1. BANNED BOOKS
http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-steinbeck-censorship-attempt-idaho-20150602-story.html
John Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men' survives censorship attempt in Idaho
By Michael Schaub
June 2, 2015
John Steinbeck's classic 1937 novella "Of Mice and Men" won't be banned from Coeur
d'Alene, Idaho, classrooms after all. The city's school board voted Monday to keep the book
as part of the ninth-grade school curriculum, disappointing community members who
wanted it restricted to "voluntary, small-group discussion," reports the Spokesman-Review of
Spokane, Wash.
The vote to preserve the book was 4 to 1. School board trustee Tom Hearn praised the
decision, saying: "We need to trust the judgment of our English teachers to use this book
wisely, as we have since 2002."
The book was challenged last month by community members, including Mary Jo Finney,
who said the novella "is neither a quality story nor a page turner." She and others objected to
profanity in the book, including "bastard" and "God damn," and found the novella, set in
California during the Great Depression, too "negative" and "dark."
Finney addressed the board before the vote, saying: "It has been 10 long years that I have
worked to get this district to be more accountable to parents with safeguards and
standards, and now I would suggest that parents pull their children from [School District] 271,
or better yet, never put them in."
The Boise Weekly reports that Finney alleges she has been the target of harassment because
of her attempts to remove "Of Mice and Men" from the high school curriculum. "At this point,
I have to be cautious answering my phone, opening my front door, and I receive emails from
strangers," she told board members. "This is bullying mentality at its highest level. It is shocking
that there is such outrage because a person is outspokenly conservative."
Some parents objected to Steinbeck's use of the N-word in the book, but one Coeur d'Alene
English teacher wasn't convinced that was a reason to remove it. According to Boise State
Public Radio, Brianna Cline told school board members that "casual use of the N-word
among white high schoolers is significantly more destructive than controlled exposure
followed by an intellectual conversation in a healthy classroom environment."
"Of Mice and Men" is widely considered one of the best books by Steinbeck, who won the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. It's also one of the most frequently challenged books in U.S.
schools, according to the American Library Assn.
2. JOHN STEINBECK
http://www.famousauthors.org/john-steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. born in Salinas, California on February 27, 1902 came from a middle
class family of German and Irish descent. He attended Stanford University but left without
graduating. He went to New York in 1925 trying to establish himself as a writer. However, he
decided on returning to California after the unsuccessful attempt. On and off while writing,
Steinbeck worked as a manual laborer (worker) to support his expenses. During this time he
realized the difficulties and bitterness of the Great Depression faced by the migratory
working class.
Steinbeck’s initial novels, Cup of Gold (1929), The Pastures of Heaven (1932) and To a God
Unknown (1933) did not bring him much success. However, Tortilla Flat (1935) gave Steinbeck
a first taste of recognition and popularity by winning the California Commonwealth Club’s
Gold Medal. The novel, with a hint of humor is a story revolving around a group of Mexican
Americans. Tortilla Flat was followed by In Dubious Battle (1936), a story about a strike by
agricultural laborers. Next to be published was the Novella, Of Mice and Men (1937) also
adapted to film and play versions, the novel shares the story of a complicated relationship
between two migrant workers.
In 1939, John Steinbeck published his most critically celebrated novel, The Grapes of Wrath.
A bestseller, the book won Steinbeck the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and was released as a film in
the same year. In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck wrote the story of a tenant farming family,
cast out from Oklahoma, that goes to California in hopes of making a living while working as
migratory workers. The story is a portrayal of the harsh agricultural economic system.
In 1941, Steinbeck worked together with freelance marine biologist Edward F. Ricketts to
publish Sea of Cortez which contained information gathered during Steinbeck’s trip to the
Gulf of California with Ricketts in 1940. During the course of World War II, Steinbeck served as
a war correspondent and also wrote about Norway under the Nazi regime in his book, The
Moon Is Down (1942). Some of Steinbeck’s post-war works include Cannery Row (1945), The
Pearl (1947), and The Wayward Bus (1947).
