How did the Great Depression affect California?
Like all other parts of the United States, the Great Depression had a huge effect on California. In particular, thousands of midwestern farmers, fleeing the devastation of the Dust Bowl, fled to California. This had a profound impact on California and forever changed the culture of the state. Many short-lived...
When did the Great Depression start in California?
When the U.S. stock market crashed in October 1929, it brought hard times to California, the nation, and the world. For businesses and millions of individuals, fear and failure became as commonplace as optimism and prosperity had been before the economic collapse. The Great Crash soon became the Great Depression.
How did the Dust Bowl and Great Depression affect California?
The fact that the Dust Bowl happened during the Great Depression in the 1930s, caused even more economic problems for farmers. The Dust Bowl eventually resulted in the mass migration of people to the state of California. The impact of this mass migration had both positive and negative effects on California and the country as a whole.
Did people jump out of windows during the Great Depression?
There are many stories about the Great Depression, mainly that one of the causes was the stock market crash of 1929. One of the most widely-known rumors about the crash was that many investors jumped out of windows on Wall Street to end their suffering. However, is there any truth to this story?
How many people migrated to California in the 1930s?
The exact number of Dust Bowl refugees remains a matter of controversy, but by some estimates, as many as 400,000 migrants headed west to California during the 1930s, according to Christy Gavin and Garth Milam, writing in California State University, Bakersfield's Dust Bowl Migration Archives.
Who migrated to California during the Great Depression?
In the 1930s, farmers from the Midwestern Dust Bowl states, especially Oklahoma and Arkansas, began to move to California; 250,000 arrived by 1940, including a third who moved into the San Joaquin Valley, which had a 1930 population of 540,000.
How many people migrated west to California during the Depression?
The Dust Bowl exodus was the largest migration in American history. By 1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the Plains states; of those, 200,000 moved to California. When they reached the border, they did not receive a warm welcome as described in this 1935 excerpt from Collier's magazine.
How many Okies migrated to California?
From 1935 to 1940 California received more than 250,000 migrants from the Southwest. A plurality of the impoverished ones came from Oklahoma. Supposedly, the Dust Bowl forced "Okies" off their land, but far more migrants left southeastern Oklahoma than the Dust Bowl region of northwestern Oklahoma and the Panhandle.
Why did people move to California during Great Depression?
Driven by the depression, drought, and the Dust Bowl, thousands upon thousands left their homes in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Over 300,000 of them came to California. They looked to California as a land of promise. Not since the Gold Rush had so many people traveled in such large numbers to the state.
What happened to the Okies when they reached California?
Once the Okie families migrated from Oklahoma to California, they often were forced to work on large farms to support their families. Because of the minimal pay, these families were often forced to live on the outskirts of these farms in shanty houses they built themselves.
When did most people move to California?
World War II further transformed California as emerging aerospace and shipping industries brought millions more workers of varied geographical and cultural backgrounds into the state. Migration actually sped up after the war's end. In 1962, California passed New York as the nation's most populous state.
How did the Great Depression affect California?
California was hit hard by the economic collapse of the 1930s. Businesses failed, workers lost their jobs, and families fell into poverty. While the political response to the depression often was confused and ineffective, social messiahs offered alluring panaceas promising relief and recovery.
What was life like for the Okies in California?
Predominantly upland southerners, the half-million Okies met new hardships in California, where they were unwelcome aliens, forced to live in squatter camps and to compete for scarce jobs as agricultural migrant laborers.
What did the Okies eat?
Chicken-fried steak, barbecue pork, fried okra, squash, blackeyed peas, cornbread, biscuits, sausage gravy, grits, corn, strawberries and pecan pie.
What ended the Dust Bowl?
1930 – 1936Dust Bowl / Period
Where did most Dust Bowl migrants end up?
The press called them Dust Bowl refugees, although actually few came from the area devastated by dust storms. Instead they came from a broad area encompassing four southern plains states: Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. More than half a million left the region in the 1930s, mostly heading for California.
Who were the migrant workers during the Great Depression?
Although the Dust Bowl included many Great Plains states, the migrants were generically known as "Okies," referring to the approximately 20 percent who were from Oklahoma. The migrants represented in Voices from the Dust Bowl came primarily from Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri.
When did most people move to California?
World War II further transformed California as emerging aerospace and shipping industries brought millions more workers of varied geographical and cultural backgrounds into the state. Migration actually sped up after the war's end. In 1962, California passed New York as the nation's most populous state.
Why did people move to California?
This famous gold rush began in January of 1848 when a man named James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill in California. Soon, an influx of gold-hungry people began to migrate to California, coming from all corners of the world. Once the gold rush happened, California and the U.S. would never be the same.
What happened to California during the Great Depression?
California was hit hard by the economic collapse of the 1930s. Businesses failed, workers lost their jobs, and families fell into poverty. While the political response to the depression often was confused and ineffective, social messiahs offered alluring panaceas promising relief and recovery.
What was the impact of the Great Depression on California?
Even though the Great Depression hit California hard in the early 1930s, agriculture was one of the areas that expanded in the state. Growers in the San Joaquin Valley quadrupled their acreage in the mid-1930s. With that, the demand for workers rose. So did wages.
What happened in California in the 1930s?
Two California governors and their administrations grappled with the influx of the hundreds of thousands who flooded the state throughout the 1930s. The great Dust Bowl migration transformed and reshaped California for years to come. The Dust Bowl.
