ohio 1932
6th Grade: Unit 3
Spring Chickens 20 cents per pound Ohio 1932
Wieners 8 cents per pound Ohio 1932
Best Steak 22 cents per pound Ohio 1935
Pure lard 15 cents per pound Wisconsin 1935
Hot Cross Buns 16 Cents per dozen Texas 1939
Campbells Tomato Soup 4 cans for 25 cents Indiana 1937
Oranges 2 dozen 25 cents Indiana 1937
Kellogs Corn Flakes 3 Pkgs 25 cents Indiana 1937
Mixed Nuts 19 Cents per pound Indiana 1937
Pork Loin Roast 15 cents per pound Indiana 1937
Channel Cat Fish 28 cents per pound Missouri 1938
Fresh Peas 4 cents per pound Maryland 1939
Cabbage 3 cents per pound Maryland 1939
Sharp Wisconsin Cheese 23 cents per pound Maryland 1939
36
6th Grade: Unit 3
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1930s News, Events, Popular Culture and Prices
The Thirties saw the growth of Shanty Towns caused by the Great Depression, Dust Storms, Radical Politics
Around The World, and what many consider an upside down world where bank robbers were seen as hero's
not villains.
Money and Inflation 1930's
To provide an estimate of inflation we have given a guide to the value of $100 US Dollars for the
first year in the decade to the equivalent in today's money.
If you have $100 Converted from 1930 to 2005 it would be equivalent to $1204.42 today "If You
Had 1 billion dollars then it would now be worth 12 billion dollars."
In 1930 average new house cost $7,145.00 and by 1939 was $3,800.00
In 1930 the average income per year was $1,970.00 and by 1939 was $1,730.00
In 1930 a gallon of gas was 10 cents and by 1939 was 10 cents
In 1930 the average cost of new car was $640.00 and by 1939 was $700.00
A few more prices from the 30's and how much things cost
Firestone Tyre 1932 from $3.69 , Single Vision Glasses 1938 $3.85 , Complete Modern 10 piece
bedroom Suite $79.85 , Steak 1938 1LB 20 cents , New Emerson Bedroom Radio 1938 $9.95 ,
Shaefer Pens 1933 from $3.35 , Plymouth Roadking Car 1938 $685 , Emmerson 5 tube bedroom
radio $9.95 , Howard Deluxe Quality silk lined hat $2.85 , Cotton Chiffon Volle Girls Frock
$2.98
Toys 1930s
From Our 1930s
Price: $11.98
Check out the new toys pages where you
can see some of the children's toys that
could be found during the Depression
Years including Balsa Wood Toy Kits,
Flossy Flirt Doll, Electric Train Sets and
more
Chevrolet 1935 Master Deluxe
New Master De luxe Chevrolet with improved
master blue flame engine, pressure steam oiling ,
cable brakes and shock proof steering
$560
Example of a house for sale
1934
Stucco Bungalow
Oakland
California .
5 room stucco bungalow ,
breakfast room , separate
garage, delightful location
$3,750
6th Grade: Unit 3
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6th Grade: Unit 3
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Bud, not Buddy
Pre-Reading
Interview Transcripts for video clip titled:
Along for the ride
One of the great joys of writing for me is not knowing where the story is going to go, or even
having a concept of where it's going to go and being told halfway through, "That's not what
happened. This is what happened." I know in the book that I just finished, Elijah of Buxton, I
wrote the last chapter first, and it changed over time. Once I got to know the character, I realized
that things that happened in the chapter as I had written it at first didn't work out, and the story
changed.
I never know where the story's going to go. I never know who's going to be in it. Originally, in
Bud, Not Buddy, I thought that I would tell a story about my grandfather as a ten-year-old boy.
Back during the 1930s, he actually had a band called Herman Curtis and the Dusky Devastators
of the Depression. Thought it was the coolest name in the world. I wanted to write something
about it. Started to write, thinking that the boy would be my grandfather. Turns out it was this
ten-year-old orphan named Bud. My grandfather was in the story, still, but he was a crusty, old
musician.
You never know, and that's one of the real delights of telling a story. It makes you wonder how
many stories are in there that if I would sit down and really apply myself, how many other stories
would come out like that — because it's great entertainment. When I'm writing, I have a lot of
fun. I'm laughing. Some of the time, I'm crying. I'm a real sight to watch when I'm writing.
© Copyright 2013 WETA Washington, D.C.
Reading Rockets is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special
Education Programs
6th Grade: Unit 3
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Bud, not Buddy
Chapter 2
Brer Rabbit, trickster figure originating in African folklore and transmitted by African slaves to
the New World, where it acquired attributes of similar Native American tricksters. Brer, or
Brother, Rabbit was popularized in the United States in the stories of Joel Chandler Harris
(1848–1908). The character’s adventures embody an idea considered to be a universal creation
among oppressed peoples—that a small, weak, but ingenious force can overcome a larger,
stronger, but dull-witted power. Brer Rabbit continually outsmarts his bigger animal associates,
Brer Fox, Brer Wolf, and Brer Bear.
