“Dust Pneumonia and Grit in Your Teeth: How the Dust Bowl Affected Women and Children”
Presented to the Region XVI Dust Bowl Days
Aug 11, 2012
I. Overview
II. Houses
Floors
Ceilings
Walls
Windows
Kitchen and cooking
II. Clothing and shoes
Women
Children – like adults, hand-me downs
Flour sacks, cardboard in shoes
III. Women’s status as a good housekeeper – Before the Dust Bowl
Gardening as a major source of food, chickens, cows
Carrying water, insects, static electricity, heat killing crops
Food preparation, canning (wood stove, cow chips), churning – how to make butter, etc.
Keeping house
Health care, home remedies
IV. Children’s lives – before the Dust Bowl
School, church
Chores
Expectations
V. Women During the Dust Bowl
Women’s status as a good housekeeper – Before the Dust Bowl
Gardening as a major source of food, chickens, cows
Carrying water, insects, static electricity, heat killing crops, rabbits (hunts)
Food preparation, canning (wood stove, cow chips), churning – how to make butter, etc.
Keeping house
VI. Children’s lives during the Dust Bowl
School (contagious diseases), church
Chores
Expectations
VII. The Effect of Dust on Health
Effect on livestock
Dust in lungs – coughing up clumps of dirt, lack of oxygen
Dust Pneumonia – causes, effects, survival
Eating dirt, scratching teeth, internal bleeding
Depression, psychoses, end of the world, suicides
Sources
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/afctshtml/tshome.html Voices from the Dust Bowl
http://www.csub.edu/library/special/dustbowl/dustbowl.shtml Dust Bowl Migrant Interviews
http://www.jogtheweb.com/run/Rj0sf39rgBR2/Experiencing-The-Dust-Bowl#1 Nebraska
Teaching Sources
Bibliography from http://www.library.okstate.edu/oralhistory/dustbowl/bibliography.htm
Diaries, Memoirs, and Biographies
Davidson, James Alfred. Patches on my Britches: Memories of Growing up in the Dust Bowl. Bloomington, IN.: 1st
Books Library, 1998.
Dyck, Mary Knackstedt and Pamela Riney-Kehrberg. Waiting on the Bounty: The Dust Bowl Diary of Mary Knackstedt
Dyck.Iowa City.
Henderson, Caroline A. and Alvin O. Turner. Letters from the Dust Bowl. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
2001.
Janke, Katelan. Survival in the Storm: The Dust Bowl Diary of Grace Edwards. New York: Scholastic Press, 2002.
Low, Ann Marie. Dust Bowl Diary. Lincoln: University Press of Nebraska, 1984.
Revard, Carter. Winning the Dust Bowl. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001.
Rutland, Robert Allen. A Boyhood in the Dust Bowl, 1926-1934. Niwot, Colo.: University Press of Colorado, 1995.
Documentary Photography
Curtis, James. Mind’s Eye, Mind’s Truth: FSA Photography Reconsidered. Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1989.
Drain, Margaret, et al. Surviving the Dust Bowl. Alexandria, VA: PBS Home Video, 1998.
Ganzel, Bill. Dust Bowl Descent. Lincoln: University Press of Nebraska, 1984.
Peeler, David P. Hope Among Us Yet: Social Criticism and Social Solace in Depression America. Athens: University
of Georgia Press, 1987.
Economic Conditions
Bonnifield, Mathew Paul. The Dust Bowl: Men, Dirt, and Depression. Albuquerque:University of New Mexico Press,
1979.
Hansen, Zeynep Kocabiyik and Gary D. Libecap. Small Farms, Externalities, and the Dust Bowl of the
1930s. Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2003.
Hull, William. The Dirty Thirties: Tales of the Nineteen Thirties during which Occurred a great Drought, a Lengthy
Depression and the era Commonly Called the Dust Bowl Years. Edna, Minn.: W. H. Hull, 1989.
Hurt, R. Douglass. Problems of Plenty: The American Farmer in the Twentieth Century.
Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002.
Leuchtenburg, William E. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940. New York:Harper & Row, 1963.
Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Wunder, John R. and Francis W. Kaye. Americans View their Dust Bowl Experience. Niwot, Colo.: University Press of
Colorado
Environmental Conditions
Blouet, Brian W. and Frederick C. Luebke. The Great Plains: Environment and Culture. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1979.
Cunfer, Geoff. On the Great Plains: Agriculture and Environment. College Station: Texas A & M University Press,
2005.
Hibbs, Ben. “The Dust Bowl Can Be Saved,” Readers Digest Vol. 32, no. 190 (February 1938).
Lookingbill, Brad D. Dust Bowl, USA: Depression America and the Ecological Imagination, 1929-1941. Athens: Ohio
University Press, 2001.
