The Dust Bowl
Lori Smale
Grade Level: 5th

Teacher Materials Needed:

• Dear Mrs. Roosevelt Letters.  See the four attached or find others at http://newdeal.feri.org/eleanor/er5.htm
• Various Pictures from the Dust Bowl era.  Many can be found at http://newdeal.feri.org/library/i43.htm
• Any available props for role play

My Social Studies Goals for this Lesson:

• To encourage empathy from the students for children their age who were living during the time of the Dust Bowl.
• To give the students a personal perspective from which to view what times were like during the Dust Bowl time period.
• For the students to understand the feelings of the people well enough to reenact a scene from a picture.

Related NC Standard Course of Study Goals/Objectives:
Grade 5
1.1  Identify, locate, and describe major groups of people, past and present, in the United States, Canada, and Latin America.
1.3 Assess the role and status of individuals and groups in the United States, Canada, and Latin America, past and present.
2.3 Analyze economic, social, and political situations which involve ethical and moral dilemmas.
5.1 Explain how people of the Western Hemisphere adapt and have adapted to the physical environment.
11.1 Identify and describe changes which have occurred in ways of living in the United States, Canada, and Latin America.
11.3 Evaluate the effects of change on the lives of the people of the United States, Canada, and Latin America.

Launch:
Pass out the letters that were written to Mrs. Roosevelt.  Since there will not be enough for each child to have a different letter, some children may have the same letter as someone else in the class.
Ask them to read the letters silently.

Reply to the letter:
November 13, 1936
My dear Miss H:
Mrs. Roosevelt and her Secretary are away and in their absence I have been asked to acknowledge their mail.
I know Mrs. Roosevelt would be very sorry to hear of your difficulties. However, she would be unable to comply with your request as there are certain persons to whom she sends the clothing for which she has no further use.
Very sincerely yours,
[no signature]

Star Route One
Albertville, Ala.
January 1, 1936
Dear Mrs. Roosevelt,
For some time I have wished to be aqainted with you. Or merly to receive a letter from you. I haved wish much to see you, but as I am a poor girl and have never been out of our state that will be impossible I guess.
Mrs. Roosevelt since I have been in high school I have been studying modern things and conveniences. I took your family for my study. I have found the study to be the most interesting subjects I could have found. In the study I, at all times know where you are, by reading all papers I find at school and elsewhere. I find what you are doing. You may never had given this a thought, but to think over our daily lives there is a good story to it.
My life has been a story to me and most of the time a miserable one. When I was 7 years old my father left for a law school and never returned. This leaving my mother and 4 children. He left us a small farm, but it could not keep us up. For when we went back to mother's people the renters would not give us part. and we were still dependent. I have been shoved to pillow to post that I feel very relieved to get off to my self.
I am now 15 years old and in the 10th grade. I have always been smart but I never had a chance as all of us is so poor. I hope to complete my education, but I will have to quit school I guess if there is no clothes can be bought. (Don't think that we are on the relief.) Mother has been a faithful servent for us to keep us to gather. I don't see how she has made it.
Mrs Roosevelt, don't think I am just begging, but that is all you can call it I guess. There is no harm in asking I guess eather. Do you have any old clothes you have throwed back. You don't realize how honored I would feel to be wearing your clothes. I don't have a coat at all to wear. The clothes may be too large but I can cut them down so I can wear them. Not only clothes but old shoes, hats, hose, and under wear would be appreciated so much. I have three brothers that would appreciate any old clothes of your boys or husband. I wish you could see the part of North Alabama now. The trees, groves, and every thing is covered with ice and snow. It is a very pretty scene. But Oh, how cold it is here. People can hardly stay comfortable.
I will close now as it is about mail time. I hope to hear from you soon. (ans real soon)
Your friend,
M. I.
 

Reply to the letter:
January 4, 1936
My dear Miss I:
Mrs. Roosevelt asks me to acknowledge your letter and to express her regret that because of the great number of similar requests, she has found it impossible to comply with them, much as she would like to assist all those who appeal to her.
Assuring you of Mrs. Roosevelt's sympathy, I am
Very sincerely yours,
Malvina T. Scheider
Secretary to
Mrs. Roosevelt

Anderson County Schools
Clinton, Tennessee
January 26, 1936
Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt
Washington, D.C.
My dear Mrs. Roosevelt,
You may think I am a very insignificant person to be writing to a person of your standing and ability but by reading your article and hearing your talks I know you are real and have an interest in people even my dear little needy boys and girls of the mountain schools.
I am Rural Supervisor of schools in my county. I have forty schools to supervise. Due to insufficient clothing and food many are unable to attend schools.
I wish it were possible for you to see some of the conditions. It is not uncommon for a child to have but one dress or one shirt. They have to stay at home the day the mother laundries them.
I am just wishing that in some of your groups that it would be possible to interest them in our needs. The Save the Children Fund, with headquarters in New York, has helped me some. Many children of my schools would be unable to attend school had it not been for this organization.
I hope you will not consider me rude for writing. I have my heart in the work. I realize a hungry or a cold child cannot learn too much.
Yours very truly,
C. B. S.
 

Reply to the letter:
January 31, 1936
My dear Miss S:
Mrs. Roosevelt asks me to acknowledge your letter and to tell you that she read it with sympathetic interest. Much as she would like to help you, she finds it impossible to do so, as all the money she has to give has been pledged and allocated.
Assuring you of Mrs. Roosevelt's regret, I am
Very sincerely yours,
Malvina T. Scheider
Secretary to
Mrs. Roosevelt

I AM A LITTLE GIRL 5 YEARS OLD I HAVE A LITTLE BROTHER HE CALLS ME SISTIE I CALL HIM BUZZIE. AFTER YOUR LITTLE GRAND CHILDREN. I WISH I HAD A SHIRLEY TEMPLE DOLL. DADY CANT NOT BUY ONE    I LOVE YOU   P. A. C.

