By Sarah Pixley
Smooth tan walls with an accent of various decorations including posters and pictures surrounded me as I sat down to delve into the Women in the Dust Bowl archive. Snuggled up in a blanket while listening and often glancing at the Thunder game on the television in the living room, I began to read many interviews conducted by primary investigators from Oklahoma State University, Steven Kite, Shelly Lemons, and Jennifer Paustenbaugh. Over one hundred women were interviewed to retell their accounts of what it was like living in the Dust Bowl during 1932-1940. Women that lived in the areas most affected by the Dust Bowl were the focus of this interview process. The interviews contained memories of family traditions, weddings, butchering of livestock, and methods to handle the dust. This archive focuses on the role women played on keeping their familial life normal despite the dust. No matter how hard the women tried, it was a defeating task to completely keep the dust out of the homes.The total defeat of attempting to separate the insides of the home from the outside world, due to the dust, showed their true struggle to show authority in society. However, they were successful in providing a safe and peaceful environment for their children in the midst of terror. It is clear that they are two sides to this scenario. One way to think of this is by looking at a gestalt. If you first look at one, your brain will focus on one part of the picture and ignore the other. When you take a second glance and concentrate on another part of it, a whole new image is seen. This is a prime example of what is happening in this archive. The menial task of women keeping the dust out seems like a daunting and boring task that accomplishes nothing. From the outside looking in, it seems as if they are doing a stupid job. They are fighting a battle that they will lose no matter what because dust is going to continue to come in; however, there is a positive outlook on the job they are performing. Through the stress and hard work, women are successful. They have provided a sense of familiarity unity despite the terror going on. Children recollect memories of reading stories and playing games as if nothing was going on outside. It was through these seemingly pointless efforts of mothers attempting to keep the dust out that saved their children from being scarred by the disaster.
During the 1930s in the United States of America, it was anything but a calm and peaceful decade. It was struck by the harsh and destructive nature of dust storms, notoriously known as the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl consisted of several dust storms that affected the environment and horticulture of American prairies. The states that suffered the severest of consequences from the storms included Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. Sadly, these storms weren’t caused by the unpredictable moves of Mother Nature. Due to the destruction of the nutrients of the topsoil by inefficient farming practices, packed in soil and moisture was displaced. The grasses became uprooted which caused soil to be not securely fixed. This lack of security created disastrous winds full of huge clouds of dust that seemed to cover the sky in a blackened screen. This illusion became more famously known as “black blizzards” and “black rollers.” The uprooting of soil could’ve been prevented if the farmers had applied the practice of dryland farming to their fields and crops. Dryland farming uses techniques and practices that adapt to lack of moisture in the soil during certain seasons of the crop cycle. Since this careful and cautious method wasn’t applied, soil became not secured enough to stay in place, causing swirling large clouds of dust that surrounded people, becoming a burden to everyday survival.
August 18th, 1920, became a remarkable time in history that would impact the United States forever. After countless efforts through protests, conventions, and conferences, women were finally granted the right to vote. This day in history marked the uprising of a new era: women were gaining confidence and power in society. The excitement and accomplishment felt from a small step of victory in the Women’s Movement shortly came to a halt when the stock market crashed in 1929, resulting in the Great Depression. Every single person was hit by challenges differing in severity. By 1932, almost thirty million Americans weren’t being supported by a steady income due to unemployment. Not only did this disaster interrupt the everyday flow of familial life but ended up resulting in a halt of the rise of feminism. Women’s rights now went on the backburner due to the overwhelmingness of poverty and hunger. If the economy crashing wasn’t enough, the revival of the movement was delayed even more by the series of dust clouds that resulted in a rigorous and prolonged period called the Dust Bowl. However, before disaster struck, the feminist movement in the 1920s was starting to grow stronger every year it never did quite spread to the midwestern part of the country. Due to lack of efficient transportation and technology throughout the nation, the power of feminism hadn’t quite become a prevalent theme within this area. Women in the west never had the opportunity to express the idea of feminism. Their reality took a sharp turn and was now focused on the Dust Bowl. For these women in the midwestern United States, their role became the protector of their family during a time where total victory wasn’t a possible feat. No matter how hard women tried, the task of keeping every single ounce of dust out of the house was impossible. The significance of this one point in time perceives the never ending struggle women deal with every single day, the constant failure of inequality in society.