Sherow, James Earl. A Sense of the American West. An Anthology of Environmental History. Albuquerque: University
of New Mexico Press, 1998.
Skinner, Brian J. Use and Misuse of Earth’s Surface: Readings from American Scientist. Los Altos, CA: W.
Kaufmann, 1981.
Walker, Robert and Doug Peterson. From Dust Bowl to Mud Bowl: The Erosion Problem. University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign: College of Agriculture, Cooperative Extension Service, 1982.
Worster, Donald. The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993.
Historical Film and Sound
Guthrie, Woody. This Land is Your Land. Boston: Little, Brown, 1998.
Guthrie, Woody. Woody Guthrie Folk Songs. New York: Ludlow Music, 1963.
Guthrie, Woody. Dust Bowl Ballads. New York: Buddha Records, 1940.
Guthrie, Woody, Harold Leventhal, and Marjorie Guthrie. The Woody Guthrie Songbook. New York: Grosset &
Dunlap, 1976.
Moore, David. Oral History Interview with Isla Barbee. [Non-musical Recording]. Oklahoma State University: Oral
History Seminar, 1993.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath and Other Writings: 1936-1941. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.
Zanuck, Darryl F. The Grapes of Wrath. [Video recording]. Los Angeles: Twentieth Century Fox Home
Entertainment, 1997.
Historical Geography
Berglund, Lee. Wheat Belt Route: The Story of a Dust Bowl Railroad. David City, Neb.: South Platte Press, 1998.
Hawks, Tod R. Kansas and the Dust Bowl Dilemma: The 1930’s and Before. New York: Columbia College, 1965.
Johnson, Vance. Heaven’s Tableland: The Dust Bowl Story. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1947.
Lauber, Patricia. Dust Bowl: The Story of Man on the Great Plains. New York: Coward McCann, 1958.
Logsdon, Guy William. The Dust Bowl and the Migrant. Tulsa: Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and
Art, 1971.
Riney-Kehrberg, Pamela. Rooted in Dust: Surviving Drought and Depression in Southwestern Kansas. Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 1994.
Rutherford, Harold J. Dustbowl to Paradise: Eastern Colorado to Frisco, Colorado: Harold’s Humorous
History. Federal heights, CO.: Ten Mile Pub., 2000.
Stanley, Ellen May. Golden Age, Great Depression, and Dust Bowl. Newton, KS: Mennonite Press, Inc., 2001.
Svobida, Lawrence. Farming the Dust Bowl: A First Hand Account from Kansas. Lawrence: University Press of
Kansas, 1986.
Internet Resources
Cooke, Morris Llewellyn. Report of the Great Plains Drought Area Committee, August,1936. New York: New Deal
Network. [Internet Resource]. http://newdeal.feri.org/hopkins/hop27.htm
Enfolder, Linda. Representing the Truth in Black and White: American Dust Bowl Migrants in Fiction and
Photography.[Internet Resource]. http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp04/mq22511.pdf [9/29/06].
Gazit, Chana, producer. “Surviving the Dust Bowl,” The American Experience series.
[Internet Resource]. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/.
Ganzel, Bill. Wessels Living History Farm: The Dust Bowl. [Internet
Resource].http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_02.html
Library of Congress. America's Story: The Dust Bowl of Oklahoma. [Internet
Resource]. http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/es/ok/dustbowl_1
Juvenile Literature
Andryszewski, Tricia. The Dust Bowl: Disaster on the Plains.
Booth, David and Karen Reczuch. The Dust Bowl. Buffalo: Kids Can Press, 1997.
Coombs, Karen Mueller. Children of the Dust Days. Minneapolis: Carolrhoda, 2000.
Cooper, Michael L. Dust to Eat: Drought and Depression in the 1930s. New York: Clarion Books, 2004.
Connell, Kate. Hoping for Rain: The Dust Bowl Adventures of Patty and Earl Buckler. Washington D. C.: National
Geographic, 2004.
DeAngelis, Therese and Gina DeAngelis. The Dust Bowl. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2002.
Farris, John and Maurie Manning. The Dust Bowl. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1989.
Hesse, Karen. Out of the Dust. New York: Scholastic Press, 1999.
King, David C. ed. The Dust Bowl. Carlisle, MA: Discovery Enterprises, Ltd. 1997.
Levey, Richard H. Dust Bowl! : The 1930s Black Blizzards. New York: Bearport Pub., 2005.
Marrin, Albert. Years of Dust: The Story of the Dust Bowl. New York: Dutton Children’s Books, 2009.
Moss, Marissa. Rose’s Journal: The Story of a Girl in the Great Depression. San Diego: Silver Whistle/Harcourt,
2001.