What did the Okies do to California?
The arrival of the Dust Bowl migrants forced California to examine its attitude toward farm work, laborers, and newcomers to the state. The Okies changed the composition of California farm labor.
Why did the Dust Bowl migrants come to California?
The Dust Bowl migrants came to California to stay, and they changed the culture and politics of the state forever.
How did the Okies affect the lives of Mexican and Filipino farm workers?
The Okies also disrupted the lives of Mexican and Filipino farm workers. Mexican and Filipino workers dominated the harvest labor force for 2 decades. They handled cotton, fruit, sugar beets, and vegetables with great skill for low pay. In the early 1930s, these workers organized and formed unions.
What was the greatest man-made ecological disaster in American history?
The Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl was the greatest man-made ecological disaster in American history. At the outbreak of WWI, the government encouraged farmers to grow wheat. Land was cheap and farmers plowed millions of acres of virgin land. They removed the native grasses that held the soil in place.
What states were affected by the Dust Bowl?
The Dust Bowl, California, and the Politics of Hard Times. In the 1930s, a series of severe dust storms swept across the mid-west states of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and Texas. The storms, years of drought, and the Great Depression devastated the lives of residents living in those Dust Bowl states. Three hundred thousand of the stricken people ...
Why did the migrants come to California?
Eight decades ago hordes of migrants poured into California in search of a place to live and work. But those refugees weren’t from other countries, they were Americans and former inhabitants of the Great Plains and the Midwest who had lost their homes and livelihoods in the Dust Bowl.
What did the locals say about the newcomers to California?
As many of the migrants languished in poverty in camps on the outskirts of California communities, some locals warned that the newcomers would spread disease and crime. They advocated harsh measures to keep migrants out or send them back home.
How did the Dust Bowl make Americans refugees in their own country?
How the Dust Bowl Made Americans Refugees in Their Own Country. As they traveled west from the drought-ravaged Midwest, American-born migrants were viewed as disease-ridden intruders who would sponge off the government. Author:
What was the impact of the Dust Bowl on California?
Years of severe drought had ravaged millions of acres of farmland. Many migrants were enticed by flyers advertising jobs picking crops, according to the Library of Congress. And even though they were American-born, the Dust Bowl migrants still were viewed as intruders by many in California, who saw them as competing with longtime residents ...
What did the Dust Bowl migrants take?
Dust Bowl migrants squeezed into trucks and jalopies —beat-up old cars—laden with their meager possessions and headed west, many taking the old U.S. Highway 66.
What percentage of the Dust Bowl migrants were still working in the 1950s?
By 1950, only about 25 percent of the original Dust Bowl migrants were still working the fields. As the the former migrants became more prosperous, they blended into the California population.
What did Californians call the newcomers?
Californians derided the newcomers as “hillbillies, ” “fruit tramps” and other names, but “Okie”—a term applied to migrants regardless of what state they came from—was the one that seemed to stick, according to historian Michael L. Cooper’s account in Dust to Eat: Drought and Depression in the 1930s. One California businessman described the newcomers as “ignorant, filthy people,” who should not “think they’re as good as the next man.”
What were the major changes in California during the 1930s?
Facts About California in the 1930s. Californians witnessed tremendous change to their state during the decade of the Great Depression. This was due to California's economy, which was healthy when compared to other states. Three industries, in particular, thrived in the 1930s and attracted thousands of new settlers: agriculture, ...
What industries were concentrated in southern California in the 1930s?
Three industries, in particular, thrived in the 1930s and attracted thousands of new settlers: agriculture, oil production and film making . Since these industries were concentrated in southern California, that region captured the designation of economic center of the state.
How many Okies migrated to California?
Known generically as "Okies," between 300,000 and 400,000 migrated to California. Between 1933 and 1935, wind-generated dust storms produced clouds of blowing top soil in western Kansas and in the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas. The press labelled those coming into California "Dust Bowl" refugees because of this phenomena.
Why did the Works Progress Administration make improvements to San Francisco?
To help with demands being made on the infrastructure by the population explosion, the Works Progress Administration, one of the federal New Deal programs, made improvements in many areas. Every public park in San Francisco benefited from WPA upgrades. Urban streets and sidewalks, rural roads and bridges still in use in California are WPA constructions. Nearly every small town in the state boasts a school built or renovated by the group. WPA workers built many more schools than prisons because the national philosophy was that if the young are given schools conducive to learning, fewer prisons will be required.
What were the most popular movies of the 1930s?
"Talkies" were being introduced at the beginning of the decade, and most 1930s films were black-and-white . In the last year of the decade, however, two Technicolor masterpieces, "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone with the Wind," were released. A number of film genres, such as musicals, westerns, screwball comedies, gangster films and horror shows, developed during the 1930s. Animation became more sophisticated in the hands of the pioneering Walt Disney Studios. Creative people from around the country were migrating to California to participate in the expanding medium.
What percentage of California farm workers were Mexican?
2 Mexican Migrant Workers. Before the 1930s, at least three-fourths of California's farm workers were Mexican or Mexican-American. Farm owners recruited them, believing that they would tolerate miserable living conditions because they earned more in the United States than they did in Mexico.
Who was the photographer of the Great Depression?
These impoverished refugees, whose plight was immortalized by California author John Steinbeck in his novel, "The Grapes of Wrath," and by photographer Dorothea Lange in her haunting portraits, became the most recognizable symbol of the Great Depression.