[Letter received by White House June 27, 1938. No reply available.]

*Once everyone has reviewed their letters, explain how these letters came to be:

During the Great Depression, thousands of young people wrote to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt for help. They asked for clothing, money, and other forms of assistance.

*Robert Cohen of the University of Georgia tells us the story:
 

        Eleanor Roosevelt had spoken often of her concern for the country's children.
"I have moments of real terror when I think we might be losing this generation. We have got to bring these young people into the active life of the community and make them feel that they are necessary."
--New York Times, 5/34
        Thousands of children and young adults wrote letters to her, asking for help. They talked to her as a confidant with whom they could share the details of their lives, no matter how painful or even embarrassing to them. In their letters, they seem certain that the First Lady will come to their aid.
        During her first year in the White House, Mrs. Roosevelt received 300,000 pieces of mail from adults and children. She continued to receive hundreds of thousands of letters in the years that followed.
        The First Lady had a secretary who was in charge of the mail. Her secretary would read the mail and either reply to it or send it to another department for action. She would also select about 50 letters a day for Mrs. Roosevelt to read. The First Lady would sometime dictate replies to those letters.
        None of the children in this story received personal replies from Eleanor Roosevelt. She gave her support to them in a different way: by working to establish government programs for young people. The National Youth Administration (NYA) and the youth-oriented programs of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) are two examples.
Eleanor Roosevelt helped establish the National Youth Administration in June 1935. The NYA helped more than 2 million high school and college students stay in school by giving them grants in exchange for work. They worked in libraries and college labs, and on farms. The NYA also found work for 2.5 million young people who were not in school and not working. As World War II approached, NYA youths worked in defense industries where they gained useful job skills.
The NYA was an equal opportunity agency, providing aid to women and minorities. This feature of the program was very important to Mrs. Roosevelt. "It is a question of the right to work," she said, "and the right to work should know no color lines."
The First Lady supported other New Deal programs that brought relief to young people:
· Nursery schools for the children of working mothers
· Nutrition programs in schools
· Surplus stores which distributed clothing, food, toys, and other goods to families in need of help
· Recreational and educational programs geared towards disadvantaged children

*Discuss how the children feel about these letters.

• How would they feel if they had to write letters like this to the first lady?
• Can any of them relate to the letters?
• Discuss why some of the letters may have been written.
• What patterns do they see in the letters?
• What characteristics to they notice about the children who wrote the letters?
• What do they think about the responses that were sent?
• Why do they think these were the responses that the secretary sent?
• How would they feel if they had gotten that kind of response to a letter they had written?

Summarize:

• Discuss how the pictures relate to the letters.
• Is it possible that one of the children in the pictures wrote to Mrs. Roosevelt?
• Debrief and discuss any misconceptions that may have come up in the role-playing.
• What are the similarities and differences they noticed among the pictures and letters?

• An understanding of why the letters may have been written to Mrs. Roosevelt.
• Evidence that the children can relate the content of the letters to the hard times in which they were written (which we would have discussed in a previous lesson).
• A sense of empathy to the children who were writing to the first lady.

During role-play, I will watch and listen for:

• The children's connection between the pictures and the letters and/or between the pictures and the information of the time period.
• The language used by the children; that they might request items that children of the Dust Bowl era would have requested and not items such as “Barbies”, “Playstations” etc.
• An understanding of what was happening in the lives of the people trying to survive during the Dust Bowl.

Ticket out the door:
 Write down one thing that interests you most about what you learned today.

Destitute farm family of Elzie Rathburn, 18 miles from Pierre, South Dakota. They are now on relief with all resources exhausted after fifteen years on their 160-acre farm fighting constantly the effects of drought, grasshoppers, and dust storms. 1936.
North Dakota.  July, 1936

1. Following the prosperity of the 1920s, America entered into the Great Depression.
2. During the economic Depression laborers were dismissed from their jobs, stores closed, small businesses and farms failed, banks had no money to give their clients--therefore people had no money to buy things.
3. By 1930, four million people were out of work, which doubled by the end of 1931. Before the end of 1932, there were 12 million (one out of four) able-bodied American who were unemployed.
4. Families suffered. Marriage and birth rates dropped. Families split up since fathers and even young teenage children went off to look for work. Some stood on street corners selling apples or shining shoes.
5. People lived in shanties (old beat-up cabins) and railroad cars. The homeless built shacks out of crates and scrap metal.
6. President Hoover began his term in 1929. People blamed him for not doing enough for the country. The shacks out of crates and scrap metal built by the homeless were called "Hoovervilles."
7. Charity groups and local governmental agencies tried to help by establishing breadlines and soup kitchens.
8. Windstorms in the Great Plains ("The Dust Bowl") forced farmers off the land. They traveled and were called migrant workers--farmhands who moved from farm to farm.
9. President Roosevelt was elected in 1932.
10. The Great Depression lasted for ten years and ended with the onset of World War II.

For more lesson ideas with the letters:
http://newdeal.feri.org/classrm/clasdmr1.htm
http://www.askeric.org

Pictures from:
http://newdeal.feri.org/library/5_1g_4r.htm

Other Resources:
http://newdeal.feri.org/eleanor/er5.htm
 
 
 
 
 
 

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