By Mike W. Ray
The Oklahoma Senate commemorated the 90th anniversary of “Black Sunday” on April 14 via the appropriately numbered Senate Resolution 14 by Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton (R-Tuttle).
“WHEREAS, the Dust Bowl of the 1930s was the worst natural disaster of its time in the United States, having a profound impact on the people and the land of Oklahoma, specifically with the storm known as Black Sunday, on April 14, 1935; and
“WHEREAS, following the Black Sunday storm, Oklahoma became committed to soil conservation and the protection of our soil resources, becoming a national leader in conservation and working with landowners to install land management practices that have transformed, protected, and sustained the land” in the 90 years since that fateful day.
The resolution reminded Oklahomans of the continuing need to protect and conserve their soil, water, and other natural resources. The bipartisan resolution passed the Oklahoma Senate with a unanimous ‘aye’ vote. “This is a resolution that not only signifies what happened that day but also what’s happened since then in making our state a much better place to live,” Paxton said.
Timothy Egan, an author and a Pulitzer Prize-winning former national enterprise reporter for The New York Times, recounted the history of the Dust Bowl in a 340-page book, “The Worst Hard Time,” published in 2006.
“Many people in the East “did not believe the initial accounts of predatory dust until a storm in May 1934 carried the windblown shards of the Great Plains over much of the nation.” Twelve million tons of dust fell in Chicago. In Dodge City, Kan., the Health Board counted only 13 dust-free days in the first four months of 1935.
During the Dust Bowl, babies and elderly citizens died from pneumonia attributed to dirt, and at least one young boy who got lost in a dust storm died half a mile from his home.
Drought, erosion, bare soil, and winds caused dust to fly freely and at high speeds. Cattle went blind from blowing dust and literally starved to death from dirt that accumulated in their stomachs, preventing them from digesting any food.
Wind-blown dust generated static electricity that created a blue flame and electrified fences and windmills. “Men avoided shaking hands with each other because the static electricity was so great it could knock a person down,” Egan learned.
“At its peak, the Dust Bowl covered 100 million acres,” he wrote. The dust blew “all over the Great Plains,” but the worst and most persistent storms “were in parts of five states: southern Colorado, southwest Kansas, the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles, and northeastern New Mexico.” The federal government “placed the geographic heart of the dust-lashed land in Cimarron County,” Oklahoma.
“High Plains nesters were more intimate with the elements than perhaps any other people in the country,” Egan wrote. “They knew black dust came from Kansas, red from eastern Oklahoma, a yellow-orange from Texas. And sometimes all of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas seemed airborne at once.”
On May 11, 1934, “dust in New York City measured 619 particles per square millimeter,” Egan reported. “For five hours, the cloud dumped dirt over New York.” Then the storm moved out to sea, “covering ships that were more than 200 miles from shore” in the Atlantic Ocean.
Records show that “in January 1934, there were four dust storms in the southern plains, followed by seven in February, seven in March, 14 in April – including one that lasted 12 hours – four in May, two in June and July, one in August, six in September, two in October, three in November, and four in December.” And that year “was not even the worst,” Egan noted.
Black Sunday was “the worst duster of them all,” he wrote. “The storm carried twice as much dirt as was excavated to create the Panama Canal.” The canal took seven years to dig. The April 14, 1935, storm “lasted a single afternoon. More than 300,000 tons of Great Plains topsoil was airborne that day.”
American meteorologists “rated the Dust Bowl the Number 1 weather event of the 20th century.” Historians say it was “the nation’s worst prolonged environmental disaster.”
“For me, the significance of Black Sunday has always been personal,” said Trey Lam, executive director of the Oklahoma Conservation Commission. “My mother, Betty, still recounts the ride home from church in Beckham County as she and her brother, Tom, watched the black wall of dust roll up behind them. My grandmother stopped the car at a neighbor’s house and they raced to the root cellar. Only later, when my father introduced me to soil conservation, did I understand that April 14, 1935, was the turning point that led to the end of the Dust Bowl with the birth of America’s voluntary natural resources conservation movement. My hope is we never forget.”