tgow ao3

• Dust Bowl

  • Severe dust storms that damaged the ecology and agriculture of America (1930s)
  • Human factors -> the destruction of the natural topsoil by settlers in the region
  • Intensified Great Depression, left more than 500 millions Americans homeless
• The Great Depression

  Became evident after Wall Street Crash (1929)

  High unemployment, many failed businesses

  Farming/rural suffered greatly

  Result of overproduction -> Henry Ford, oversupply
• Communism

  Communists worked with farm owners to prevent farm foreclosures

  Red scare; communism viewed as anti-foreign

  Communism diametrically opposed to the American lifestyle
• American Civil War

  Confederacy: wanted slaves

  North became more industrialised after Civil War, South more agricultural economy
• Abraham Lincoln

  In 1863, passed Emancipation Proclamation declaring freedom of slaves
• Aftermath of civil war, post-1865:

  Southern states experienced economic devastation

  African Americans still faced ongoing discrimination
• Hoovervilles

  Grim, unsanitary conditions with makeshift materials (cardboard, tar paper, glass)

  Politicised label suggesting that President Hoover was responsible for the economic crisis facing the migrants
• Route 66

  2400 miles

  Mythologised, primary route for those migrating West especially during Dust bowl

  Symbolises freedom, hope and liberty