Although The Grapes of Wrath remains Steinbeck’s most famous novel, some of his other
noted efforts include Burning Bright (1950), East of Eden (1952), The Winter of Our Discontent
(1961), and Travels with Charley (1962).
In 1962, Steinbeck was awarded The Noble Prize for his realistic and imaginative writing
which carried sympathetic humor and a keen social awareness. Two years later, he was
presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon B. Johnson. John
Steinbeck died in New York on December 20, 1968.
3. MIGRANT WORKERS
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/dustbowl-mass-exodus-plains/
When the drought and dust storms showed no signs of letting up, many people abandoned
their land. Others would have stayed but were forced out when they lost their land in bank
foreclosures. All in all, one-quarter of the population left, packing everything they owned into
their cars and trucks, and headed west toward California. Although overall three out of four
farmers stayed on their land, the mass exodus emptied the population drastically in certain
areas. In the rural area outside Boise City, Oklahoma, the population dropped 40% with 1,642
small farmers and their families pulling up stakes.
The Dust Bowl exodus was the largest migration in American history. By 1940, 2.5 million
people had moved out of the Plains states; of those, 200,000 moved to California. When they
reached the border, they did not receive a warm welcome. The Los Angeles police chief
went so far as to send 125 policemen to act as bouncers at the state border, turning away
“undesirables”. These policemen were called “the bum brigade” by the media, and their
actions were publicly criticized.
Arriving in California, the migrants were faced with a life almost as difficult as the one they
had left. Many California farms were corporate-owned. They were larger and more
modernized than those of the southern plains, and the crops were unfamiliar. The rolling fields
of wheat were replaced by crops of fruit, nuts and vegetables. Some 40 percent of migrant
farmers wound up in the San Joaquin Valley, picking grapes and cotton. Life for migrant
workers was hard. They were paid by the quantity of fruit and cotton picked with earnings
ranging from seventy-five cents to $1.25 a day. Out of that, they had to pay twenty-five
cents a day to rent a tar-paper shack with no floor or plumbing. In larger ranches, they often
had to buy their groceries from a high-priced company store.
As roadside camps of poverty-stricken migrants increased, growers pressured sheriffs to
break them up. Groups of vigilantes beat up migrants, accusing them of being Communists,
and burned their shacks to the ground. To help the migrants, Roosevelt’s Farm Security
Administration built 13 camps, each temporarily housing 300 families in tents built on wooden
platforms. The camps were self-governing communities, and families had to work for their
room and board.
When migrants reached California and found that most of the farmland was tied up in large
corporate farms, many gave up farming. They set up residence near larger cities in
shacktowns called Little Oklahomas or Okievilles on open lots local landowners divided into
tiny subplots and sold cheaply for $5 down and $3 in monthly installments. They built their
houses from scavenged scraps, and they lived without plumbing and electricity. Polluted
water and a lack of trash and waste facilities led to outbreaks of typhoid, malaria, smallpox
and tuberculosis.
Over the years, they replaced their shacks with real houses, sending their children to local
schools and becoming part of the communities; but they continued to face discrimination
when looking for work, and they were called “Okies” and “Arkies” by the locals regardless of
where they came from.
4. THE GREAT DEPRESSION
http://www.history.com/topics/great-depression
THE GREAT DEPRESSION BEGINS: THE STOCK MARKET CRASH OF 1929
The American economy entered an ordinary recession during the summer of 1929, as
consumer spending dropped and unsold goods began to pile up, slowing production. At the
same time, stock prices continued to rise, and by the fall of that year had reached levels
that could not be justified by anticipated future earnings. On October 24, 1929, the stock
market bubble finally burst, as investors began dumping shares en masse. A record 12.9
million shares were traded that day, known as “Black Thursday.” Five days later, on “Black
Tuesday” some 16 million shares were traded after another wave of panic swept Wall Street.
Millions of shares ended up worthless, and those investors who had bought stocks “on
margin” (with borrowed money) were wiped out completely.