6th Grade: Unit 3
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Bud, not Buddy
Chapter 2
Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby
A Georgia Folktale
retold by S.E. Schlosser
Well now, that rascal Brer Fox hated Brer Rabbit on account of he was always cutting
capers and bossing everyone around. So Brer Fox decided to capture and kill Brer Rabbit if it
was the last thing he ever did! He thought and he thought until he came up with a plan. He would
make a tar baby! Brer Fox went and got some tar and he mixed it with some turpentine and he
sculpted it into the figure of a cute little baby. Then he stuck a hat on the Tar Baby and sat her in
the middle of the road.
Brer Fox hid himself in the bushes near the road and he waited and waited for Brer
Rabbit to come along. At long last, he heard someone whistling and chuckling to himself, and he
knew that Brer Rabbit was coming up over the hill. As he reached the top, Brer Rabbit spotted
the cute little Tar Baby. Brer Rabbit was surprised. He stopped and stared at this strange
creature. He had never seen anything like it before!
"Good Morning," said Brer Rabbit, doffing his hat. "Nice weather we're having." The Tar
Baby said nothing. Brer Fox laid low and grinned an evil grin.
Brer Rabbit tried again. "And how are you feeling this fine day?" The Tar Baby, she said
nothing. Brer Fox grinned an evil grin and lay low in the bushes. Brer Rabbit frowned. This
strange creature was not very polite. It was beginning to make him mad.
"Ahem!" said Brer Rabbit loudly, wondering if the Tar Baby were deaf. "I said 'HOW
ARE YOU THIS MORNING?" The Tar Baby said nothing. Brer Fox curled up into a ball to
hide his laugher. His plan was working perfectly!
"Are you deaf or just rude?" demanded Brer Rabbit, losing his temper. "I can't stand folks
that are stuck up! You take off that hat and say 'Howdy-do' or I'm going to give you such a
lickin'!" The Tar Baby just sat in the middle of the road looking as cute as a button and saying
nothing at all. Brer Fox rolled over and over under the bushes, fit to bust because he didn't dare
laugh out loud.
"I'll learn ya!" Brer Rabbit yelled. He took a swing at the cute little Tar Baby and his paw
got stuck in the tar.
"Lemme go or I'll hit you again," shouted Brer Rabbit. The Tar Baby, she said nothing.
"Fine! Be that way," said Brer Rabbit, swinging at the Tar Baby with his free paw. Now
both his paws were stuck in the tar, and Brer Fox danced with glee behind the bushes.
"I'm gonna kick the stuffin' out of you," Brer Rabbit said and pounced on the Tar Baby
with both feet. They sank deep into the Tar Baby. Brer Rabbit was so furious he head-butted the
cute little creature until he was completely covered with tar and unable to move.
Brer Fox leapt out of the bushes and strolled over to Brer Rabbit. "Well, well, what have
we here?" he asked, grinning an evil grin.
6th Grade: Unit 3
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Brer Rabbit gulped. He was stuck fast. He did some fast thinking while Brer Fox rolled
about on the road, laughing himself sick over Brer Rabbit's dilemma.
"I've got you this time, Brer Rabbit," said Brer Fox, jumping up and shaking off the dust.
"You've sassed me for the very last time. Now I wonder what I should do with you?"
Brer Rabbit's eyes got very large. "Oh please Brer Fox, whatever you do, please don't throw me
into the briar patch."
"Maybe I should roast you over a fire and eat you," mused Brer Fox. "No, that's too much
trouble. Maybe I'll hang you instead."
"Roast me! Hang me! Do whatever you please," said Brer Rabbit. "Only please, Brer
Fox, please don't throw me into the briar patch."
"If I'm going to hang you, I'll need some string," said Brer Fox. "And I don't have any
string handy. But the stream's not far away, so maybe I'll drown you instead."
"Drown me! Roast me! Hang me! Do whatever you please," said Brer Rabbit. "Only
please, Brer Fox, please don't throw me into the briar patch."
"The briar patch, eh?" said Brer Fox. "What a wonderful idea! You'll be torn into little
pieces!"
Grabbing up the tar-covered rabbit, Brer Fox swung him around and around and then
flung him head over heels into the briar patch. Brer Rabbit let out such a scream as he fell that all
of Brer Fox's fur stood straight up. Brer Rabbit fell into the briar bushes with a crash and a
mighty thump. Then there was silence.
Brer Fox cocked one ear toward the briar patch, listening for whimpers of pain. But he
heard nothing. Brer Fox cocked the other ear toward the briar patch, listening for Brer Rabbit's
death rattle. He heard nothing.
Then Brer Fox heard someone calling his name. He turned around and looked up the hill.
Brer Rabbit was sitting on a log combing the tar out of his fur with a wood chip and looking
smug.
"I was bred and born in the briar patch, Brer Fox," he called. "Born and bred in the briar
patch."
