Transcripts For CSPAN3 C-SPAN Cities Tour Explores The Great Depression Era 20240713

Plunges and a financial panic gripped the world. This land is your land this land is my land from california to the New York Island i have but one desire, and that is to see my country again on the road to prosperity. This land was made for you and me let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. By the time Franklin Roosevelt gives his march 1933 inaugural speech, almost a quarter of the nation is unemployed. More than 5,000 banks have failed and drought is persisting in key agricultural areas of the country. Coming up in the next hour, stories from the Great Depression as we take you around the country to places like toledo. And then in 1931, five of the six largest banks in toledo all failed at the same time, which made it the largest banking failure of the Great Depression. Two successful Infrastructure Projects of the time still impacting us today. And to one ending in tragedy. Well take you to saint paul where depression gangsters and the corrupt police force strike a bargain. Well explore the impact of new deal programs like the civilian conservation core as we go just outside texas. We would not have a park here if it wasnt for the civilian conservation corps. And well learn about the people who were hit the hardest from artists who tell their sales. We begin our citys hour feature on the time period with a trip to toledo, ohio. In the 1920s, toledo was the fastestgrowing manufacturing city in america. In some ways it was sort of like the Silicon Valley of today. The auto industry, cuttingedge technologies were all centered here at the time. And as a result, the Manufacturing Base was just going gangbusters. And toledo seeped to be one of the brightest economic spots on the whole american map during a decade that was a decade of prosperity. And then in 1931, the entire house of cards collapsed, all in one week, and five of the six largest banks in toledo all failed at the same time, which made it the largest banking failure of the Great Depression, the Banking Industry here was perhaps more corrupt than other places. And that contributed to its catastrophic collapse. Toledo was the 27th largest city in america and its economy was rather diversified for a city of its size. It was an upandcoming major producer of automobiles, it had one of the largest automobile companies, the Willys Overland company, producing cars here. T but it was also a city that had a large Manufacturing Base in the glass industry. In fact, not only did it have probably the most Glass Production of any city in the country, its companies owned all the important patents to glass technologies. So any bottle and any window pane that was made in the world, some of those royalties came back here to toledo. The Banking System in toledo is similar to the Banking System throughout ohio, and maybe even the country, in that the banks were mostly chartered by the state government, not the federal government. And thats significant because that means the federal government didnt regulate or inspect them. Instead, the inspections and the regulations were all done by the state of ohio. And that unfortunately allowed banks to pretty. Pursue sort of a wild west atmosphere of investing. They really didnt have any constraints on the type of loans that they would give out and they really didnt have many constraints on any Business Decisions that they made. What eventually happened is that the banks pretty much escaped even state regulation. We know this because just on the eve of all of these banks collapsing, the state inspectors certified them all as being healthy, and in fact the bank thats right next door, the Security Home bank, was put on the honor roll of ohio banks even though it hadnt made a profit in over a year and even though the inspectors discovered that they were at least 300,000 short on their accounting, and the Bank Directors had given themselves dividends illegally. In spite of all of that, they still put it on the honor roll of banking. Thats how weak the banking regulations were here. Were standing in the former toledo trust building, which was the only bank that survived that period. And it largely survived because it was part of the Federal Reserve system and it was federally inspected, which meant it had to have good accounting and it wasnt able to escape the regulations that were put upon it. And when the bank crisis occurred, when the other banks began failing, this bank could call upon the Federal Reserve in cleveland and have an armored truck filled up with 11 million in cash and drifrven out here aa high rate of speed, so fast in fact that it got into an accident and had to transfer the stock into a different armored car to make the trip, so as to put the depositors at ease. All of the banks were owned by local investors and controlled by local directors and the major problem that leads to the Bank Failures is that these directors and owners were also involved in other companies. So they were oftentimes the owners of some of the Big Manufacturing Companies in town. Oftentimes Bank Directors would be directors on two or three banks at the same time. They would also be involved, all the Bank Directors were heavily invested in Real Estate Companies because one of the primary contributors to the bank crisis here in toledo in the 1930s, just as it was in america in 2007, was the overinvestment in real estate. Real estate speculation reached a mindboggling rate in the 1920s. For example, by 1925, there was 435 Real Estate Companies in this small city. And they developed 67 subdivisions which could hold over 1 Million People for a city of a quarter Million People. Clearly overleveraged and overinvested. And the reason these Real Estate Companies could do that is because they were largely owned by the directors of the banks, who by loaning them money were essentially giving themselves money. And the interlocking directives meant that there was all these incentives for bankers to give out loans when there really wasnt collateral or a Good Business reason to do so. And by 1931, that overhang of bad loans finally, the bill came due. And on june 6th, 1931, rumors began swirling around the city that the banks were about to fail. And crowds of depositors began lining up outside these very doors demanding their money. Little did they know that when they lined up outside the doors, the people inside the bank, the directors and the owners and the people invested, were already removing their money ahead of the depositors, leaving them very little. So toledo, after the bank crisis of 31, went from being a city in a recession to being a city in athe workers in toledo were laid off. Things got so bad that the city of toledo, which went quickly bankrupt itself, couldnt afford to buy new light bulbs for the street lights and so every day the city got a little darker and a little darker. They couldnt afford to replace to fire trucks so the number of fires that were allowed to burn uncontrolled increased every year throughout the Great Depression. By 1934, one out of six people in the city were on federal relief and federal leaf was so, so tight for toledo that dietitians began calculating the minimum number of calories needed to maintain life and thats what was allocated to the individuals. It couldnt have actually been much worse from that sense. The