Estella García

(Wikipedia) Estella R. Garcia was an American artist who was a part of the Federal Art Project. Garcia was a teacher at the Melrose Federal Art Center in Melrose, New Mexico where she taught colcha, a traditional form of wool embroidery, to both Hispanic and Anglo students. The facility was considered to be located in the smallest town to have such a federal art center. Continued

Bonnie and Clyde

 

(Wikipedia) Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (October 1, 1910 – May 23, 1934) and Clyde Chestnut Barrow a.k.a. Clyde Champion Barrow (March 24, 1909 – May 23, 1934) were American criminals who traveled the central United States with their gang during the Great Depression, robbing people and killing when cornered or confronted.
At times, the gang included his older brother Buck Barrow and his wife Blanche, Raymond Hamilton, W. D. Jones, Joe Palmer, Ralph Fults, and Henry Methvin.
Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during the "Public Enemy Era," between 1931 and 1935.
Though known today for their dozen-or-so bank robberies, the two preferred to rob small stores or rural gas stations. The gang is believed to have killed at least nine police officers and several civilians. Continued

Civilian Conservation Corps established

CCC Camp BR-58 Carlsbad Project, New Mexico,
photo of enrollees with a dump truck spreading lining for a canal

(Wikipedia) The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families as part of the New Deal. Originally for young men ages 18–25, it was eventually expanded to young men ages 17–28. Robert Fechner was the head of the agency.
It was a major part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal that provided unskilled manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands owned by federal, state and local governments.
The CCC was designed to provide jobs for young men, and to relieve families who had difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression in the United States. At the same time, it implemented a general natural resource conservation program in every state and territory. Continued

Grumpy Old Men on the Trail of Glamorous Killers

(NYTimes) … To call “The Highwaymen” revisionist — or even reactionary — would be an understatement. This retelling of the Bonnie and Clyde story is not content to posit that those two Depression-era outlaws got what they deserved when they died in a hail of bullets on a Louisiana back road. It has a sackful of bones to pick with the modern world as a whole.
Violent criminals are a problem, yes, but so are movies, airplanes, car radios, women in politics, newspapers — you name it. If Grandpa Simpson could figure out how to get himself a Netflix subscription, this movie would be the whole algorithm. I’m here to say I didn’t entirely hate it. Continued

Texas Ranger who killed Bonnie and Clyde gets film redemption at last in 'The Highwaymen'

The posse. Top: Hinton, Oakley, Gault; seated: Alcorn, Jordan, and Frank Hamer.

(USA Today) Frank Hamer, the former Texas Ranger who was brought out of retirement to stop gangsters Bonnie and Clyde, has found film redemption through Kevin Costner's laconic portrayal in "The Highwaymen."
Costner's role in the drama, which premiered Sunday at the South By Southwest film festival in Austin ahead of its March 15 theatrical release (streaming March 29 on Netflix), gives Hamer's point of view in leading the effort to stop criminal couple Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, dramatically killing the duo in a hail of bullets in 1934. Continued

REA begins bringing electricity to rural Texas

 

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1936, a fifty-eight-mile power line near Bartlett, Texas, was energized, according to some sources the first in the nation under the Rural Electrification Administration.
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt began the REA in May 1935, only about 2 percent of the farms in Texas (and only about 10 percent nationally) had electricity. … By 1965, instead of only 2 percent of Texas farms with electricity, there were only 2 percent without electricity. Continued

Letter from Back East: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935

The 1935 Hurricane memorial on Upper Matecumbe Key, Florida.