And Brer Rabbit skipped away as merry as a cricket while Brer Fox ground his teeth in
rage and went home.
"Used with permission of S.E. Schlosser and AmericanFolklore.net. Copyright 2013. All rights
reserved."
Retrieved from: http://americanfolklore.net/folklore/2010/07/brer_rabbit_meets_a_tar_baby.html
6th Grade: Unit 3
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Bud, not Buddy
Chapter 2
John Dillinger
During the 1930s Depression, many Americans, nearly helpless against forces they didn’t
understand, made heroes of outlaws who took what they wanted at gunpoint. Of all the lurid
desperadoes, one man, John Herbert Dillinger, came to evoke this Gangster Era and stirred mass
emotion to a degree rarely seen in this country.
Dillinger, whose name once dominated the headlines, was a notorious and vicious thief.
From September 1933 until July 1934, he and his violent gang terrorized the Midwest, killing 10
men, wounding 7 others, robbing banks and police arsenals, and staging 3 jail breaks—killing a
sheriff during one and wounding 2 guards in another.
John Herbert Dillinger was born on June 22, 1903 in the Oak Hill section of Indianapolis,
a middle-class residential neighborhood. His father, a hardworking grocer, raised him in an
atmosphere of disciplinary extremes, harsh and repressive on some occasions, but generous and
permissive on others. John’s mother died when he was three, and when his father remarried six
years later, John resented his stepmother.
In adolescence, the flaws in his bewildering personality became evident, and he was
frequently in trouble. Finally, he quit school and got a job in a machine shop in Indianapolis.
Although intelligent and a good worker, he soon became bored and often stayed out all night. His
father, worried that the temptations of the city were corrupting his teenage son, sold his property
in Indianapolis and moved his family to a farm near Mooresville, Indiana.
However, John reacted no better to rural life than he had to that in the city and soon
began to run wild again. A break with his father and trouble with the law (auto theft) led him to
enlist in the Navy. There he soon got into trouble and deserted his ship when it docked in Boston.
Returning to Mooresville, he married 16-year-old Beryl Hovius in 1924. A dazzling dream of
bright lights and excitement led the newlyweds to Indianapolis. Dillinger had no luck finding
work in the city and joined the town pool shark, Ed Singleton, in his search for easy money.
In their first attempt, they tried to rob a Mooresville grocer, but were quickly apprehended.
Singleton pleaded not guilty, stood trial, and was sentenced to two years in prison.
Dillinger, following his father’s advice, confessed, was convicted of assault and battery with
intent to rob and conspiracy to commit a felony, and received joint sentences of two to 14 years
and 10 to 20 years in the Indiana State Prison. Stunned by the harsh sentence, Dillinger became
a tortured, bitter man in prison.
“ John Dillinger” excerpt © www.fbi.gov. All rights reserved.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/john-dillinger/famous-cases-john-dillinger
6th Grade: Unit 3
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Bud, not Buddy
Chapter 3
Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson was a famous African-American athlete, actor, write, scholar, lawyer and political
activist. Paul Robeson was born on April 9, 1898, in Princeton, New Jersey, to Anna Louisa and
William Drew Robeson. Robeson's mother died from a fire when he was 6 and his clergyman
father moved the family to Somerville, where the youngster excelled in academics and sang in
church. When he was 17, Robeson earned a scholarship to attend Rutgers University, the third
African American to do so, and became one of the institution's most stellar students. He received
top honors for his debate and oratory skills, won 15 letters in four varsity sports, was elected Phi
Betta Kappa and became his class valedictorian.
Bud, not Buddy
Chapter 4
Public Enemy Number One is a term which was first widely used in the United States in the
1930s to describe individuals whose activities were seen as criminal and extremely damaging to
society. The phrase was appropriated by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI who used it to describe
various notorious fugitives that they were pursuing throughout the 1930s. The FBI's "Public
Enemies" were wanted criminals and fugitives who were already charged with crimes. Among
the criminals whom the FBI called "public enemies" were John Dillinger, Baby Face
Nelson, Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Ma Barker, Al Capone, and Alvin Karpis.
J. Edgar Hoover was the founder and director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Federal Bureau of Investigation began in 1908 as the primary investigators of crime and terror
in the United States.
6th Grade: Unit 3
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Bud, not Buddy
Chapter 5
Pretty Boy Floyd
http://www.biography.com/people/charles-pretty-boy-floyd-9542085 (short 3 minute video and reference
material)
Floyd was born in Georgia and grew up on a farm in Oklahoma. After an unlikely first career as a farmer,
Floyd turned to crime to escape the poverty of the Depression era, which hit farmers in the "Dust Bowl"
especially hard. He became popular with the public by destroying mortgage papers at many of the banks
he robbed, liberating many debt-ridden citizens; he was often protected by Oklahoma locals, who dubbed
him "Robin Hood of the Cooksoon Hills." (you may need to remind students that Robin Hood was
famous for stealing from the rich and giving to the poor).
