IB History Social Impact of the Great Depression in One Country in the Americas Key Definitions

A severe drought and ecological disaster that struck the Great Plains of the USA and Canada during the 1930s. Years of overfarming had removed native grasses that anchored topsoil. When drought arrived, massive dust storms stripped away the soil, destroying crops and forcing hundreds of thousands of farming families to abandon their land. The worst years were 1934 and 1936. Many displaced families, known as 'Okies', migrated west to California seeking work.

Federal legislation signed by President Hoover requiring that, when government staff cuts were made, married persons whose spouses also worked for the federal government be dismissed first. In practice, Section 213 almost exclusively targeted women, as married female federal employees were dismissed before their husbands. Over 1,600 women lost their federal jobs under this provision by 1937. Many states adopted similar rules for their own public sector employees.

A New Deal programme operating under the WPA from 1935 to 1943 that employed approximately 5,000 visual artists to create murals, paintings, and sculptures for public buildings. It produced around 2,500 murals, 108,000 paintings, and 18,000 sculptures. The FAP was influenced by the Mexican muralist tradition of Diego Rivera and sought to bring art to ordinary Americans during the Depression crisis.

Makeshift shanty towns that appeared on the outskirts of American cities during the Great Depression, built from scrap wood, cardboard, and metal by people who had lost their homes to unemployment and eviction. Named mockingly after President Herbert Hoover, whose policies were widely blamed for failing to prevent the Depression, they became powerful symbols of governmental neglect. The largest Hooverville in New York City's Central Park housed hundreds of residents at its peak.

New Deal legislation championed by Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier that reversed the Dawes Act of 1887, which had broken up communally-held tribal land into individual allotments. The 1934 Act restored some tribal land, allowed tribes to adopt their own constitutions, and recognised a degree of tribal self-government. It is regarded as the most beneficial New Deal policy for any marginalised group, though poverty on reservations remained severe throughout the Depression.

A series of programmes, public works projects, financial reforms, and regulations introduced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1939 in response to the Great Depression. Key agencies included the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), and the Social Security Administration. The New Deal expanded the federal government's role in the economy and established the principle that government bore responsibility for citizens' basic welfare.

The largest New Deal agency, established in 1935, which employed millions of unemployed Americans in public works projects and cultural production. Its arts divisions included the Federal Art Project, Federal Writers' Project, Federal Theatre Project, and Federal Music Project, which together employed thousands of artists, writers, actors, and musicians. The WPA produced murals, state guidebooks, plays, and recordings that documented Depression-era America, and was dissolved in 1943.