city was very much closed by 1932 as a result of the bank crisis. Toledo wasnt us in this state of economic catastrophe through most of the Great Depression. It wasnt until 1935, 1936 that the programs of the new deal began to have an effect. By the late 1930s, a very high proportion of the workforce, toledo is actually federally employed so it was federal new deal relief that eventually got the city back on its feet. And of course, as its true throughout the country and the Great Depression, the coming of the war in the 1940s invigorated the economy. Toledo retooled for the war, it began making the famous wartime released jeep. It began converting many of its hardware factories into the munitions factories. By the early 1940s, toledo was essentially running on full employment cap. The economy would never rebound the way it was in the 1920s. The 1920s, toledo it was one of the fastestgrowing cities in the country. In the 1930s, they lost population. And even after the war, in the forties, fifties, and sixties toledos rate of growth fell behind the national average. So we never really recovered from the Great Depression. Its pretty much the significant event of this citys history, modern history. Two years after toledos 1931 banking crashed, the nations Banking System itself is urging on collapse as fdr speaks to the nation on march 5th, 1933. You people must have faith, let me make it clear that the bank will take care of all needs. But the Banking System is not the only thing president wrote roosevelt has his eyes on. Bill after bill pours into congress from the white house. Whatever roosevelt wants, he gets. The house is burning down, says the republican floor leader so give the president anything he needs to put out the fire. Through 100 historic days of a special session, every new deal measured passes without question. The new secretary of interior, herald the in ministry of the pita, the program a public works designed to create jobs for the unemployed. Those hired for pwa initiatives work on Infrastructure Projects such as bridges, roads and dams. One of the most notable is the hoover dam. Seen with 238 Million Dollars from the pwa. Up next, our cspan city tour is featured on the Great Depression takes you to what was originally named the boulder dam until a 1947 act of Congress Changes the name to honor fdrs predecessor in the white house, herbert hoover. Who were down was actually started in 1931 in april. The contractors were given seven years to complete it and actually got it done in five years. When the federal government decided to authorize hoover dam and found it, it took literally six different Construction Companies to come together with the resources to have enough stuff, machines, man power to put this together. So youll see the signs around who were down that was built by Six Companies because that is actually how many it took and the joint forces to build this beautiful place. Totally there is about 21,000 men that worked on the dam. At its peak, towards the end, about 1934, there were 5000 workers. That were here working. The workers work 24 7. They had two days off a year that they could take. It was voluntary. And you ask a lot of people and a lot of people guess what those days are. Everybody gets christmas but the other day they could take off as the 4th of july. Thats how proud they were of the structure. The primary purpose for building the hoover dam with flood control. The Colorado River could flood and flood and trickle and trickle and flood. If someone one said it was too thick to drink and too thin to farm so what they wanted to do was have some stability to the Southwestern United States to increase farming and enhanced the growth of communities but they needed to control the colorado because it kept washing everything away. Who were down was built primarily for flood control, the other purpose of course was water delivery. Under a compact that was signed in arizona, nevada and california, the water was divvied up for the last 688 miles of the Colorado River. Thats our region here. They wanted to have a way to deliver that water. You cant do it all at once, you have to do it when the farmers needed or when the communities needed so water delivery was second and hydro power generating electricity was the third reason. Right now, i believe weve come down 500 feet. We are in one of the tunnels that was built inside the rock walls, beside hoover dam. We were headed to the arizona side of the dam. So the arizona side is part of hoover dam that contains nine generators and it is generating electricity and you can see when we get in there, some of them are generating and some are not. These generators are marked a one, a two, to indicate they are on the arizona side. We are what is called a peeking plant which means we dont generate electricity all the time we generate electricity when we get an order from the Electrical Companies that say, we need more power. Our joke around here is when you turn the air conditioning on in california, youll see some of these generators fire up because they want some more power. The interesting thing is we dont just generate power, we deliver water and water is king. We will not generate any power unless theres a water delivery to go with it because that water is designed to fulfill the water orders and it will be released to generate electricity one theres a lot of orders coming in. Hoover dam is 726 feet high, now thats 171 feet higher than the Washington Monument in washington, d. C. We are about 50 feet above the bedrock, this is where the water comes out of the turbans after its generating electricity and its going to feed the contractors who have water entitlements to the colorado. Its a gravity arch down which means its 660 feet at the bottom and then it comes up to 45 feet at the top. Basically, its pushing down and against the walls of the canyon, so its definitely going to be staying in place. The dam, when it was constructed, it took about 4. 3 million cubic yards of concrete. Thats enough to build a 16 foot wide highway from los angeles to new york. When they were building that, of course a lot of construction folks know that concrete takes time to cool, well to conquer that problem and keep pouring and keep pouring and make that deadline, they built their own refrigeration plant down here in the 1932 timeframe and they ran pipes through the concrete with refrigerated water to cool the blocks so they could keep pouring. As they poured, they cooled the concrete, they ports more and cooled. It was quite an ingenious thing to build their own refrigeration plant down here at the bottom of the canyon. Theres a large body of treaties, court cases, agreements called the law of the river and including the law of the river is the compact that was signed in 1922, which divvied up the water into the upper Colorado River basin in the lower Colorado River basin. That lower Colorado River basin is basically what hoover dam controls. The water deliveries to arizona, california, nevada. Now at the time they defeated up, they were counting on Record Keeping from 1905 and those have been pretty wet year so they actually divvied up the waters based on some pretty wet years. Now the system is really variable. You can have great snow pack years and get lots of water in the colorado, or you can go through what we are going through now. 16 years of drought