As consumer confidence vanished in the wake of the stock market crash, the downturn in
spending and investment led factories and other businesses to slow down production and
construction and begin firing their workers. For those who were lucky enough to remain
employed, wages fell and buying power decreased. Many Americans forced to buy on
credit fell into debt, and the number of foreclosures and repossessions climbed steadily. The
adherence to the gold standard, which joined countries around the world in a fixed
currency exchange, helped spread the Depression from the United States throughout the
world, especially in Europe.
THE GREAT DEPRESSION DEEPENS: BANK RUNS AND THE HOOVER ADMINISTRATION
Despite assurances from President Herbert Hoover and other leaders that the crisis would run
its course, matters continued to get worse over the next three years. By 1930, 4 million
Americans looking for work could not find it; that number had risen to 6 million in 1931.
Meanwhile, the country’s industrial production had dropped by half. Bread lines, soup
kitchens and rising numbers of homeless people became more and more common in
America’s towns and cities. Farmers (who had been struggling with their own economic
depression for much of the 1920s due to drought and falling food prices) couldn’t afford to
harvest their crops, and were forced to leave them rotting in the fields while people
elsewhere starved.
In the fall of 1930, the first of four waves of banking panics began, as large numbers of
investors lost confidence in the solvency of their banks and demanded deposits in cash,
forcing banks to liquidate loans in order to supplement their insufficient cash reserves on
hand. Bank runs swept the United States again in the spring and fall of 1931 and the fall of
1932, and by early 1933 thousands of banks had closed their doors.
Hoover, a Republican who had formerly served as U.S. secretary of commerce, believed
that government should not directly intervene in the economy, and that it did not have the
responsibility to create jobs or provide economic relief for its citizens. In 1932, however, with
the country mired in the depths of the Great Depression and some 13-15 million people (or
more than 20 percent of the U.S. population at the time) unemployed, Democrat Franklin D.
Roosevelt won an overwhelming victory in the presidential election.
5. HERBERT HOOVER
http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/herbert-hoover
THE GREAT DEPRESSION
In the U.S. presidential election of 1928, Hoover ran as the Republican Party’s nominee.
Promising to bring continued peace and prosperity to the nation, he carried 40 states and
defeated Democratic candidate Alfred E. Smith (1873-1944), the governor of New York, by a
record margin of 444-87 electoral votes. “I have no fears for the future of our country,”
Hoover declared in his inaugural address. “It is bright with hope.”
On October 24, 1929–only seven months after Hoover took office–a precipitous drop in the
value of the U.S. stock market sent the economy spiraling downward and signaled the start
of the Great Depression. Banks and businesses failed across the country. Nationwide
unemployment rates rose from 3 percent in 1929 to 23 percent in 1932. Millions of Americans
lost their jobs, homes and savings. Many people were forced to wait in bread lines for food
and to live in squalid shantytowns known derisively as Hoovervilles.
Hoover undertook various measures designed to stimulate the economy, and a few of the
programs he introduced became key components of later relief efforts. However, Hoover’s
response to the crisis was constrained by his conservative political philosophy. He believed in
a limited role for government and worried that excessive federal intervention posed a threat
to capitalism and individualism. He felt that assistance should be handled on a local,
voluntary basis. Accordingly, Hoover vetoed (banned) several bills that would have provided
direct relief to struggling Americans. “Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the public
Treasury,” he explained in his 1930 State of the Union address.
POST-PRESIDENTIAL YEARS
The Depression worsened throughout Hoover’s term in office, and critics increasingly
portrayed him as indifferent to the suffering of the American people. By the time of the 1932
presidential election, Hoover had become a deeply unpopular–even reviled–figure across
much of the country. Carrying only six states, he was soundly defeated by Democratic
candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt, the governor of New York, who promised to enact a slate of
progressive reforms and economic relief programs that he described as a New Deal for the
American people.
After leaving office, Hoover emerged as a prominent critic of Roosevelt’s New Deal
programs. He wrote articles and books outlining his conservative political views and warning
about the dangers of investing too much power in the federal government. By the time
Hoover died at age 90 on October 20, 1964, in New York City, assessments of his legacy had
grown more favorable. Noting that after Hoover left the White House, the Great Depression
continued for eight more years despite Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, some historians
have argued for a more sympathetic appraisal of Hoover’s presidency.
