The Great Depression: Hard Times in America

October 29, 1929 is remembered as Black Tuesday, when the New York Stock Exchange collapsed and the market lost roughly $14 billion in a single day — the opening blow of the worst economic crisis in American history.

Unemployment peaked at roughly 25 percent in 1933, meaning one in four American workers had no job — the highest unemployment rate in United States history, before or since.

These desperate communities were sarcastically nicknamed "Hoovervilles" after President Herbert Hoover, whom many Americans blamed for doing too little to ease the suffering of ordinary families during the Depression's darkest years.

The southern Great Plains — especially Oklahoma, Kansas, and the Texas panhandle — suffered the worst dust storms because farmers had plowed under the native grasses that naturally held the soil in place, leaving it exposed to the relentless prairie wind.

More than 9,000 American banks failed during the Depression, wiping out the lifetime savings of millions of families who had no deposit insurance — one of the key reasons the FDIC was created as part of the New Deal.

About three million young men served in the CCC between 1933 and 1942, planting more than three billion trees and building hundreds of trails, cabins, and facilities in state and national parks that Americans still enjoy today.

The WPA's Federal Art Project, Federal Writers' Project, and Federal Theatre Project employed thousands of creative Americans, producing public murals, state guidebooks, dramatic plays, and recorded oral histories that remain treasures of American culture.

The Social Security Act of 1935 created the foundation of America's social safety net, establishing retirement benefits for workers over 65 and a system of unemployment insurance — both radical new ideas that were fiercely debated at the time.

Smoot-Hawley raised tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels, prompting trading partners around the world to retaliate with their own tariffs — strangling international trade at exactly the moment the global economy needed it most.

The 21st Amendment repealed Prohibition, ending the nationwide ban on alcohol that had been in effect since 1920 — making it the only constitutional amendment ever passed specifically to overturn another amendment.

The Glass-Steagall Act created the FDIC, which insures bank deposits so that if a bank fails, ordinary savers do not lose their money — restoring public trust in banks after thousands had collapsed and wiped out family savings during the Depression.

The Joad family's desperate journey from Oklahoma to California gave a human face to the half-million Dust Bowl migrants — nicknamed "Okies" — who left everything behind seeking a better life picking fruit in California's farm fields.

Dorothea Lange, working for the federal Farm Security Administration, photographed Florence Owens Thompson and her children at a migrant labor camp in Nipomo, California in 1936, creating an enduring symbol of Depression-era hardship and resilience.

FDR was elected four consecutive times — in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944 — and served as president until his death in April 1945, an unprecedented record that directly inspired the 22nd Amendment, which now limits presidents to two terms.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, established in 1933, guarantees bank deposits up to a set limit so that ordinary Americans never again have to worry about losing all their savings if their bank collapses — a direct lesson learned from the Depression.