Pretty Boy Floyd
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie
If you'll gather 'round me, children,
A story I will tell
'Bout Pretty Boy Floyd, an outlaw,
Oklahoma knew him well.
But a many a starvin' farmer
The same old story told
How the outlaw paid their mortgage
And saved their little homes.
It was in the town of Shawnee,
A Saturday afternoon,
His wife beside him in his wagon
As into town they rode.
Others tell you 'bout a stranger
That come to beg a meal,
Underneath his napkin
Left a thousand-dollar bill.
There a deputy sheriff approached him
In a manner rather rude,
Vulgar words of anger,
An' his wife she overheard.
It was in Oklahoma City,
It was on a Christmas Day,
There was a whole car load of groceries
Come with a note to say:
Pretty Boy grabbed a log chain,
And the deputy grabbed his gun;
In the fight that followed
He laid that deputy down.
"Well, you say that I'm an outlaw,
You say that I'm a thief.
Here's a Christmas dinner
For the families on relief."
Then he took to the trees and timber
Along the river shore,
Hiding on the river bottom
And he never come back no more.
Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
Yes, he took to the trees and timber
To live a life of shame;
Every crime in Oklahoma
Was added to his name.
And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.
© Copyright 1958 (renewed) by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc.
6th Grade: Unit 3
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There’s No Way Like The American Way
.
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Bud, not Buddy
Chapter 7
Bud, Not Buddy
A Reader’s Theater Script
Excerpted from the book by Christopher Paul Curtis, published by Delacorte, New York, ©1999
Story © 1997, Christopher Paul Curtis. This script may be freely copied, shared, and performed
for any noncommercial purpose, except it may not be posted online without permission.
EXCERPT SUMMARY: Bud goes to the Public Library to seek the help and advice of Miss
Hill, a librarian. He learns she has married and moved away.
Characters:
NARRATOR 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 – these may be combined or broken apart to add more reading roles
LIBRARIAN
BUD
_____________________________________________________________
NARRATOR 1:
I pushed the heavy door open and walked into the library.
NARRATOR 2:
The air in the library isn’t like the air anywhere else. First it’s always
cooler than the air outside. It feels like you’re walking into a cellar on a
hot July day, even if you have to walk up a bunch of stairs to get into it.
NARRATOR 3:
The next thing about the air in the library is that no other place smells
anything like it. If you close your eyes and try to pick out what it is that
you’re sniffing, you’re only going to get confused, because all the smells
have blended together and turned themselves into a different one.
NARRATOR 3:
As soon as I got into the library I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I
got a whiff of the leather on all the old books, a smell that got real strong
if you picked one of them up and stuck your nose real close to it when you
turned the pages.
NARRATOR 4:
Then there was the smell of the cloth that covered the brand new books,
the books that made a splitting sound when you opened them.
NARRATOR 5:
Then I could sniff the paper, that soft, powdery, drowsy smell that comes
off the pages in little puffs when you’re reading something or looking at
some pictures, a kind of hypnotizing smell.
NARRATOR 6:
I think it’s that smell that makes so many folks fall asleep in the library.
You’ll see someone turn a page and you can imagine a puff of page
powder coming up really slow and easy until it starts piling on the
person’s eyelashes.
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NARRATOR 1:
It weighs their eyes down so much that they stay down a little longer after
each blink and finally makes them so heavy that they just don’t come back
up at all. Then their mouths come open and their heads start bouncing up
and down like they’re bobbing in a big tub of water for apples. Before you
know it, …woop, zoop, sloop…they’re out cold and their
face thunks down smack-dab on the book.
NARRATOR 2:
That’s the part that gets the librarians the maddest. They get real upset if
folks start drooling in the books and, page powder or not, they don’t want
to hear no excuses, you gotta get out. Drooling in the books is even worse
than laughing out loud in the library.
NARRATOR 3:
Even though it might seem kind of mean, you can’t really blame the
librarians for tossing drooly folks out. We all know there’ nothing worse
than opening a book and having the pages all stuck together from
somebody’s dried-up slobber.
NARRATOR 4:
I opened my eyes to start looking for Miss Hill. She wasn’t at the lending
desk so I left my suitcase with the white lady there. I knew it would be
safe. I walked between the stacks to see if Miss Hill was putting books up.
I went back up to the librarian at the lending desk. I waited until she
looked up at me. She smiled.
LIBRARIAN:
Yes? Would you like to retrieve your suitcase?
BUD:
Not yet, ma’am. Could I ask you a question?
LIBRARIAN:
Of course, young man. How may I help you?
BUD:
I’m looking for Miss Hill.
LIBRARIAN:
(surprised) Miss Hill? My goodness, hadn’t you heard?
NARRATORS:
Uh-oh!
NARRATOR 5:
That’s Number 16 of Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things for Having a
Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself, and it's one of the
worst ones.
