1. THE GREAT DEPRESSION BEGINS LIFE DURING THE DEPRESSION

2. THE DEPRESSION WORSENS -Living in Makeshift Villages Homeless and unemployed Americans wander around the country, walking, hitchhiking, or, most often, “riding the rails.” Those who rode the rails were known as hobos. Many people who lost their homes lived in make-shift tents formed from cardboard, blankets, newspapers, or whatever else people could find. These “neighborhoods” were called shantytowns and were nicknamed “Hooverville” after the president.

3. THE DUST BOWL In 1932 a terrible drought struck the Great Plains. Neither grass nor wheat would grow as the soil dried out. A dust storm struck the area blackening the skies and delivering dust as far as the Atlantic Ocean. Farmers who were already struggling from low crop prices, were devastated.

4. ESCAPING THE DEPRESSION To help themselves from constantly worrying about the depression, Americans turned to entertainment to take their minds off their troubles. Walt Disney produced the first feature-length animated film: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Scarlett O`Harra was a character in the four hour movie Gone With the Wind about a Georgia plantation owner during the Civil War who struggles to maintain her life. Marlene Dietrich was a film star who fled to Hollywood to escape hardship in Europe Many Americans listened to the radio which produced radio shows such as The Green Hornet, The Guiding Light (soap opera), and The Lone Ranger (about a hero who fought injustice in the old west with his side-kick and “faithful Indian companion” --Tonto)

5. THE DEPRESSION IN ART John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath—the story of an Oklahoma family who lost everything and flees to California to find a new life—which characterized what many Americans were going through at the time