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Surviving the Dust Bowl | American Experience

Man walks in a bare crop field
Courtesy
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PBS

Wed., Aug. 31 at 10 p.m. on WKAR-HD 23.1 & STREAMING | The determined people who clung to their homes and way of life enduring drought and dust.

In 1931, the rains stopped and the “black blizzards” began. Powerful dust storms carrying millions of tons of stinging, blinding black dirt swept across the Southern Plains — the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, western Kansas, and the eastern portions of Colorado and New Mexico. Topsoil that had taken a thousand years per inch to build suddenly blew away in only minutes. One journalist traveling through the devastated region dubbed it the “Dust Bowl.”

Surviving the Dust Bowl is the remarkable story of the determined people who clung to their homes and way of life, enduring drought, dust, disease — even death — for nearly a decade. Less well-known than those who sought refuge in California, typified by the Joad family in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, the Dust Bowlers who stayed overcame an almost unbelievable series of calamities and disasters.

This episode is available to watch live during its premiere date on the WKAR Livestream.

MORE ABOUT AMERICAN EXPERIENCE:
For more than 30 years, American Experience has been television’s most-watched history series, bringing to life the incredible characters and epic stories that have shaped America’s past and present.

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