NARRATOR 6:
RULES AND THINGS NUMBER 16 If a Grown-up Ever Starts a
Sentence by Saying “Haven’t You Heard,” Get Ready, ‘Cause What’s
About to Come Out of Their Mouth Is Gonna Drop You Headfirst into a
Boiling Tragedy.
NARRATOR 1:
It seems like the answer to ‘Haven’t you heard” always has something to
do with someone kicking the bucket. And not kicking the bucket in a
6th Grade: Unit 3
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clam, peaceful way like a heart attack at home in bed either, it usually is
some kind of dying that will make your eyes buck out of your head when
you hear about it. It’s usually the kind of thing that will run you out of a
room with your hands over your ears and your mouth wide open.
NARRATOR 2:
Something like hearing that your grandmother got her whole body pulled
through the wringer on a washing machine, or something like hearing
about a horse slipping on the ice and landing on some kid you went to
school with.
BUD:
No, ma’am.
LIBRARIAN:
There’s no need for you to look so stricken. It’s not bad news, young man.
(quiet “librarian-type” laugh) Really, it’s not bad news. Unless you had
matrimonial plans concerning Miss Hill.
BUD:
(confused) No, ma’am, I didn’t plan that at all.
LIBRARIAN:
(quiet laugh again) Good, because I don’t think her new husband would
appreciate the competition. Charlemae…Miss Hill is currently living in
Chicago, Illinois.
BUD:
Husband? You mean she got married, Ma’am?
LIBRARIAN:
Oh, yes, and I must tell you, she was radiating happiness.
BUD:
And she moved all the way to Chicago?
LIBRARIAN:
That’s right, but Chicago isn’t that far. Here, I’ll show you in this atlas.
(pause) Here we are. We’re here in Flint, Michigan. And Chicago is here
in Illinois.
BUD:
How long would it take someone to walk that far?
LIBRARIAN:
Oh, dear, quite a while, I’m afraid. Let’s check the distance. (pause) OK,
this is how one figures the amount of time required to walk to Chicago.
(pause) Aha, it says in this book that the average male human gait is five
miles an hour. OK, assuming that you could cover five miles an hour, all
we have to do is divide two hundred seventy by five. (pause) Fifty-four
hours! Much too long to be practical. No, I’m afraid you’ll simply have to
wait until Mrs. Rollins comes back to Flint for a visit.
NARRATOR 3:
Shucks. Chicago might as well be a million miles away from Flint and
Miss Hill might as well be a squashed, crunched-up mess in a washing
machine when it came down to helping me now. I thanked the librarian for
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the bad news and went to sit at one of the big heavy tables so I could think
what to do next.
NARRATOR 4:
Going back to the Home was out. It used to be that we’d get a new kid
every once in a while, but lately it seems like there’s a couple of new kids
every day, mostly babies, and they’re most always sick.
NARRATOR 5:
It’s not like it was when I first got there, shucks, half the folks that run it
don’t even tell you their name and don’t remember yours unless you’re in
trouble all the time or getting ready to move out.
NARRATOR 6:
After while I got my suitcase and…
NARRATOR 1:
…walked into the regular air and…
NARRATOR 2:
…stinking smells of Flint.
NARRATOR 3:
That library door closing after I walked out…
NARRATOR 4:
…was the exact kind of door Momma had told me about.
NARRATOR 5:
I knew that since it had closed…
NARRATORS:
…the next one was about to open
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Bud, not Buddy
Chapter 8
The Great Depression
It walked like shadow in the night
Without a word, a sound
And when it struck, a vicious bite
It split the sky and ground
Never there was such great despair
Left all men by its feet
And anywhere and everywhere
They had none to live or eat
They tried to hide but found were they
And any place they left
Was teemed with gloom, sad and most grey
Cheerless, lonely, bereft
They bit the dust and gulped defeat
Twas nothing left at all
And shattered was each heart, in need
Each broken and dimmed soul
The market fell, each core was broke
Land teemed with dearth e’ermore
And every heart, they sat in dark
Asked, what was it worth for?
Gleb Zavlanov
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-great-depression-2/
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Bud, not Buddy
Chapter 10
"Baby Face" Nelson
"Baby Face" Nelson was born Lester M.
Gillis on December 6, 1908, in Chicago,
Illinois. He roamed the Chicago streets
with a gang of juvenile hoodlums during
his early teens. By the age of 14, he was
an accomplished car thief and had been
dubbed "Baby Face" by members of his
gang due to his juvenile appearance.
Nelson's early criminal career included
stealing tires, running stills, bootlegging,
Lester M. Gillis
and armed robbery.
In 1922, Nelson was convicted of auto theft and was committed to a boys' home. Two
years later, he was released on parole, but within five months he was returned on a similar
charge.
In 1928, Nelson met a salesgirl, Helen Wawzynak, whom he married. His wife retained
the name Helen Gillis throughout their marriage.