with maybe one good year in there. The lakers dropped, and the river at this point given the history is whats being called overall located. When the river is called over allocated it basically means the hydrology isnt keeping up with the water delivery needs. In other words, we are not getting enough water into the system to meet the water delivery needs that are contracted with us. As of today, we have never failed to meet the contracted water deliveries to arizona, nevada and california and we dont anticipate that next year. If we continue to see the lake drop, we might be in a condition called shortage in future years. Under that contract, arizona and nevada would take less water, california having the senior water ride in that agreement. When the compact was signed in 1922, when i look this up, the census for nevada was 1000 people. Nobody envisioned a las vegas, or a reno or any of the industries that have risen in nevada since then. As time went on, and water became more available, the committee sprung up, las vegas grew, it clearly has become a Huge Community and people continue to move out here but they have managed or water. They knew how much they had. It was predictable how much they could take by contract so they managed to reuse their water, recycle their water. If you go look at the fountains and downtown las vegas, thats not freshwater, thats reused water. They take care of every drop, recycle it and they put a lot of it back into the lake. As they were putting the plans together to build hoover dam, it was pretty clear especially in the Great Depression that this was going to be an enormous undertaking and people were going to want to come and see this. In order to acknowledge that and make a place for all these visitors, they knew they had to add some of the art decal work in there. Weve got marble floors, the wing statues made of copper, that salute american spirit are there on the Memorial Plaza so they knew people would come and they sure did. We sell 800,000 tickets a year for the tours and you dont have to buy a tour ticket. We are figuring, we got about 1 Million People a year that come and visit hoover dam, spend their time, take a look around. Its such an incredible mixture of engineering and art deco creativity. I sometimes think to myself, how did those Straight Line engineers and that architect get more creative . How in the world did they find a place to get along and make it so beautiful and so functional . And so hoover dam stands today, amounting of the losses. Children stemming and controlling and bending the will of an unbearable school stream, the Colorado River. The hoover dam is one of over 34,000 Construction Projects the Public Works Administration funds during the depression. Providing jobs to a nation with nearly 25 unemployment rate, the abc spends over six billion dollars from 1933 to 1939. Next, the p. O. W. A construction project gone wrong. Either cspan city tour features stories on the Great Depression take you to the Pacific Northwest. Partially funded by the Public Works Administration, with that to coma narrows bridge is built towards the end of the era. The area we are standing in right now is in the southern section of puget sound, which is the Washington State and Pacific Northwest great inland water. When the Transcontinental Railroad came, there was talk about one day being able to stand puget sound. It really wasnt an undertaking anybody was prepared to do. During the depression, federal programs like the building of the coolly dam and stuff, there were a big job creating public works projects happening the Pacific Northwest. In the mid 19 thirties there would be talk about creating a bridge over puget sound. A reach from took home to the kid sap peninsula. Bridge was open on the 1st of july in 1940. After two years of construction. The tacoma narrows is also a bit of a wind tunnel and people working on the deck began to north movement. Almost like airplane wing lifts in the bridge so unlike just kind of horizontal movement, they began to feel a vertical lift in the bridge especially in the center span. You know, there was no suspension bridge, anything like this, anywhere in our part of the world, anywhere in the Pacific Northwest so there was an unfamiliarity of just how big a big thing like this was supposed to behave. People were excited about it. There is a certain musical kind of gracefulness about a bridge like this. People i guess just wanted to think it wasnt anything wrong, that it was normal. Once they get all the concrete down on the deck and everything they added that that would all go away. As we went out of summer and began to get into fall and the winds picked up a little bit, our prevailing wind down on the southwest, which blows almost directly on to across the bridge deck, they began to notice the that there was an undulation in the deck. By fall, soldiers were coming out from the military base for the novelty of riding the bridge. They go out and they kick their feet over the railing and stand on the outside of the bridge and lean out as far as they could. The center deck of the bridge would be rising, not just inches, but to a point where the undulation was so severe that to automobiles or a truck in an automobile coming in opposite directions, the headlights of the vehicle coming at you would disappear under the rolling kind of hill of the deck. Four conservative people, something was horribly wrong from the very beginning. For a community that was proud of their new bridge, for the many people that participated in building the bridge, it was unthinkable that this was wrong but the engineers began to work on the idea of some stiffening of the bridge. They thought that the railings on the side could be converted into some deep high beams and that that would add some rigidity to the bridge. Some of those minor structural additions, modifications were implemented or were about to be implemented as we got through october of 1940 and by early november of 1940, really only four months, four and a half months after the bridge was then completed, the weather began to shift into its winter patterns. That really was the bellwether of what was about to happen. On the morning of november 7th, the winds kicked up to about 40 miles an hour and they were fiercely directed right at the side of the bridge as if the way the wind comes over the wing on an airplane. Instead of the normal undulation of the bridge, the deck began to twist for, it began to turn and everybody noticed immediately that that was a behavior people had not noticed before. So early in the morning on the seventh, there are hundreds if not thousands of people who came out on both sides of the bridge to start to watch what was happening, start to watch its behavior. The bridge keepers, it was a toll bridge, so the bridge keepers had decided that they would close the bridge. This was wrong, it was just not safe anymore. Indeed, it was just not an action that should happen with an inanimate object of this size. One last car was coming across the bridge, even though the access to the bridge had been fought off shut off. There was one last car coming across the bridge, a man coming from his summer home the heading towards tacoma. He had a conquer spaniel to with him in a car, by the time he got to the most severely moving part of the bridge deck, he could not control the automobile so