Professor Hamilton's Diary: April 14, 1935

They have a typical Sunday, but the Plains States suffer 'Black Sunday'

It was a quiet, typical Sunday for the Hamiltons. He drove Gwennie to Sunday school and back again, and took his wife and mother-in-law to church. The doctor gave Mary Elizabeth another violet ray treatment and changed her ear dressings. In the afternoon, he and Margaret got away long enough to take a short walk together.

I wonder if they noticed any darkening of the sky? A combination of extreme drought and destructive farming practices in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and other Great Plains states had resulted in the Dust Bowl, and today was called Black Sunday because of a massive wind storm that carried topsoil as far away as Washington, D.C.

Paid subscribers can read on about what may have been the greatest man-made disaster of the twentieth century and what the New Deal did about it.

The photo above, taken on this day in 1935, shows a huge black cloud of dust near Liberal, Kansas. The photo is from the National Archives, accessed through Wikimedia Commons.