Agathos Dorea

“The impact is like a shovelful of fine sand flung against the face.
People caught in their own yards grope for the doorstep. Cars come
to a standstill, for no light in the world can penetrate that swirling
murk… We live with the dust, eat it, sleep with it, watch it strip us
of possessions and the hope of possessions. It is becoming real.”

~Avis, D. Carlson, reflecting on the Dust Bowl experience in
an article published by The New Republic

In the most literal sense, historians tell us that the darkest day of the entire dust bowl period occurred on 14 April, 1935. According to writers for “The American Experience,” people moved about on the sunny Sunday morning with purpose–attending church, doing chores, and making plans for a leisurely lunch. But by mid-afternoon, the temperature had dropped and birds began chatting nervously. Slowly taking shape, a great cloud could be seen on the horizon.

What transpired next was both awesome and terrible.

As sheets of sand rained from the heavens, untold numbers of people in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Kansas sought shelter wherever they could find it. Families huddled together in houses, traveling salesman hunkered down in their cars which had by shorted out by the electricity generated by the storm, and entire congregations held hands and sang hymns believing that the world was coming to an end. Because the dust was so thick and the wind so strong, farmers rang their cast-iron dinner bells to guide farmhands safely to shelter.

The day after Black Sunday, an Associated Press reporter submitted the following entry: “Three little words achingly familiar on the Western farmer’s tongue rule life in the ‘dust bowl’ of the continent – “if it rains.”

This was the first time the words “Dust Bowl” had ever been used.

*This photograph was taken on a Nebraska farm–75 years almost to the day after Black Sunday. The second photograph was retrieved from the National Archives and is in the public domain.