the car swung, just screeched around and sort of ended up kind of diagonally across both lanes on the bridge and he jumped out and iran and got off the bridge. For the next 30 or 40 minutes, the bridge went into just a violent one, Just Movement that no one had seen before and all the crowds on both sides all sort of, you know, closed in to just watch. I think everyone started to suspect that the impossible was about to happen, that the bridge was going to give up, was going to fail. With no one really on the bridge, strangely, a University Professor who had worked on trying to solve the puzzle, there was enough time for people to be able to get out there, actually ran out onto the bridge trying to get the dog out of the car. Theres great footage of him. It looks like this Stephen Spielberg movie. Today, you watch that footage and you cannot even imagine that somebody would run out on the bridge with this tearing sort of deck. He had got out there, the dog with just two terrified to get of the car so he gave up and kind of strolled back. He was knocked down a couple of times by the movement of the bridge. Finally got off the bridge and then in a few moments that followed, the deck tore away from the hangers and the witnesses talk about it being like listening to gunshots because the jewels, they are called, these big boats that are, the cable comes down goes through the deck and there is a big bolt on the bottom to keep it from going out. Those jewels began to pop and cables began to snap under the force. The light standards on the bridge are just cutting, swirling across rapidly and catching on the cables. In just a moment, the connection between two sections of the bridge deck fail and there is a violent twist and tear of the deck and in the moments that follow that, huge sections of begin to fail. Most of the center span of the bridge underneath the big suspension cables falls away, drops away from the bridge and then just plunges into puget sound. No one is killed in the incident. No one is even hurt. They demolished as much as they can, this in november 1940, and then as they begin to think about really having to reengineer the whole thing, the clouds of war close in of the Second World War and by that time they realize there is no way during the war that they are going to be able to get the bridge rebuilt and that pearl harbor happens. The shipyard become a critical, strategic thing and the focus shifts away from public works projects for. In fact, the towers and the steal on the bridge is actually removed and brought into the war effort, recycled and turned into bullets and tanks and whatever. Actually, sections of the bridge of the steel are actually used on the alaska highway to build a highway up to alaska during the Second World War because of the program in the ties with the northwest and alaska. So it really the remnants was set in the channel through the war and then its only after the war that the begin to reconstruct another suspension bridge. In 1950, the second tacoma narrows bridge is complete and thats the bridge we see in the distance here, the steele bridge that standing with the steel towers in the distance. I doubt that there is a textbook only reference book written about bridge engineering that does not include tacoma in the index because of the tacoma narrows bridge. Its impossible for me to imagine that engineering students all over the world have seen the film of galloping dirties collapse. It is one of those absolutely spellbinding moments in engineering one of those disasters, those outer failures of design that is completely captured on film and it is amazing, it still is jawdropping to see a huge endeavor like this. A physical objects moved with this much, just dance almost, with this Much Movement that are out of the parameters of the original design. One thing thats happening, men are going to work for the government by the millions. Our new buildings, roads, schools, bridges, anything to get as roosevelt calls them off the grid lines and on the job, any job. Wba its not for Works Progress administration but critics say it really means we poke along. While a depression is the era public money its also the era public enemies as gangsters like John Dillinger were rich on Bank Robberies and bootlegging. This was the epicenter of 1930s crime in the era of John Dillinger. Next we take you to st. Paul for the story of a corrupt police force, famous outlaws, prohibition in the fbis pursuit from americas most wanted criminals but. What cities all over america that were safe havens for gangsters, hot springs, arkansas, cicero, illinois outside of chicago but more than any of those other cities was st. Paul. It was estimated that 50 of minnesota ands were involved in making bootleg liquor in those days. The other 50 were buying it from them. This minnesota area was also well situated to make bootleg liquor, to break the probation law we. Had a lot of germans and germans not to make beer. We had more breweries per capita than almost any city in america. When you break the law and make illegal liquor, you need water, you need freshwater. We had the mississippi river, only a few yards from where we are standing today and we are very close to the border of canada so liquor could be imported and exported over the canadian border. As a result, this area was a haven for bootlegging and became a haven for public enemies and gangsters. The history of the building that we are in right now, which is today called landmark center, but in the 1930s, the public enemies era, it was called the old federal courts building. The history here is incredible. Above our heads, on the fifth floor, as the offices of the prohibition bureau. The man who headed the prohibition era was the man who wrote the american prohibition law was, the volstead act. It was andrew volstead, the congress from the minnesota who created probation in this building. Then when the prohibition was repealed and all of these bootleggers, what were they going to do . Liquor was legal, they turned to bank robbery, kidnapping, labor racketeering, extortion and murder and thats what this building became then. The fbi, the federal bureau of investigation with jay edgar hoover, had this building as your headquarters. As they say, if these walls could talk, what notorious stories they could tell. In the 1930s, fortunately every major gangster, kidnap or and bank robber in america lived and worked within a three block radius of where we are standing today, John Dillinger, baby face nelson, alvin creepy carson. All were here. People dont know that, there is no statues of these gangsters but this was the epicenter of 1930s crime in the era of John Dillinger. Basically, the police in st. Paul at the turn of the century, sent the word out to gangsters, bank robbers, kidnappers, come to st. Paul, you can be here, you have to promise not to kill or robbed anyone within the city limits of st. Paul. Of course, pay a bribe, as long as you are under good behavior, mr. Don jill, under baby face nelson, you are welcome in our city. The deal between the crooks and the gangsters was tolerated for almost three decades and the people of st. Paul would see the most notorious gangsters in america, wanted men, like bank robber John Dillinger walking along the street and it was like seeing a celebrity but you wouldnt fear for your life in st. Paul in the 1930s