With the whole mess and destruction caused by the storms, it caused many citizens of these states affected to pack up their belongings and move to another area in order to be able to live in harmony without constantly having to worry about making sure there wasn’t dust in your clothes, bedsheets, and food. A plethora of people began migrating to the big state of California. It became a safe haven away from their farms back at home that were covered in dust and despair. While they were able to escape the torment of natural disaster, the Great Depression affected every part of the United States which caused an economic disaster. Throughout the whole time of imbalance, a backbone of America was created with the strength and commitment of mothers, grandmothers, and women to keep up the fight against the dust. They became strong sources of moral support, keeping the children at ease with everything going on outside of the home. Their efforts gained recognition and in itself, started the rising of the western United States version of a feminist movement.
In the midwest Oklahoma area, there was a different sense of what an everyday lady acted like. A woman would cook and clean around the house. She was a domesticated worker, completing grungy and tedious tasks. She had no power to protest for her own opinions and rights. It was through the Dust Bowl that midwestern women started a movement of empowerment by showing that they could make a difference in someone’s lives, specifically their children. Donna Craighead, a woman from Buffalo Oklahoma, exemplifies her mother’s successful duties in this time of need. Craighead told about where she was from, her family dynamic, and her personal encounter with the Dust Storm. Craighead distinctly remembers her mom going around to each of the windows with a table knife and stuffing rags in between the window and the windowsill to keep the dust out (Craighead 6). She took this task very seriously and made sure every single hole was filled. After this task was complete, she made Craighead and her siblings get into bed. No matter how hard the mother tried to keep the dust out, it still covered the floors and would cover the children’s feet. By keeping the children in bed, she was preventing them from walking around in the house attracting dust onto themselves. In order to distract the children, after tucking them into bed, she would sit with them and picked out stories to read. Craighead comments,
“[S}he would usually read to [them] through those times, to keep [them] calm, and probably to keep herself calm too.”
Their mother would read to them until they fell asleep, which was the end goal. While the dust storms swirled outside of the home, the three children felt a sense of security from their mother’s efforts; however, this false sense of serenity was always interrupted whenever they woke up with dust covering the quilts they were covered in. The dust managed to get in despite all of the blockades in the doors and the windows. After reading this interview, I soon began to picture an idea of this concept that would stick with me. When imagining a house, I think of a structure that supports a family against harsh weather conditions, against animals, and against natural disasters. A house provides a sense of ease knowing that a roof is over one’s head to protect someone throughout anything. When the Dust Bowl hit, the distinction between inside the house and outside was hard to distinguish. The dust was able to intrude the houses and made one feel like they couldn’t escape the harsh reality of the storms no matter where you were. The security of the household was destroyed and made people lose trust in the structures they lived in. Women were fighting a losing battle by trying to keep the dust out of the houses. They could fill every window to their heart’s desire with materials but it was never completely successful. This image of the mother scurrying around the house shows the true struggle of women in society today. It seems as if no matter how hard they try, they will never be completely successful in being victorious; however, their efforts weren’t ignored. The image of the gestalt comes back into my mind. On one hand, they worked and worked to keep the dust out but ultimately failed. Looking at it from the other side, they succeeded in motherhood. Their children will never forget the impact their mothers made. While it seemed as if they were performing futile tasks, they gained a sense of empowerment. They were able to make a positive impact in their children’s lives. Even though some dust managed to get in, the children recognized that their mom was attempting to keep them safe, causing them to feel a sense of security. Living during the 1930s for children wasn’t remembered as a time filled with terror but rather with the feeling of safety and peace.
The Dust Bowl archive made quite an impact on how I view women in the 1930s. I’m used to the fact that I have a roof over my head which will always support me and will probably not fail me. The women in this time lost this gift and had to make the best of their lives with the dust invasion. Instead of facing these hard times with adversity, they took the initiative to provide their children with a safe living environment to the best of their ability. Their efforts, while they may seem to be pointless, caused their children to remember the good times instead of the bad. Women’s empowerment clearly bleeds through in their success of motherhood.
Fall 2017
Sarah will graduate Oklahoma State University with a major in Elementary Education and a minor in American Sign Language. She plans to move to Texas after the completion of her degree in order to pursue her dream of being a deaf education teacher.
archiveoklahoma.com 