Reaping the Whirlwind
Black Sunday was only halfway through the decade-long crisis. The storms continued. The Great Depression still affected people. Government programs were instituted to help. Learn what FDR’s administration did to try to keep the southern Plains from becoming a North American Sahara desert. Find out why some residents finally decided they had to give up and move somewhere else and how some held on.
Episodes
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Reaping the Whirlwind
S1 E2 - 1h 55m
Black Sunday was only halfway through the decade-long crisis. The storms continued. The Great Depression still affected people. Government programs were instituted to help. Learn what FDR’s administration did to try to keep the southern Plains from becoming a North American Sahara desert. Find out why some residents finally decided they had to give up and move somewhere else and how some held on.
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The Great Plow-Up
S1 E1 - 1h 55m
The grasslands of the southern Plains were rapidly turned into wheat fields. Then following the early years of the drought, storms killed crops and livestock and literally rearranged the landscape. The worst storm of them all was on April 14, 1935—Black Sunday—a searing experience for everyone caught in it, including a young songwriter from Pampa, Texas, named Woody Guthrie.
Extras + Features
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Plows and Bubbles
S1 -
Learn about the two types of plows farmers used.
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Psychological
S1 -
Dorthy Williamson discusses working in the southern Great Plains during the dust bowl.
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Government Photography
S1 -
The government hired photographers to capture the movement of immigrants to CA.
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Trixie Travis Brown: Follett Texas
S1 -
Trixie Travis Brown talks about her father moving to Follett, TX.
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Robert Boots McCoy Talks About The Jack Rabbits
S1 -
Robert Boots McCoy talks about the jack rabbits.
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Extended Look
S1 - 1m 43s
The Dust Bowl chronicles the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, in which the frenzied wheat boom of the Great Plow-Up, followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s nearly swept away the breadbasket of the nation..
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First Look | Suffocating Blackness
S1 - 20s
Survey the causes of the worst man-made ecological disaster in U.S. history: the catastrophic dust storms of the 1930s.
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Making The Dust Bowl | Uncovering the Dust Bowl
S1 - 5m 55s
Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan discuss making The Dust Bowl and the myriad hardships facing those in the Panhandle during the 1930s.
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Modern Machinery
S1 -
Modern machinery made farming more profitable and changed the structure of the land for growing wheat. The result was more land speculation, more acreage turned over to wheat farming, and a blind faith that the good times wouldn’t end, but warning signs were evident.
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You Gave Us Beer, Now Give Us Water
S1 -
FDR was greeted with signs along the road saying "You gave us beer. Now give us water."
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Buying Land
S1 -
Land prices are going up and people say the climate is undergoing a permanent shift.
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Jack Rabbits
S1 -
Plagues of jack rabbits swarmed the great plains destroying everything in their path.
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