Black Sunday refers to a particularly severe dust storm that took place on April 14, 1935, as part of the Dust Bowl. It was one of the worst dust storms in American history and it caused immense economic and agricultural damage. It is estimated to have displaced 300 million tons of topsoil from the Prairie area in the US.
On the afternoon of April 14 the residents of the plains States were forced to take cover as a dust storm, or “black blizzard”, blew through the region. The storm hit the eastern Oklahoma panhandle and northwestern Oklahoma first, and moved south for the remainder of the day.It hit Beaver around 4 p.m., Boise City around 5:15 p.m., and Amarillo at 7:20 p.m.The conditions were the most severe in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, but the storm’s effects were felt in other surrounding areas.
The storm was harsh due to the high winds that hit the area that day. Along with the drought, erosion, and the unanchored soil, the winds caused the dust to fly freely and at high speeds.
“The impact is like a shovelful of fine sand flung against the face,” Avis D. Carlson wrote in a New Republic article. “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…. The nightmare is deepest during the storms. But on the occasional bright day and the usual gray day we cannot shake from it. 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. The poetic uplift of spring fades into a phantom of the storied past. The nightmare is becoming life.”
Dust storm. Amarillo, Texas; April 1936; photo by Arthur Rothstein; Library of Congress image.
Seventeen year old boy going to feed the pigs. Homedale district, Malheur County, Oregon; October 1939; photo by Dorothea Lange; (Note: Images on the associated Library of Congress page are wrong for the description, showing an interior shot in an old house or cabin – issue reported to LOC 8/3/2013.)
“In Memphis, Tennessee hundreds of colored laborers congregated near the bridge every morning at daylight in hopes of work chopping cotton on a plantation. They are hauled to and from work on trucks. Reduced cotton acreage has made employment scarce for this class of seasonal labor in all towns. ‘You can’t live the commonest way on six bits a day. Not alone nor no way. A man like me can’t get no foothold. It’s a mighty tough old go. The people here in the morning are hungry, raggedy, but they don’t make no hungry march’ “ – June 1938, Dorothea Lange.
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