6. HOOVERVILLES
http://www.history.com/topics/hoovervilles
THE RISE OF HOOVERVILLES
As the Depression worsened and millions of urban and rural families lost their jobs and
depleted their savings, they also lost their homes. Desperate for shelter, homeless citizens
built shantytowns in and around cities across the nation. These camps came to be called
Hoovervilles, after the president, Herbert Hoover. Democratic National Committee publicity
director and longtime newspaper reporter Charles Michelson (1868-1948) is credited with
coining the term, which first appeared in print in 1930.
Hooverville shanties were constructed of cardboard, tar paper, glass, lumber, tin and
whatever other materials people could salvage. Unemployed masons used cast-off stone
and bricks and in some cases built structures that stood 20 feet high. Most shanties, however,
were distinctly less glamorous: Cardboard-box homes did not last long, and most dwellings
were in a constant state of being rebuilt. Some homes were not buildings at all, but deep
holes dug in the ground with makeshift roofs laid over them to keep out inclement weather.
Some of the homeless found shelter inside empty conduits and water mains.
LIFE IN A HOOVERVILLE
No two Hoovervilles were quite alike, and the camps varied in population and size. Some
were as small as a few hundred people while others, in bigger metropolitan areas such as
Washington, D.C., and New York City, boasted thousands of inhabitants. St. Louis, Missouri,
was home to one of the country’s largest and longest-standing Hoovervilles.
Whenever possible, Hoovervilles were built near rivers for the convenience of a water source.
For example, in New York City, encampments sprang up along the Hudson and East rivers.
Some Hoovervilles were dotted with vegetable gardens, and some individual shacks
contained furniture a family had managed to carry away upon eviction from their former
home. However, Hoovervilles were typically grim and unsanitary. They posed health risks to
their inhabitants as well as to those living nearby, but there was little that local governments
or health agencies could do. Hooverville residents had nowhere else to go, and public
sympathy, for the most part, was with them. Even when Hoovervilles were raided by order of
parks departments or other authorities, the men who carried out the raids often expressed
regret and guilt for their actions. More often than not, Hoovervilles were tolerated.
Most Hoovervilles operated in an informal, unorganized way, but the bigger ones would
sometimes put forward spokespersons to serve as a liaison between the camp and the larger
community. St. Louis’ Hooverville, built in 1930, had its own unofficial mayor, churches and
social institutions. This Hooverville thrived because it was funded by private donations. It
maintained itself as a free-standing community until 1936, when it was razed.
Although a common factor among Hooverville residents was unemployment, inhabitants
took any work that became available, often laboring at such backbreaking, sporadic jobs
as fruit picking or packing. Writer John Steinbeck (1902-68) featured a family who lived in a
California Hooverville and sought farm work in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Grapes of
Wrath,” which was first published in 1939.
7. FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/fdr-legacy/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/dustbowl-franklin-d-roosevelt/
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to the presidency by a huge majority in 1932, winning all but six
states. The wealthy Democratic governor from New York was a charismatic speaker, able to rally the
public to his cause. His political abilities allowed him to be elected for four terms, an unprecedented
event. Although he had been struck by polio as an adult, Roosevelt refused to give up his political career.
The press corps worked with him to present the image of a president sound in both mind and body,
minimizing his paralysis, to the extent that most of the public was not aware of it at the time. FDR
transformed the presidency and placed the institution at the very center of American life.
When Roosevelt took the oath of office on March 4, 1933, America lay in the depths of the Depression.
Franklin Roosevelt was not the type of man who waited for events to happen. In his inaugural address, he
swore to bring the nation a New Deal, and backed by a soundly Democratic Congress, he took
Washington by storm. Roosevelt created his New Deal programs, addressing poverty, unemployment, and
the floundering economy. Through his reforms, Roosevelt created a new kind of presidency, more
powerful and more intimate than that of his predecessors. Congress allowed him free reign, giving him
executive power to put through his reforms without a quibble during the first 100 days of his presidency.