Nelson was sentenced to a prison term of one year to life for his January, 1931, bank
robbery in Chicago, Illinois. After a year's confinement, Nelson was removed from the Illinois
State Penitentiary, Joliet, Illinois, to stand trial on another bank robbery charge in Wheaton,
Illinois. On February 17, 1932, Nelson escaped prison guards while being returned to Joliet.
After a brief stay in Reno, Nevada, he fled to Sausalito, California. There he meet John Paul
Chase, with whom he would be closely associated for the rest of his life.
John Paul Chase, born December 26, 1901, lived most of his life in
California. He attended school through fifth grade, then worked at a
ranch near San Rafael, California. Chase later worked in railway shops
for four years, first as an office boy, then as a machinist's apprentice. In
1930, Chase became associated with a liquor smuggling operation
comprised of persons with underworld connections.
When Nelson arrived in California, Chase still was involved with the
liquor smuggling gang. Nelson worked with Chase as an armed guard
for the truck used to illegally transport liquor. The two men became
close friends, and Chase frequently introduced Nelson as his halfJohn Paul Chase
brother.
Nelson was joined by his wife and remained in California until May, 1933. While Chase
stayed in Sausalito, Nelson departed to Long Beach, Indiana, where he lived for several months.
While in Indiana, Nelson met several criminals, including Homer Van Meter, and occasionally
6th Grade: Unit 3
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accompanied them to San Antonio, Texas. Nelson may have made his original connection with
the Dillinger gang during this period.
In December, 1933, Nelson contacted Chase and they remained together for almost a
year. During this time, a man was shot and killed in Minneapolis. The perpetrators were
reportedly in an automobile bearing California license plates which were eventually traced to a
car owned by Nelson.
After a short trip to Bremerton, Washington, Nelson and Chase proceeded to Reno,
Nevada. Chase later reported in an interview that Nelson killed a man during an altercation while
they were in Reno. The victim was a material witness in a United States
Mail Fraud case.
In April, 1934, Nelson, Helen Gillis and John Paul Chase went
to Chicago, Illinois, where they joined the Dillinger gang. While Chase
remained in Chicago, Nelson and his wife vacationed with the Dillinger
gang at the Little Bohemia Lodge in northern Wisconsin.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) learned of the gang's
location on April 22, 1934, and Special Agents proceeded to the Little
Bohemia Lodge. Barking dogs alerted the gangsters to the impending
FBI raid. The gangsters escaped in the dark, leaving a few women
associates, including Helen Gillis, behind.
Helen Gillis
Nelson fled to a nearby home and forced his way in with two
hostages. Shortly thereafter, Special Agents J. C. Newman and W. Carter Baum arrived at the
scene with a local constable. When their car stopped, the diminutive Nelson, who stood only five
feet four inches high and weighed 133 pounds, rushed to the car and ordered the occupants to get
out. Before they could comply, Nelson shot all three men, instantly killing Special Agent Baum
with a series of shots from his automatic pistol.
Within a short time, Chase rejoined Nelson. Helen Gillis, who had been released on
parole, met her husband and Chase about a month later. They lived near Lake Geneva,
Wisconsin, for several days. On June 23, 1934, Attorney General Homer S. Cummings offered a
reward for Nelson's capture or information leading to his arrest.
A robbery of the Merchants National Bank, South Bend, Indiana, occurred on June 30,
1934, in which a police officer was shot and killed. "Baby Face" Nelson, John Dillinger, and
Homer Van Meter participated in the actual robbery. Following the robbery, the gangsters fled to
Chicago, Illinois. Later two police officers were shot on Wolf Road, outside Chicago, when
Nelson opened fire as they approached the gang's meeting place.
Notorious gangster leader John Herbert Dillinger was shot and killed on July 22, 1934.
Following Dillinger's death, Nelson, Helen Gillis and Chase left Chicago for California with two
associates. That summer, Nelson and Chase made numerous trips between Chicago and
California. On one occasion, they were arrested for speeding in a small town. They paid the $5
fine at the police station and were released. Their car, containing machine guns, rifles and
ammunition, was not searched.
6th Grade: Unit 3
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In late August, the group returned to Chicago. Within a month, Nelson went to Nevada
and Chase traveled to New York City. Nelson and Chase again joined forces near Minden,
Nevada, on October 10, 1934. They proceeded to Chicago, where they stole a car on November
26, 1934, and drove to Wisconsin.
Inspector Samuel P. Cowley of the FBI's Chicago Office had been assigned to search for
Nelson. On November 27, 1934, Cowley received word that Nelson had been seen driving a
stolen car. Two Special Agents spotted the vehicle near Barrington, Illinois. Nelson brought his
car around behind the Agents, and Chase fired five rounds from an automatic rifle into the
Agents' car. One of the Agents returned fire and one shot pierced the radiator of Nelson's car,
partially disabling it.
