The story of the Dust Bowl which hit the Great Plains in the 1930s is gripping and powerful and a testimony to the resilience of a people who would not give up in spite of brutal weather which sapped life from humans and animals alike.

But what gripped me in a painful way was that even in the midst of such despair, misery and suffering, people had the time and the will to be racist.

The dust storms that plagued the Great Plains lasted for five years. They were caused by farmers’ ruination of the soil, a soil that was never meant to be farmed. American Indians had raised bison on the soil but had been run off and the bison killed. The land was known for its brutal summers and winters and harsh winds, but there was a spell where the weather moderated some.

Farmers began to grow wheat, plowing and digging up a very special kind of grass which had kept the land intact for thousands of years. When they got through, they had wheat, sure enough, but the land had been ruined. The topsoil had nothing to hold it in place anymore and when the winds came, horrible dust storms caused enormous pain and destruction.

In the book “The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan, the story is graphically told, including this vignette of how two black men had the unfortunate luck to be on a train which stopped in Dalhart, Texas, which had been hard hit by the storms.
 

The people were suffering; they were sick and broke. Farms were gone; livestock were dead and/or dying …but in spite of that, the American illness of racism prevailed. At the edge of Dalhart, Egan writes, there was a sign which said  “Black man, don’t let the sun go down on you here.”

These two black men, unnamed in the book, didn’t know that. When the train stopped in Dalhart, unable to proceed because the mounds of dust blocked the tracks, they got off the train, hoping to find food and water.

They were arrested. The headlines of the local Dalhart newspaper read, “Two Negroes Arrested.”  These young men, one 19 years old and the other 23, had done nothing except look for food and water. They were arrested and locked up in the county jail.  At their arraignment, Justice of the Peace Hugh Edwards ordered them to dance.

“Tap dance,” Edwards said to them.

After some hesitation, they did just that, hoping to be freed. No such luck. After they danced, Edwards banged his gavel and sentenced them to two months in jail.

After three months, they were brought back to the courthouse for trial. The railroad agent told the judge that he had found the two men looking for food, water and blankets after the train on which they were riding had had to stop.
The men admitted to the same and were found guilty of criminal trespassing. He sentenced them to another 120 days in jail …but first, he needed them do something…

“Dance,” he said.