because you knew the fix was in, the crooks were on the best behavior. Its march, 1934 and the most wanted men in america, public enemy number one, bank robber John Dillinger is living right behind us in apartment three zero three of st. Pauls Lincoln Court apartments. The he basically regroup to get his bank robbery gang ready for a crime spree. So he was here enjoying time with his girlfriend, they went to the movies, just one block away from us. Meanwhile, his gang is getting weapons, getaway cars, and casing which banks they rob from their home base here in st. Paul. Now the fbi didnt know that this was John Dillinger but they began hits that a strange man was living in this apartment building. The shades were always drawn to the bottom, dillinger never came out to get his mail but the big tip off was John Dillingers girlfriend, a beautiful indian woman from wisconsin name belief or shut. She would come out on this grass and hangup John Dillingers a laundry dressed up in a halter top and short shorts. I talked to men in their eighties who remember 70 years ago, when dillinger was here, and they said, oh my god, this girl was so beautiful. They still remember dillingers girlfriend. The fbi sent a crew here to knock on dillingers door but they didnt know, they thought it was carl helm in, which was John Dillingers alias but he lived above at the 303. You are walking towards John Dillingers apartment, its apartment 303. All you know is that theres something suspicious in apartment 303, you knock, this is dillingers door right here and dillinger is in bed with his girlfriend, billy. She opens the door, peeks out and the fbi goes, maam we are still here to speak to carl helmand. The deer woman forgets her own alias. She goes carl, carl, oh, my husband. And the fbi are not fools, they go man we are staying right here, you go and get carl. She runs to the bed says, john, john, the jig is up, its the fbi. Dillinger, cool as a cucumber, says deer get your clothes on. He pulls on his pants, gets a machine gun, comes to this door, opens it slightly, leans out, grins at the fbi and starts firing machine gun bullets out of this door. The police and the fbi start firing back at him. This door is chewed up by bullets. To give you a sense, John Dillinger, not a master criminal, not a single bullet from villages gun hits any of the fbi agents in the actual corridor that you are in right now but one bullet from the fbi and the police is gun hits John Dillinger in the thigh. Incredibly, John Dillinger has escaped from the fbi shoot out. He lays down fire and comes out this door. Now dillinger is wounded in the leg so dillinger races over here, stand here holding a sub machine gun in one hand and a gun in the other and tell us his girlfriend, billy, get the getaway car. Literally the most wanted men in america is standing here, bleeding like a stuffed pig. A boy, louis, in this building next door sees the man who recognizes as John Dillinger, bank robber, reaches under his bed, takes out a shotgun and aims it at dillinger, who is here. The kids seconds from becoming the boy who killed John Dillinger, when his mother, here in the shots that were from here, tackles her son, throws him into the ground and dillinger is not killed in st. Paul. He gets in the getaway car with his girl and he rose a way to wisconsin for a little rest and relaxation at the Little Bohemia lodge. The deal between the crooks and the cops, which had stood for years, meaning the crooks live here but they dont kill or kidnap anyone here, fell apart. Bank robber, John Dillingers girlfriend was try, successfully, in this room but before she was found guilty of harboring her boyfriend, John Dillinger, she tried to escape. She said she had to go to the ladiesroom. The federal marshals with her followed her through this door and then the man, the marshals somewhat shy, stood back allowing billy, dillingers girlfriend, to go to the backroom at which point she simply kept on going down this hallway and try to escape. Unfortunately, the federal marshals were overcoming their shyness about a female soon to be convict and grabbed her make sure she did not fix cape on to the powder room. The fbi was quite concerned that the dillinger gang would try to come here with their machine guns and free dillingers girlfriend. In the kind of the porch is that you see behind my head there were federal marshals armed with shotguns and sub machine guns waiting in case any members of the corpus barker gang or dillinger gang would come up to relieve their comrades. It never happened but you can imagine what it was like in this room, in the sweltering heat of the summers of 35 degrees and 36 degrees when all the gangsters were here and everyone was waiting to see if other gangsters with machine guns would calm and try to free them. In this building, is both the inception of prohibition that led to widespread organized crime all over america. Thats how al kupperman got his start as a bootlegger. In 1934, 1935, 1936, this was the building where all those bootleggers and bank robbers were tried and sent to alcatraz, lebron worth prison in other prisons across america. Its where began and where it ended. While the gangsters of the depression era turn to crime to make a living, others turn west. Across the great plains from the texas panhandle to the canadian border, exhausted and broken by the plow, parched and eroded begins to blow away in great black blizzards. By the thousands, they abandoned their homes, flee the doesnt fold. They uprooted to oklahoma and given a name to the new dispossessed americans. During the 19 thirties, over 1 Million People, many of them Farming Families the their home in oklahoma, arkansas in texas and had to california. Finding jobs mostly on large formed and with minimal pay, these minor workers leave in squatter camps and shantytowns on the outskirts of the farm on welcome by many californians, the derogatory term hockey is used to describe them. I want to make this trip is native oklahoma and and singersongwriter Woody Guthrie who next, our cspan cities tour features on stories on the Great Depression continues as it takes you to the Woody Guthrie center and tulsa, oklahoma. I got started in oklahoma, thats where i was born. I was one third indian, one third and one third white people. So i hit the road when i was about 13 years old and odd jobs all over the country. I lived amongst all these kinds of people so thats why picked up a lot of songs. This land is your land this land is my land from california to the New York Island from the redwood forest and the gulf stream waters this land was made for you and me. When he got through his most famous for his writing of this land is your line but he was very much more than that. He was born in 1912 in oklahoma and so we are very proud to have his work back in oklahoma, where we think it belongs. He was an advocate for people who were disenfranchised, for those people who were Migrant Workers from oklahoma, kansas and texas during the decibel era. Who have found themselves in california, literally starving and he saw this vast difference between those who were the haves or that have knots and became their spokesman through his music. The what Guthrie Center was open in april of 2013. It started with a purchase of the woody garth three archives from his daughter, nor got three. The plan was to have this Research