Inspector Cowley and Special Agent Herman Edward Hollis approached in another
automobile and began pursuing Nelson and Chase. Suddenly, Nelson veered off Northwest
Highway at the entrance to the North Side Park in Barrington, Illinois, and stopped. Before
Cowley and Hollis could get out of their car, Nelson and Chase began firing automatic weapons
at them.
Special Agent Hollis was killed during the gun battle which lasted only four or five
minutes. Inspector Cowley, mortally wounded, died early the next morning.
Nelson, also critically injured, was helped into Cowley's automobile by Chase. Many guns and
other articles were transferred from Nelson's car to the Agents' car. Helen Gillis had been lying
in a field during the battle. She jumped into the Government vehicle as Chase was driving it
away.
"Baby Face" Nelson died about 8:00 that evening. In response to an anonymous
telephone call, FBI Agents found his body the next day near a Niles Center, Illinois, cemetery.
Nelson's widow was arrested on November 29, 1934. Having violated the terms of her parole,
Helen Gillis was sentenced to serve one year and one day in the Women's Federal Reformatory
in Mila, Michigan.
After Chase disposed of Nelson's body, he returned to Chicago. On November 30, 1934,
Chase responded to a want ad for men to drive automobiles to Seattle, Washington. To obtain
this job, he was photographed for a chauffeur's license at a police station. Because Chase's only
known arrest had been for drunkenness in 1931, no wanted circulars with his photograph and
fingerprints had ever been issued.
In early December, 1934, Special Agents of the FBI's San Francisco Office contacted
Chase's former employers and associates. They were instructed to notify the FBI if Chase was
seen. On December 27, 1934, Chase tried to borrow money from employees at the Mount Shasta,
California, fish hatcheries, where he had worked in 1928. The FBI and local police were
immediately notified, and Chief of Police A. L. Roberts apprehended Chase.
On December 31, 1934, Chase was removed to Chicago, Illinois, where he was the first
person to be tried under the law that made it a Federal violation to murder a Special Agent of the
FBI in the performance of his duties. Chase's trial began on March 18, 1935. One week later, the
jury found him guilty of murdering Inspector Samuel P. Cowley. The Attorney General
6th Grade: Unit 3
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designated the United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island, California, to receive Chase, and his
imprisonment there began on March 31, 1935.
Chase was transferred to the United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth, Kansas, in
September, 1954. Although he had been serving time for the murder of Inspector Cowley, 20
years later Chase had not yet been tried on the December 31, 1934, indictment charging him with
Special Agent Hollis's murder. On April 27, 1955, a motion was filed in United States District
Court, Chicago, Illinois, demanding immediate trial on this indictment or its dismissal.
On October 17, 1955, a United States District judge dismissed the indictment that
charged Chase with Hollis's murder. He held that Chase's mere knowledge of the indictment and
his failure to take action did not constitute a waiver of his right to a speedy trial.
When the pending indictment was dismissed, Chase became eligible for parole. After
parole had been denied repeatedly, Chase finally was paroled from Leavenworth on October 31,
1966. After his release, Chase resided in California, where he was employed as a custodian for
over six years.
John Paul Chase died of cancer in Palo Alto, California, on October 5, 1973.
Retrieved from: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/baby-face-nelson
6th Grade: Unit 3
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Bud, not Buddy
Chapter 12
Machine Gun Kelly was a notorious bank robber and kidnapper. Despite his enduring fame and
violent nickname, Machine Gun Kelly never killed anyone, and he was never known to fire his
namesake tommy gun (a gift from his wife) at anything but tin cans. As a young man he worked
as a cab driver and bootlegger, and he was jailed for that crime at Leavenworth, where he
became friends with several notorious bank robbers. He joined them in that line of work after his
release from prison, and he was involved in numerous hold-ups in Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi,
Texas, and Washington. In 1932, with his wife and several associates, Kelly kidnapped Howard
Woolverton, a banker in South Bend, Indiana, demanding $50,000 in ransom. Released after two
days, unharmed and with only the promise of payment, Woolverton said that over subsequent
months he received several phone calls demanding the past-due ransom, but he just hung up, and
eventually his kidnappers stopped calling.
Bud, not Buddy
Chapter 12
Ku Klux Klan
(Ku Kluxer)
Founded in 1866, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost every southern state by 1870
and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party's Reconstruction-era
policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for blacks. Its members waged an
underground campaign of intimidation and violence directed at white and black Republican
leaders. Though Congress passed legislation designed to curb Klan terrorism, the organization
saw its primary goal–the reestablishment of white supremacy–fulfilled through Democratic
victories in state legislatures across the South in the 1870s. After a period of decline, white
Protestant nativist groups revived the Klan in the early 20th century, burning crosses and staging
rallies, parades and marches denouncing immigrants, Catholics, Jews, blacks and organized
labor. The civil rights movement of the 1960s also saw a surge of Ku Klux Klan activity,
including bombings of black schools and churches and violence against black and white activists
in the South.