Roosevelt’s programs paid Americans to do everything from building airport runways to writing local
histories. A man at the time observes, “My mother looks upon the president as someone so immediately
concerned with her problems and difficulties that she would not be greatly surprised were he to come to
her house some evening and stay for dinner.” Although the New Deal had its critics, Roosevelt's programs
left an impression upon America that lasted for decades.
Although the New Deal mitigated American misery, it would take another great tragedy to end the
Depression -- World War II. While America struggled to repair its shattered economy, fascist dictators in
Germany, Italy, and Japan built massive armies and began their quest for world domination. Franklin
Delano Roosevelt would lead America in the fight to defeat fascism and keep democracy alive.
After Japan attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, America declared war
against the Axis. Roosevelt fought the fascists with every weapon he could muster. He spent billions on
arms. He oversaw the invasion of Europe and the bloody battles against the Japanese on the islands of
the Pacific. He led America to a victory over the Nazis and authorized the building of the world's first
atomic bombs, fiendishly destructive weapons that his successor, Harry Truman, would use to finally defeat
Japan. At Yalta in February 1945, Roosevelt met with the Soviet Union's Josef Stalin and Churchill to
negotiate the boundaries of Europe and parts of Asia.
The voters elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt president four times. Only death, it seemed, could remove
him from office. By the time he died of a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945, the nation had, on the
strength of a wartime economic boom, emerged from the Depression. Many of the Americans who
mourned the death of their president would remember him forever as the man who saved their jobs, their
homes, their farms, and their way of life when America stood at the brink of disaster. With his death,
Americans mourned the passing of a President and a friend.
8. THE NEW DEAL
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/dustbowl-new-deal/
In 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected overwhelmingly on a campaign promising a
New Deal for the American people. Roosevelt worked quickly upon his election to deliver
the New Deal, an unprecedented number of reforms addressing the catastrophic effects of
the Great Depression. Unlike his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, who felt that the public should
support the government and not the other way around, Roosevelt felt it was the federal
government’s duty to help the American people weather these bad times.
Together with his “brain trust,” a group of university scholars and liberal theorists, Roosevelt
sought the best course of action for the struggling nation. A desperate Congress gave him
carte blanche and rubber-stamped his proposals in order to expedite the reforms. During the
first 100 days of his presidency, a never-ending stream of bills was passed, to relieve poverty,
reduce unemployment, and speed economic recovery.
His first act as president was to declare a four-day bank holiday, during which time Congress
drafted the Emergency Banking Bill of 1933, which stabilized the banking system and restored
the public’s faith in the banking industry by putting the federal government behind it. Three
months later, he signed the Glass-Steagall Act which created the FDIC, federally insuring
deposits
The Civil Conservation Corps was one of the New Deal’s most successful programs. It
addressed the pressing problem of unemployment by sending 3 million single men from age
17 to 23 to the nations’ forests to work. Living in camps in the forests, the men dug ditches,
built reservoirs and planted trees. The men, all volunteers, were paid $30 a month, with two
thirds being sent home. The Works Progress Administration, Roosevelt’s major work relief
program, would employ more than 8.5 million people to build bridges, roads, public
buildings, parks and airports.
The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) and the National Recovery Administration (NRA)
were designed to address unemployment by regulating the number of hours worked per
week and banning child labor. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), created
in 1933, gave $3 billion to states for work relief programs. The Agricultural Adjustment Act
subsidized farmers for reducing crops and provided loans for farmers facing bankruptcy. The
Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) helped people save their homes from foreclosure.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), built dams and hydroelectric projects to control
flooding and provide electric power to the impoverished Tennessee Valley region of the
South, and the Works Project Administration (WPA), a permanent jobs program that
employed 8.5 million people from 1935 to 1943. After showing early signs of recovery
beginning in the spring of 1933, the economy continued to improve throughout the next
three years.
While they did not end the Depression, the New Deal’s experimental programs helped the
American people immeasurably by taking care of their basic needs and giving them the
dignity of work and hope.