On an unseasonably cold, cloudy day on Tuesday, October 29, 1929 stockbrokers, bankers, and investors looked on as an unprecedented stock market crash caused prices and stocks to plummet as never had been seen before. In a blink of an eye, $14 billion was lost and Americans were left in shock. Surely the worst was over? Unfortunately, Americans soon found the prosperity of the previous decade had come to a dramatic end and would be followed by nearly a decade of challenges.

As President Hoover took office, optimistic about America’s future, he upheld his political beliefs and proceeded to create reforms and legislation that reflected his outlook. The Federal Farm Board was one of the programs created during his first months in office. This program attempted to regulate the prices of crops that had been fluctuating drastically prior to the Great Depression. With an effective, promising start, it seemed that American prosperity would continue into the 1930s and beyond through sound policies and good governance.

Figure 1. A migrant family in the pea fields of California.

Hoover, who had taken office just seven months prior to the stock market crash, was sure that America’s Individualism, volunteerism, and a policy of minimal government interference would lead the United States back to wealth and economic growth. As an example of American resilience, Hoover himself was born to working-class parents and through his own hard work and determination became a successful and wealthy businessman. These experiences shaped his views on government and what he understood as a uniquely American spirit. He felt strongly that the government should not provide direct support and that Americans would rise up from the Depression through humanitarian volunteerism and self-reliance. Hoover’s reluctance to provide direct government relief would quickly impact those suffering in all corners of the United States.

As millions of Americans in the cities suffered, leaving one in four people who wanted to work jobless, farmers in the plains experienced their own hardships. Across the Great Plains, from Texas to South Dakota, farmers endured drought and sandstorms. Survivors from this time remember the black clouds of sand that overcame their farms and their senses. The once flourishing farmland had become a dusty wasteland. Unknowingly, common farming practices that degraded the land had created ideal conditions for a multi-year period of drought to inflict maximum damage, causing dust storms and failing crops. When the land became barren and the economic reality untenable, many farmers saw their land foreclosed, thus losing both their livelihood and their homes. A mass exodus ensued as these dispossessed “Okies” trekked westward in search of opportunities.

Black Americans, who were already disadvantaged and discriminated against, experienced worsening conditions during the Great Depression. The Scottsboro Case highlighted the racism that was ever-present in much of America, particularly in the Jim Crow South. The wrongful conviction of nine Black boys, the oldest 19 years old and the youngest only 13, drew national attention. One of the surviving, convicted boys, Clarence Norris, pardoned in 1976, 45 years after his wrongful conviction, remembers the night when their lives changed forever due to a false accusation. “The place was surrounded with a mob…They had shotguns, pistols, sticks, pieces a’ iron, everything.”  (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/scottsboro/#transcript)

Across America, people suffered from hunger, homelessness, and loss of dignity. Meanwhile, President Hoover was intent on governing in accordance with his political views. He consistently maintained that government should not provide direct support in response to the Great Depression. However, Americans were desperate for basic necessities, including food, water, clothing, and shelter. Service programs, volunteer organizations, and charities alone were not able to provide the assistance so many people needed. As a result Franklin Delano Roosevelt easily overtook Hoover when he was up for re-election in 1932. The one-term president’s legacy would be one of inaction during a time when America needed to reconsider the necessity of government intervention in times of acute, widespread national crisis.