Curated OER
Grapes of Wrath: Setting up Historical Context
Discuss life in the 1930s in relation to the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, then do a cross-media analysis. Here you'll find background information on film maker John Ford, writer John Steinbeck, and 1930s America. You can compare the...
Curated OER
Children in the Fields
Fourth graders research Hispanic child labor in California's agricultural period. They create dioramas reflecting the lives of migrant farm workers and political cartoons as produce crate labels, They illustrate farm scenes and hold a...
Other
Encyclopedia of Arkansas: Cotton Industry
Cotton has long been an important and successful part of the economy and history of Arkansas. This is an overview of the cotton industry from the early days of plantations, slaves, immigrant workers to today's productive source of...
Library of Congress
Loc: Documenting America: Tenant Farmers
This resource on America during the Great Depression contains photographs of tenant farmers and their communities during the 1930's, taken by photographer Arthur Rothstein. Also includes information on the time period.
Wessels Living History Farm
Living History Farm: Farming in the 1930s: The Fsa, Farm Security Administration
Find photographs, brief videos, and commentary about what loans from the Farm Security Administration meant to poor farmers during the Great Depression.
Digital History
Digital History: The Farmers' Plight
Read about the plight of American farmers in the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt instituted several programs to help the rural population, the most important of which was the Agricultural Adjustment Act. Find out whom this act...
University of Illinois
University of Illinois: Modern American Poetry: About Sharecropping
Three articles about the effects of sharecropping, a farming system that became prevalent after the Civil War for blacks and whites.