6th Grade: Unit 3
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Bud, not Buddy
Chapter 12
Al Capone
Born of an immigrant family in Brooklyn, New York in 1899, Al Capone quit school
after the sixth grade and associated with a notorious street gang, becoming accepted as a
member. Johnny Torrio was the street gang leader and among the other members was Lucky
Luciano, who would later attain his own notoriety.
About 1920, at Torrio’s invitation, Capone joined Torrio in Chicago where he had
become an influential lieutenant in the Colosimo mob. The rackets spawned by enactment of the
Prohibition Amendment, illegal brewing, distilling and distribution of beer and liquor, were
viewed as “growth industries.” Torrio, abetted by Al Capone, intended to take full advantage of
opportunities. The mob also developed interests in legitimate businesses in the cleaning and
dyeing field and cultivated influence with receptive public officials, labor unions, and
employees’ associations. Torrio soon succeeded to full leadership of the gang with the violent
demise of Big Jim Colosimo, and Capone gained experience and expertise as his strong right
arm.
In 1925, Capone became boss when Torrio, seriously wounded in an assassination
attempt, surrendered control and retired to Brooklyn. Capone had built a fearsome reputation in
the ruthless gang rivalries of the period, struggling to acquire and retain “racketeering rights” to
several areas of Chicago. That reputation grew as rival gangs were eliminated or nullified, and
the suburb of Cicero became, in effect, a fiefdom of the Capone mob.
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre on February 14, 1929, might be regarded as the
culminating violence of the Chicago gang era, as seven members or associates of the “Bugs”
Moran mob were machine-gunned against a garage wall by rivals posing as police. The massacre
was generally ascribed to the Capone mob, although Al himself was in Florida. The investigative
jurisdiction of the Bureau of Investigation during the 1920s and early 1930s was more limited
than it is now, and the gang warfare and depredations of the period were not within the Bureau’s
investigative authority.
The Bureau’s investigation of Al Capone arose from his reluctance to appear before a
federal grand jury on March 12, 1929 in response to a subpoena. On March 11, his lawyers
formally filed for postponement of his appearance, submitting a physician’s affidavit dated
March 5, which attested that Capone had been suffering from bronchial pneumonia in Miami,
had been confined to bed from January 13 to February 23, and that it would be dangerous to
Capone’s health to travel to Chicago. His appearance date before the grand jury was re-set for
March 20.
On request of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Bureau of Investigation agents obtained
statements to the effect that Capone had attended race tracks in the Miami area, that he had made
a plane trip to Bimini and a cruise to Nassau, that he had been interviewed at the office of the
Dade County Solicitor, and that he had appeared in good health on each of those occasions.
6th Grade: Unit 3
58
Capone appeared before the federal grand jury in Chicago on March 20, 1929 and
completed his testimony on March 27. As he left the courtroom, he was arrested by agents for
contempt of court, an offense for which the penalty could be one year in prison and a $1,000
fine. He posted $5,000 bond and was released.
On May 17, 1929, Al Capone and his bodyguard were arrested in Philadelphia for
carrying concealed deadly weapons. Within 16 hours they had been sentenced to terms of one
year each. Capone served his time and was released in nine months for good behavior on March
17, 1930. On February 28, 1931, Capone was found guilty in federal court on the contempt of
court charge and was sentenced to six months in Cook County Jail. His appeal on that charge
was subsequently dismissed.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department had been developing evidence on tax evasion
charges—in addition to Al Capone, his brother Ralph “Bottles” Capone, Jake “Greasy Thumb”
Guzik, Frank Nitti, and other mobsters were subjects of tax evasion charges.
On June 16, 1931, Al Capone pled guilty to tax evasion and prohibition charges. He then boasted
to the press that he had struck a deal for a two-and-a-half year sentence, but the presiding judge
informed him he, the judge, was not bound by any deal. Capone then changed his plea to not
guilty.
On October 18, 1931, Capone was convicted after trial and on November 24, was
sentenced to eleven years in federal prison, fined $50,000 and charged $7,692 for court costs, in
addition to $215,000 plus interest due on back taxes. The six-month contempt of court sentence
was to be served concurrently. While awaiting the results of appeals, Capone was confined to the
Cook County Jail. Upon denial of appeals, he entered the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta, serving
his sentence there and at Alcatraz. On November 16, 1939, Al Capone was released after having
served seven years, six months and fifteen days, and having paid all fines and back taxes.
Suffering from paresis derived from syphilis, he had deteriorated greatly during his
confinement. Immediately on release he entered a Baltimore hospital for brain treatment and then
went on to his Florida home, an estate on Palm Island in Biscayne Bay near Miami, which he had
purchased in 1928.
Following his release, he never publicly returned to Chicago. He had become mentally
incapable of returning to gangland politics. In 1946, his physician and a Baltimore psychiatrist,
after examination, both concluded Capone then had the mentality of a 12-year-old child. Capone
resided on Palm Island with his wife and immediate family, in a secluded atmosphere, until his
death due to a stroke and pneumonia on January 25, 1947.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/al-capone