Facility in tulsa. As the concept grew of opening these archives to a new generation, and teaching people about what is important part of American History, this museum came to be. We really consider it a place to inspire people. We want them to investigate what woody did with his talents. And inspire people to go and use their talents do something of their own. When the sun come shining and i were strolling music music many of the people displaced were looking for a better way of life. Some of them have lost their farms due to foreclosure. Others lost their farms due to the death toll, the drought, and all of the winds that blow their soil away. They had nothing. They were promised this garden of eden, and plenty of work. Come to california and we will have plenty of work for you. Its a wonderful place to be. When they arrived, they found out thats not what was going on. They had been the victims, often times, of a marketing ploy by large land owners who were trying to get very cheap labor because they knew if they had an over abundance of labor, they did not have to pay them much. The workers had no rights and whenever woody arrived and saw that, it did not seem right. In our country of plenty, where so many have so much to allow families to struggle so horrifically, and to degrade them in a way that makes them feel less than human, is just not acceptable. This area of the center focuses on the experience. It was such an important part of who woody was, and really started his work. Its a significant thing for us to mention. Its such an important part of our history as oklahomans. We want to make sure our young people understand the resilient people they came from. The way that they persevered in the face of this natural disaster, that was actually manmade. Had the planes not been found my they were and over cultivated, then it would not have then the death toll would not occur as it did. In this area we have some dorothy elling photos. Sketches of him going to california and then one of his scrapbooks, its one of my favorite pages. Its just a short little notation and answer to some articles that were posted about him and he just says, oh yeah, ill do everything i can to help the folks from oklahoma, dont you worry. Items about the distal i just think that really speaks for who he was and what he was intending to do. Also, we have lyrics that woody wrote. Lyrics to tom joad, a nod to John Steinbeck and the joad family. music [applause] then, if you aint got the do re mi, it talks about how people would be greeted at the border. It were told if they did not have money they cannot get into california. So many of the, especially the young and old, died because of this pneumonia. Woody recorded very few songs of his own. We have a listening station that features 46 of his songs in his own voice. Most of the time when people hear Woody Guthrie songs, they are not woody singing them, they are someone else. He spent his time traveling, in a Migrant Workers camps, in Union Organization rallies, so he did not spend a great deal of time in recording studios. Thats what makes the recordings that he did make so significant and so important to us. music woody definitely had themes to his writing. He wanted to make sure people were well represented in his artwork and his lyrics. There are some sketches here, city of los angeles, no children wanted. You have the hoover villes over here with the shining city in the background. There is one consolation left, the children raised in the sun will always be the brightest. Woody was working with the migrant displaced workers he felt the one way to create workers were rights was to unionize. It was a pretty dangerous concept. It was not so much of an option without facing some kind of violence. In these lyrics, 1913 massacrem, he talks about a party were Union Members were joining during christmas. The boss man created a panic by saying there was a fire, and then locked the doors. It was in michigan. music i think woody would go into history and research other events that were still pertinent to the struggles that the workers were still facing. In the first line he says, take a trip with me back in 1913. He makes it clear that he is going back, and he is telling the story of the massacre that happened in 1913. He is pointing out that this fight they are facing, for workers, for the displaced oklahomans, the problems they are facing are still alive today. These people who faced this disaster should not be forgotten. Again, woody was an artist and used his artwork in a playful way. Other times for commentary. Often times a combination of both. He had almost a little story that he tells about the hands of the workers. The hand thinks it over, on the hand cases possible. The boss yells at the cops. The law in order comes and hand is charged with trying to overthrow the u. S. Government. Then joined the ceo. So if you have the struggles, joined the union. We are in the area of the center dedicated to this land is your land. That is the song most people recognize as a Woody Guthrie song. Its an important theme for our country. We wanted to make sure it was given its proper credit here. This one is your land actually celebrated its 75th birthday, february 23rd of this year. We have the original handwritten lyrics on display. While most people recognize the song as a singalong from our Elementary School days. Usually that did not involve singing the fourth and sixth verses, which were meant as social commentary about things could be improved in our society. He paints this gorgeous landscape of the things he saw as he traveled from coast to coast. He also points out things about the people and how we are treating the people and how we should be taking care of each other better. music there was a big high wall there that try to stop me the sign was painted private property but on the backside it did not say nothing this land was made for you and me music music the idea of a land owner seeing people who were starving outside this beautiful land that he had and saying, no, you have to keep out, this is private property, did not really go along with what woody demonstrated as our beautiful country and what we had to offer our citizens. This land was made for you and me music music its important to note that woody was a class worker. In a day that so many artists were not. He was a person that gave a voice to the voiceless. This land was made for you and me music music with rudy grant three seeing none about not having a home anymore, another deal program as young men moving into camps together across the nation. Few objectives have been in conservation for the ccc it takes thousands of young man in the towns and cities with nothing to do and puts them in government counts where there is plenty to do. They built this world by hand basically for 30 dollars a month, a dollar a day. Obviously you cant build the rest of the structures and the rest of the facilities until you have access to it. It changed their lives without their work we would not have anything we have today. The experience of driving into the Palo Duro State Park is as it has been for thousands of years. All of a sudden you, across this huge drop into the earth. Even today its quite a shocking experience. The fact that i get to see this every day, i have to stop and take it in, and just make sure that i am appreciating how lucky