After World War One, veterans were offered a service bonus payable in 1945. And that was a fine and good thing, but along came the Great Depression and many of the veterans, displaced by the economic hard times, lobbied Congress to pay the bonus sooner.
In 1932 thousands of them demonstrated in Washington D.C. They set up a camp and there they stayed. President Hoover eventually ordered the marchers out of the city by force. It wasn't a pretty sight.
The next year the marchers returned and President Roosevelt persuaded many of them to take jobs building the Overseas Highway in the Florida Keys. While working on this project, they were hit by a hurricane on Labor Day, 1935. It was the most intense hurricane ever to make landfall in the United States. 164 Keys residents were killed that day, along with 259 veterans. The stories from this storm are gripping and I won't go into them here; there are several books that do a better job of it than I could in a little blog entry.
How does this relate to our area? It doesn't. It's just that some of those bonus marchers stayed at my grandfather's house in Washington D.C. all those years ago, and every Labor Day I wonder if any of them went down to work on the highway, and if any of them made it out alive.

Florida Keys at sunset, both photos Canon EOS 20D.

Arthur Rothstein

Perhaps Rothstein's most famous photo, and an icon of the Dust Bowl:
 a farmer and his two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936

(Wikipedia) Arthur Rothstein (July 17, 1915 – November 11, 1985) was an American photographer. Rothstein is recognized as one of America’s premier photojournalists. During a career that spanned five decades, he provoked, entertained and informed the American people. His photographs ranged from a hometown baseball game to the drama of war, from struggling rural farmers to US Presidents. Continued

Bonnie and Clyde

 

(Wikipedia) Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (October 1, 1910 – May 23, 1934) and Clyde Chestnut Barrow a.k.a. Clyde Champion Barrow (March 24, 1909 – May 23, 1934) were American criminals who traveled the central United States with their gang during the Great Depression, robbing people and killing when cornered or confronted.
At times, the gang included his older brother Buck Barrow and his wife Blanche, Raymond Hamilton, W. D. Jones, Joe Palmer, Ralph Fults, and Henry Methvin.
Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during the "Public Enemy Era," between 1931 and 1935.
Though known today for their dozen-or-so bank robberies, the two preferred to rob small stores or rural gas stations. The gang is believed to have killed at least nine police officers and several civilians. Continued

Black Sunday Dust Storm of 1935

 

(Wikipedia) Black Sunday refers to a particularly severe dust storm that occurred 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 Oklahoma Panhandle and Northwestern Oklahoma first, and moved south for the remainder of the day. It hit Beaver around 4:00 p.m., Boise City around 5:15 p.m., and Amarillo, Texas, at 7:20 p.m. The conditions were the most severe in the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles, but the storm's effects were felt in other surrounding areas. Continued

The WPA

Wheatland School was completed by the WPA in 1939.

(Wikipedia) The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was the largest and most ambitious American New Deal agency, employing millions of people (mostly unskilled men) to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. In a much smaller project, Federal Project Number One, the WPA employed musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects.
Almost every community in the United States had a new park, bridge or school constructed by the agency. The WPA's initial appropriation in 1935 was for $4.9 billion (about 6.7 percent of the 1935 GDP). Continued

Texas Cotton Acreage Control Law of 1931-32

Tam Anne Cotton Gin (Sixgun Siding)

(TSHA)  In the late 1920s and early 1930s reduced cotton consumption and steady cotton production resulted in low prices for the crop and placed economic strains on many cotton farmers. This situation prompted southern states to seek measures to reduce production and address the need to stabilize a weak export market to Europe-a major buyer of southern cotton.

The states of Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, and New Mexico were represented at the Southern Cotton Conference on August 4, 1931. The gathering was called to consider proposals to restrict cotton acreage, look to other crops for production, and develop an industrial program to unite the South.

