Bright Dreams, Hard Times - America in the '30s

Readers will have the opportunity to explore our nation’s response to its greatest economic and ecological challenge during the “Bright Dreams, Hard Times: America in the Thirties” Chautauqua this summer in Falls City and Hastings, Neb.. The following essay describes some of the themes that scholars portraying Franklin Roosevelt, Huey Long, evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, author Zora Neale Hurston, and Will Rogers will present to audiences each evening on the Chautauqua stage and discuss with them during daytime workshops. For more information about the full Kansas-Nebraska Chautauqua schedule, go to www.knchautauqua.org.

By John R. Wunder

For many historians, the ’30s represents a time when the American people were looking for ways to survive in a national crisis. Indeed, the crisis was not a simple one. Its complexities featured an extensive economic depression, a devastating environmental disaster—the Dust Bowl on the Great Plains—and the looming signs of yet another world war. How Americans sought to understand and prevail over these national catastrophes is a tale of determination and success.

Seeking to survive the ’30s required innovation in all aspects of American society. People were searching for solutions to all of these problems. They experienced a variety of emotional responses to the crisis—frustration; anger; sadness; a need for introspection, diversions, religious explanations and someone or something to blame; and a sense of urgency. Above all, they sought action, both from themselves individually and within their communities and beyond. The Great Plains was no exception.

Politically, Americans decided they wanted to create a new relationship between the people and their national government. It was painfully obvious that the calamity could not be resolved at the local or state levels. Americans first tried those kinds of solutions and the problems were simply too monstrous to resolve. It required a flexible approach, and even then in the early ’30s, Americans were uncertain if the new ideas and new actions by the national government would prevail. They chose overwhelmingly a new leader who was charismatic but who had only a glimmer of a plan.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, from a wealthy New York political family and the Democratic Party, came forward with his New Deal programs that attempted to provide relief, begin recovery, and implement lasting reforms that would prevent a future of economic, environmental and diplomatic disasters. To do so meant giving up what had in the past been regarded as sacred local rights, but Americans were willing. With unemployment at record levels, a huge army of homeless people on the move, the worst economy in national history, a lengthy drought never before experienced that attacked the agricultural heartland, and a harsh racial division throughout society, unrest, instability and even revolution were possibilities. The optimism and strength that sustained Roosevelt through a severe attack of paralysis were echoed in his speech, reminding Americans that “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Not all Americans agreed with Roosevelt’s approach. Some felt not enough was being done, and they advocated greater authoritarian action on the part of the federal government. They included Huey Long, governor and then senator from Louisiana; Father Charles Coughlin and his radio programs; and William Lemke, congressman from North Dakota and ally of Father Coughlin in a third political party, the Union Party. The small American Communist Party, including the firebrand Mother Ella Bloor, and the Socialist Party as championed by African American union leader A. Philip Randolph were impatient with Roosevelt’s government.

Other groups disagreed with Roosevelt for very different reasons. Some believed that the New Deal intruded too far into the rights of the states and individuals, while others thought it was not being implemented efficiently. This conservative approach to the crisis was advocated by business leaders within the Republican Party such as Emporia, Kan., newspaper publisher William Allen White, and represented by the Republican Party candidate for president in 1936, Alfred Landon, the governor of Kansas. A majority of voters rejected all of these concepts, although at various points during the ’30s Huey Long and Father Coughlin attracted very large followings.

Out of this came Social Security; major public works projects putting Americans to work; the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) as sponsored by George Norris, senator from Nebraska; protection for labor unions and businesses through regulations and codes mutually devised; and agricultural programs to help raise the price of livestock and grains for production and encourage environmentally sound practices.

The ’30s, however, were not just about politics and a new relationship of the American people with their national government. American society changed drastically in its search for meaning in the midst of crisis. Many Americans looked for religious explanations and comfort in a period of extreme suffering. Traditional Christian religions seemed too tame to many and offered few answers. Like the early national era and the time of the Great Awakening, thousands of Americans converted to Protestant Pentacostalism. Americans needed individualized and personal approaches to religion as they sought solutions and solace to the problems they faced in everyday life.

This movement gained significant momentum in the ’30s. Pentacostals evolved in the ’30s and were represented by the ministry of Aimee Semple McPherson, a Canadian with a charismatic and dramatic flare, who set up headquarters in California. She ministered to hundreds of thousands in their time of need. By experiencing the Holy Ghost, Americans could be soothed when they asked: Why has God done this to us? What have we done that has caused these calamities?

Americans also sought diversions from their everyday life, filled with so much stress and sorrows. They watched the movies and Henry Fonda and Clark Gable; they followed athletics, particularly boxing with Joe Louis and baseball with Joe DiMaggio; and thousands listened to the radio. Politically savvy leaders, such as FDR, Father Conklin and Aimee Semple McPherson used radio to reach their followers, much as Will Rogers did to entertain Americans while serving as America’s humorist in his comments on their leaders. Artists and writers created visuals and stories about individual suffering that the American people needed to help alleviate their despair. Dorothea Lange’s photos came to represent the ’30s, as did John Steinbeck, writer of the Dust Bowl and Okie migration west, while Zora Neale Hurston’s folklore and novels from the Harlem Renaissance and the southern black experience captured these moments in time that greatly moved Americans.

Thus, in the search for survival, Americans uprooted their world as they knew it. They had to do so. The crisis of the ’30s required political, economic, social, intellectual and emotional solutions. The health of the nation in every conceivable fashion was on the line. No doubt such alertness served the nation well when confronting the horrors of a forthcoming world war.

Adapted from an essay by John R. Wunder for the Kansas-Nebraska Chautauqua.

All photos in this article are courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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