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Contributor: Danielle Childers. Lesson ID: 10131
Discover a time in the 1930s when huge dust storms hit the Midwest, making it hard to farm and live. Learn how families coped and the amazing ways they survived this tough period in history!
Imagine playing outside one Sunday and seeing in the sky a huge wall of black coming at you. The wall is as tall as a mountain and covers the horizon.
Most likely, you would run to your safe house.
Now imagine your house is more of an unstable shack. As you peer outside, the black wall is coming closer to you and then totally engulfs your house, and dust blows in through the cracks in the walls.
The blackness and dust last all night, and when you peer outside in the morning light, everything is covered with a foot of dust.
This happened in Northern Texas on April 14, 1935. They call that day Black Sunday.
Unfortunately, Black Sunday was not the only time these horrible dust storms hit Northern Texas and the Great Plains of the west-central United States. They happened for ten years in the area they call the Dust Bowl.
American singer and songwriter Woody Guthrie lived through Black Sunday. He later wrote a song called "Dust Storm Disaster" about the event.
Watch the slide show below as you listen to Guthrie sing about his experience that day.
The reason something happened is called a cause. There was not just one cause for the Dust Bowl.
The effects are what happened due to an event. The Dust Bowl affected many things — not just the humans living there but also the way people farmed and the migration to California.
Continue to the Got It? section to continue learning about cause and effect.
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