i am to be here every day. Canyon has been forming for about a million years or so. The bulk of the formation has happened in the last 100,000 years. It runs from here close to the town of silverton. The river is probably like 100 20 miles. Its the second largest canyon in the United States after the grand. Its not a single canyon. Many canyons branch off to the side. We are standing in an area where we can see three canyons where we are right now. Its a much bigger system than people realize with a visit to the state park. I actually grew up here in amarillo. As a young kid i came out. As soon as i got my drivers license i was driving out here and bringing my friends. We would explore the caves. I can tell you, its much bigger than what you think it is from just looking up here. When you get down into the canyon, and you get your hiking stick and boots on, you better make sure you have a lot of water, because its farther than you think. There are all kinds of treasures out there that we have been searching for. One of the draws is being around extreme nature. This is extreme nature. There are so many places out here where you can see the beautiful cliffs. When i was growing up, the only footage you had from the air out here were helicopter shots that the local television stations would do. When the drones got popular several years ago, i had to be there. Its another one of my shortcomings, i have to have the latest gadgets. Of course i have my drones out here. It is just amazing. It helps having the experience and knowledge of where to go to look at these things from spending my life looking from the ground up, i knew all the places i wanted to go to get the view from the air down. I already had the shot set up in my mind, and executed as many as i could. Theres so many places out here. You could stay on the trail and be suitably amazed with everything you see. There is plenty to look at and take photos of and experience. But there are so many other places that are just off the trail. Palo duro canyon is a story of edges. We arekind of on the edge of a lot of different ranges from plants and animals. We are on the edge literally of a canyon, and its a place on the edge of battles, conflicts of different cultures. For the vast majority of the history of this area and of the canyon, the people were nomadic. They did not build permanent structures. They had temporary structures that they could move with them as they traveled. In the earliest days there were large, extinct species of bison, mammoth, giant sloths, the ice age mega fauna that no longer exists. Later than that we get into a late prehistoric period when they were like your typical image of what you think of when you think of native americans. This was the Southern Plains region and so the tribes included the southern cheyenne, the comanches, the apaches. Towards the ends of the life in the 1860s and 1870s, this became a stronghold for people who were trying to escape the bison hunters and people trying to take their lands. Because this was right in the center of comanche territory, it was hard to get to and of course the native americans had thousands of years of knowledge of this area. People coming into the area did not. They used it as a stronghold to escape. There were a series of battles in 1874 that became known as the red river war. The most decisive battle of the red river war was the battle of palo duro in september of 1874. The comanches, some cheyenne set up winter campgrounds, like they had done for years on the floor of the canyons, they were under the mistaken impression that they would be safe, that they would be left alone. They did not realize the government sent five separate troops in the area to look for them, to try to force them back onto the reservations of oklahoma. The fourth cavalry of the United States army of oklahoma discovered their camp, and early in 1874, they dismounted their horses, they led them down into the canyon floor, and then remounted them and charged into this massive village of native americans. Its not a battle that had a high casualty count. Its more of a route. Imagine waking up and youre laying there with your wife, your husband, your aunt, your grandmother, your children, all of these people are with you, and you wake up to armed soldiers attacking your town. What would you do . They did the only thing they could, which was to flee. They ran, setting up Little Pockets of resistance to try to hold off the soldiers long enough to escape and most of the native americans were successful in getting away. The problem was in their flight, they were not able to take much with them. That gave the cowboys motivation to come back and destroy their camp and destroy their camp and destroy their winter supplies, and destroy their horse herd. They slowly trickled back into the reservation, and that ended the Southern Plains way of life. In just a couple of years, a new group came in at some the opportunity of this empty place empty of people at least and they set up ranchers. Charles good night set up a ranch that would later become the ja. It grew into one of the largest of its size. A lot of that encompassed parts of the canyon behind us. This was great grazing land for bison, and it worked great for the cattle as well. The ranching period in this spot where we are standing lasted from 1876 until 1933. This was a working cattle ranch, and in 1933, through a bond, the state of texas purchased about 15,000 acres that became the original Palo Duro State Park. The people of this area had a really strong desire to have a park here. Prior to this being a park, if you did not owe someone know someone who owned some land, you had to trespass to go see it. Sometimes tens of thousands of people would show up in the 1920s and 1930s just to see it. A huge drive for not only the people of the town of canyon, but amarillo is also close, and other cities wanted a park because they knew not only how important this place was to protect but how they would have people coming around to see it. Ranching continues all around us, but we are this sort of pocket of public land that people can visit. That is part of wakes it so special. We would not have a park here if it were not for the civilian conservation corps. They were a new relief deal effort. One of the many groups started by president roosevelt in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression. They arrived here very shortly after the creation of the ccc. They arrived at palo duro, one of the oldest parks and texas, also across the nation. They got here in the summer of 1933 and set up their camp. One of the first projects they worked on is the road into the canyon. Obviously, you cannot build the rest of the structures until you have access to it. It is a reminder to myself all the time when im driving down in my work every day that they built this road by hand, basically for 30 a month, a dollar a day. It changed their lives and that they were able to feed themselves, their families, they learned a lot that served them later in life, and it also provided infrastructure because we have so many historic structures, the road into the canyon. Without their work, we would not have every thing we have today. Being up here in the texas panhandle, theres not a lot of written history. Theres not a lot of history that you can go back to and actually look at. This is one of