On This Day 90 Years Ago, the Sky Went Black. Today Marks the 90th Anniversary of Black Sunday, April 14, 1935.
- Jann Alexander
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
When the Biggest, Baddest, Blackest Dust Storm of Them All Struck the Texas Panhandle 90 Years Ago Today, It Set the Stage for the Opening of My Historical Novel, Unspoken (A Dust Novel), on Black Sunday.
That Sunday, April 14, 1935, would forever be known as Black Sunday. But it began quite differently, as the main character, Ruby Lee Becker, recalls at the outset of Unspoken:
"That Sunday in April 1935 in the Panhandle was an uncommon bright day which didn’t reflect our family’s desperation. What little breeze there was blew gentle, unlike the stinging winds we were accustomed to. The spring air was so clean you could almost inhale it deep without coughing up dirt. The sun was golden and hopeful. Our families who’d been farming this desert during the five long years of the drouth were well acquainted with hope, though it was a currency our town’s shuttered bank no longer accepted."
But the black blizzard on Sunday, April 14, 1935 was the most notable of perhaps hundreds over the decade that had already prompted mass migration from the Plains states. It became known as Black Sunday — because it was a rolling mass of tumbling black soil, hundreds of feet high, that blackened the sun, suffocated entire towns, and struck elders and children alike with the "brown plague"— the deadly dust pneumonia.
Dig deeper into the causes: How The Dust Bowl era resulted in the worst ecological disaster in U.S. history.
The spot where Unspoken is set, a mythical town called Hartless, is in the Texas Panhandle, and considered the epicenter of the Dust Bowl. The sudden drama of that bright clear day in 1935 inspired my story of scattered family, their lost mother, and the abandoned daughter who'll stop at nothing to remake family and rebuild home.
Want to read an excerpt from Unspoken? Subscribe HERE to download a chapter.
Woody Guthrie, the balladeer of the Dust Bowl, wrote the anthem of the Dust Bowl, called Dusty Old Dust, so we'd never forget. Today we know it as So Long, It's Been Good to Know Ya.
Like Ruby Lee Becker in Unspoken, Guthrie had lived in the Texas Panhandle, and had himself been consumed by the devastating Black Sunday dust blizzard on April 14, 1935. And like thousands across the High Plains, Ruby Lee Becker's family was no stranger to the "brown plague"— the deadly dust pneumonia.
Ruby Lee describes the scene on Black Sunday in their new church as the black blizzard descended upon their small town, Hartless:
"The sky was thick with birds, flying fast and hard. The few which landed inside by accident were squawking and slamming the walls to find their way back out, and the ladies they flew into screeched as loud as the birds did. The disruption was turning to panic as the daylight became the darkening so familiar and fearful—a rolling wall of dark dirt tumbling and climbing and tumbling and rising, wave after wave, chasing the birds, aiming right at us."
Later, when she's wheezing and gasping for a breath, Ruby Lee notes, "This brown plague, was different. Nobody knew how you could fix air that wasn’t fit to breathe."
Subscribe HERE to read a chapter from Unspoken.
Want to hear more about Unspoken from author Jann Alexander? Watch this interview with Karen E. Osborne on her show, What Are You Reading, What Are You Writing?
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