Myers, Anna. Red Dirt Jessie. New York: Puffin Books, 1997.
Price, Sean. The Dirty Thirties: Documenting the Dust Bowl. Chicago: Raintree, 2007.
Raven, Margot Theis and Roger Essley. Angels in the Dust. Mahwah, NJ: BridgeWater Books, 1997.
Slade, Arthur G. Dust. New York: Wendy Lamb Books, 2003
Turner, Ann Warren and Robert Barrett. Dust for Dinner. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.
Dust Bowl Literature-Fiction
Babb, Sanora. Whose Names are Unknown. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
Carlile, Clark S. Till the Grass Grows Green. Pocatello, ID: The Author, 1999.
Gassett, John D. Little John: The Webb City Kid. Tulsa: Gassett, 1999.
Herr, Melody. Summer of Discovery. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006.
Johnson, Josephine Winslow. Now in November. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1934.
Lanham, Edwin. The Stricklands. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1939.
Mick, Lee. Below the Horizon. Bloomington, IN: Author House, 2005.
Peery, Janet. What the Thunder Said. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath and Other Writings: 1936-1941. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.
Thompson, Jim. Roughneck. New York: Vantage Books, 1954.
Williams, Jeanne. The Longest Road. New York: St. Martin’s, 1993.
Wright, Barbara. Plain Language. Prince Frederick, MD., 2003.
Migrant Labor
Durbin, William. The Journal of C. J. Jackson: A Dust Bowl Migrant. New York: Scholastic Press, 2002.
Gregory, James N. American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1989.
McWilliams, Carey. Ill Fares the Land: Migrants and Migratory Labor in the United States. New York: Barnes & Noble,
Inc., 1941.
Meltzer, Milton. Driven from the Land: The Story of the Dust Bowl. New York: Benchmark Books, 2000.
Shindo, Charles J. Dust Bowl Migrants in the American Imagination. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997.
Stanley, Jerry. Children of the Dust Bowl: The True Story of the School at Weedpatch Camp. New York: Trumpet
Club, 1993.
Stein, Walter J. California and the Dust Bowl Migration. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press: 1973.
Natural Disasters
Lloyd, Linda Mercer. Five Great Weather Disasters. [Videorecording]. Stamford, CT: ABC Video, 1996.
Smith, Howard Everett. Killer Weather: Stories of Great Disasters. New York: Dodd,
Mead, and Company, 1982.
Spignesi, Stephen J. The 100 Greatest Disasters of all Time. New York: Citadel Press, 2002.
Social Conditions
Carrozza, Carl. The Dust Bowl: The History, Ecology, and Echoes of 1930s America. Princeton Junction: Thoughtful
Education Press, 1995.
Egan, Timothy. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived The Great American Dustbowl. New
York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.
Hurt, R. Douglas. The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981.
Isaacs, Sally Senzell. Life in the Dust Bowl. Chicago: Heinemann, 2002.
McArthur, Debra. The Dust Bowl and the Depression in American History. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers,
2002.
McElvaine, Robert S. The Depression and New Deal: A History in Documents. New York: Oxford University Press,
2000.
Yancey, Diane. Life during the Dust Bowl. San Diego: Lucent Books, 2004.
Theses and Dissertations
Chisholm, Margo Lee. “Creation of the Dust Bowl Image.” M. A. thesis, Louisiana State University, 1987.
Dorrill, Lisa. “Picturing the Dirty Thirties: Painting and Prints of the Dust Bowl,” Ph. D. diss., University of Kansas,
1998.
Floyd, Fred. A History of the Dust Bowl. M. A. thesis, Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1950.
Jennings, Melanie S. “Writing from the Fields: Dust Bowl Okie Literature,” Ph. D. diss., University of California, San
Diego, 2000.
Lookingbill, Brad D. “In God We Trust: The Fundamentalist Culture in the Dust Bowl Environment,” M. A. thesis,
University of Toledo, 1993.
Porter, Jess Christian. “Public Perception and Knowledge of the Dust Bowl as Region, Era, and Event,” Ph.D. diss.
Oklahoma State University, 2007.
Riney-Kehrberg. “In God We Trusted, In Kansas We Busted--Again: A Social History of Dust Bowl Kansas,” Ph.D.
diss. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1991.
Ware, James Wesley. “Black Blizzard: The Dust Bowl of the 1930s.” Ph. D. diss, Oklahoma State University, 1977.
Yanke, Hannah R. “Dust Bowl,” M. A. thesis, University of Denver, 1946.
~Prepared by Charles Buckner, under contract for the Oklahoma State University Library, November 2006. Revised
and updated by Jennifer Paustenbaugh, October 2009.