those places that you can go back and look at some of the history. You have the mortar stones. Theres a rock that has some indian art from probably 1000, 2000 years ago that you can still go to, and it looks im sure its not as vivid as it was back in the day, but it is still pretty vivid. I like that connection of being able to look at history that is more than just your grandfathers history. The texas state park, state parks all across the nation, these are state lands and we want people to visit them. I always ask schoolkids when they come in who owns pallet canyon, and they always say me, i do or you do who owns palo doro canyon . It is the state that owns it, the people, and we want people to come and see this place. With ccc camps in every state from 1933 to 1942, the employee employees about 300 million out of work man with the average worker making 30 dollars a month. Another new deal program is the Farm Security administration created in 1937 with the intent of combatting rural poverty and becomes famous for its photographic collection documenting the depression. Made up of over 175,000 images, some of the most iconic are by fsa employ, dorothy elaine. We take you to california with an example thems photographers work. Dorothy lying dorothy line has made some of the most memo graft from the Great Depression, the migrant mother being the one pretty much everyone has seen it has become a symbol of the Great Depression. The whole grapes of wrath, John Steinbeck, woodys music, steinbecks literature, and langs photographs that have created the image and the mental picture we have in our minds of the Great Depression. One of her favorite sayings was that the camera is an instrument that teaches us how to see without a camera. That is what she was all about. She grew up in hoboken, new jersey and new york city had childhood polio which left her with a withering leg, which she always credited with helping to make her nonthreatening, and as she put it, one of the walking wounded, a subject matter she was always interested in, being that she could approach people. She was perceived as nonthreatening and not someone who was not invasive. As a teenager, lange decided she was going to become a photographer. Told her mother, took classes and with her best friend at the age of 18 again what would have been and around the world tour. They got as far as San Francisco when all their money was stolen, so they were forced to stay. Lange got a job at the local Photo Finishing counter. It inspired her to open her own Portrait Studio. It is an interesting story because its not at all what we think of her work. We have many thousands of negatives and prints from her Portrait Studio days. It was kind of highend. If you can afford her and wanted a portrait that was sort of artistic, you would end up in her studio usually. Of course when the depression came along she ended up with a lot of time on our hands, like a lot of people, didnt have a lot of excess income to spend on things like photographs so she sitting around her studio and the way she told her story about getting involved with social documentary photography was looking at the window one day and seeing these unemployed men just sort of, our studio window, just aimlessly wandering around San Francisco. One day she said, if im going to do this, i have to do it now. She grabbed her camera instinctively. This is a photograph called white angel bread line. The reason it is called that is because there was a San Francisco Society Woman nicknamed the white angel, and she had this soup kitchen basically established on the San Francisco waterfront. Its really one of langes masterpieces. What i love about it is the fact that it was made on the very first trip she made out of the studio. She went out with her brother because she was a little frightened of all these angry, potentially hungry men out there, but she found that she was welcomed and came back with this photograph that almost did not manage to make it. She had an assistant at the time who became a really wellknown architectural photographer, who was developing her negatives for her. She gave him the film holders and told him to develop them, but she said dont worry about this one, theres nothing in that, this particular holder, so he took them into the dark room, so he went into the dark room to make sure there was no film in there, and he pulled out there was a little piece of film in there, and it contained this, so if it were not for him, we would not have this photograph. Its great to because having the negative collections like we do here, we can see the photographs she took before and after this. You can see right from the beginning of her documentary work, she had this tendency to take multiple images getting closer until she was just capturing what was essential about the photograph, the image, and that was usually what ended up being the best photograph. Whats fascinating about this is you will notice theres only one face in the photograph. His eyes are not visible. It is shot from above, which makes it seem really isolated. Little atypical of a lot of the works she did photographing migrant farmworkers. Shes actually famous for shooting workers from below, which gave them stature and dignity they would not have had otherwise. Her photographs, generally speaking, tend to be ennobling and not concentrating on despair, and really making the case that these were resilient people that were going to make it. All they needed was a little hand. The support of local cable providers, we take you on a virtual tour of those places key to understanding our nations history. To watch any of our videos, go to cspan. Org slash citys tour and follow us on twitter at cspan cities. Tonight on American History tv, beginning at eight eastern, from American History to visa lectures and histories series Wesley College professor brenda gear teaches a class debunking some of the miss rounding rosa parks and the 1955, 1956 montgomery bus boycott. Watch American History tv now and over the weekend on cspan three. American history tv on cspan 3 exploring the people and events that tell the american story every weekend. Coming up this weekend, saturday at noon eastern on the presidency, former white house curator William Allman on the 1962 tour and the white house collections. At 6 pm eastern, American Civil War interpretation specialists clarissa markan on civil war girl fighters who became outlaws. And sunday on 4 pm eastern on real america, the 1936 film, a National Program in the Tennessee Valley about two massive dam projects, the north dam in tennessee and the wheeler dam in alabama. Exploring the american story, watch American History tv this weekend on cspan 3. The cspan cities tour travels the country exploring the american story. Since 2011 weve been to over 200 communities across the nation as with Many Americans our staff is staying close to home due to the coronavirus. Heres a look at our recent visit to chapel hill, north carolina. The cspan city stories exploring the american story as we take book tv in American History tv on the road with the support of our spectrum cable partners, we travel to chapel hill, north carolina. Over the next hour, will go to multiple location, speak with experts about the citys history and also talk to some history makers themselves. In a moment, the story of the university of north carolinas