Dust Bowl Video Compliments of New Deal

I started doing a little research on background information to help my students understand the historical context of The Grapes of Wrath. This semester one of my classes is an "Ag Academy" class filled with students who are pursuing a career pathway in agriculture. I teach the same curriculum with these students but try to choose reading selections that are appealing to their love of agriculture; thus, The Grapes of Wrath seemed a natural choice. Students have knowledge of the Great Depression, but the impact of the Dust Bowl is not as well known.

Sometimes the Internet takes me on a circuitous research route--I go in search of one thing and find a different gem altogether. Tonight I was searching for a children's book on the Dust Bowl, and I came across a 25 minute video about the Great Plains called "The Plow that Broke the Plains." It is a documentary sponsored by the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal program. It has more video and music than dialogue and vintage farm machinery going all the way back to a horse-drawn plow. It essentially gives the agricultural history of the Great Plains leading up to the Dust Bowl. Scenes from dust storms are effective. Best of all, I found it on Google--not YouTube or another site. On good ol' Google. I'm embedding it in the blog for you to see. Now I have to research the films that Google has available online to see if there are any others I can apply to my curriculum. Another plus is that the video can be broken down into segments, so I can choose which segment I want to play if I do not have enough time to watch it all in class.




I also found the film on another website, the Prelinger Archives, and it has a better picture than the one I saw on Google.