The representatives felt that Texas should take a leading role in enacting an acreage law, and then other states would follow suit. In the second called session the Forty-Second Texas Legislature passed the Texas Cotton Acreage Control Law on September 22, 1931. Continued

Feed Sack Fashions And Patterns of Depression Era America

(Library of Congress)

(Flashbak) During the Depression people used cotton flour bags and feed sacks to make clothes, curtains, diapers, awnings and other household items. Manufacturers got wind of their bags’ other uses and began decorating them. Color and patterns added a little style and joy to the common sack dress. Of course, it wasn’t all altruistic. As we read in Cotton bags as consumer packages for farm products (1933): ‘One of the greatest opportunities to increase the use of American  cotton lies in the field of consumer packaging of farm products… Continued

Arthur Rothstein

Perhaps Rothstein's most famous photo, and an icon of the Dust Bowl:
 a farmer and his two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936

(Wikipedia) Arthur Rothstein (July 17, 1915 – November 11, 1985) was an American photographer. Rothstein is recognized as one of America’s premier photojournalists. During a career that spanned five decades, he provoked, entertained and informed the American people. His photographs ranged from a hometown baseball game to the drama of war, from struggling rural farmers to US Presidents. Continued

Bonnie and Clyde

(Wikipedia) Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (October 1, 1910 – May 23, 1934) and Clyde Chestnut Barrow a.k.a. Clyde Champion Barrow (March 24, 1909 – May 23, 1934) were American criminals who traveled the central United States with their gang during the Great Depression, robbing people and killing when cornered or confronted.
At times, the gang included his older brother Buck Barrow and his wife Blanche, Raymond Hamilton, W. D. Jones, Joe Palmer, Ralph Fults, and Henry Methvin.
Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during the "Public Enemy Era," between 1931 and 1935.
Though known today for their dozen-or-so bank robberies, the two preferred to rob small stores or rural gas stations. The gang is believed to have killed at least nine police officers and several civilians. Continued

Civilian Conservation Corps

CCC Camp BR-58 Carlsbad Project, New Mexico,
photo of enrollees with a dump truck spreading lining for a canal

(Wikipedia) The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families as part of the New Deal. Originally for young men ages 18–25, it was eventually expanded to young men ages 17–28. Robert Fechner was the head of the agency.
It was a major part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal that provided unskilled manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands owned by federal, state and local governments.
The CCC was designed to provide jobs for young men, and to relieve families who had difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression in the United States. At the same time, it implemented a general natural resource conservation program in every state and territory. Continued

REA begins bringing electricity to rural Texas

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1936, a fifty-eight-mile power line near Bartlett, Texas, was energized, according to some sources the first in the nation under the Rural Electrification Administration. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt began the REA in May 1935, only about 2 percent of the farms in Texas (and only about 10 percent nationally) had electricity. Continued

Conchas Dam

Sometimes, I wonder what my great-grandfather would think about his old homestead being irrigated.

"Texas Ranger: The Epic Life of Frank Hamer, the Man Who Killed Bonnie and Clyde," by John Boessenecker

(Historynet) ... There is no escaping the fact that Hamer (born March 17, 1884, in Fairview, Texas) played a central role in the ambush shooting of notorious 1930s bank robbers and killers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. “In our collective memory, Frank Hamer still remains the man who killed Bonnie and Clyde,” the author writes in conclusion. “Perhaps this book can help restore him to his proper place in the American story.” Boessenecker does his part by boldly exploring the mostly good and some bad of Hamer’s extraordinary (yes, even epic) career from his time as a fearless lawman on horseback through his manhunting and town-taming years both in and out of the Ranger service. Continued

Russell Lee

Rodeo at the Pie Town, New Mexico Fair 

(Wikipedia) Russell Lee (July 21, 1903, Ottawa, Illinois – August 28, 1986, Austin, Texas) was an American photographer and photojournalist, best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA).
... In the fall of 1936, during the Great Depression, Lee was hired for the federally sponsored Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographic documentation project of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. He joined a team assembled under Roy Stryker, along with Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein and Walker Evans. Stryker provided direction and bureaucratic protection to the group, leaving the photographers free to compile what in 1973 was described as "the greatest documentary collection which has ever been assembled." Lee created some of the iconic images produced by the FSA, including photographic studies of San Augustine, Texas in 1939, and Pie Town, New Mexico in 1940.  Continued