Why Did So Many Families Live in Their Cars During the Great Depression?

Families living in cars during the Great Depression weren't blown out by the dust. Tom Higginbotham told the government the truth, and it put eight of them in one Model A. ☕ Enjoying these stories? You can support the channel here: https://buymeacoffee.com/thenickleys In December 1937, an eastern Oklahoma cotton renter named Tom Higginbotham packed his family into a little 1929 Model A roadster with forty-some dollars. For almost three years, everything they owned rode in that car: tourist cabins on Route 66, a twelve-by-fourteen tent for eight in an Arizona cotton camp, a smallpox quarantine, the California state line, and the government camps where, as Tom said, everything was just kept clean. You hear Tom tell it himself, in his own voice, recorded in a California farm camp in 1940, and in his sworn testimony to Congress. Why the car? A few years before the crash, researchers in Muncie, Indiana, found families who had a car out front and no bathtub inside. For a family that rented its farm, the car was the one big thing they truly owned, and the only home that could follow the work. Part of our series The Great Depression at Home. Did your family ever live out of a car, a trailer or a tent in those years? Where were they headed, and where did they finally stop? Tell us in the comments. We read every one. CHAPTERS 0:00 Eight People, One Model A 1:00 Everything Except the Mortgage 4:37 A Car Out Front 7:59 Route Sixty-Six 10:07 A Tent for Eight 12:57 The Bug Inspectors 16:25 Home People 19:30 Twenty-Five Cents for Ice Cream 22:31 Any Vehicle SOURCES U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee to Investigate the Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens (the Tolan Committee), Hearings, 1940: Part 5 (Oklahoma City), Part 6 (San Francisco) and Part 7 (Los Angeles). Testimony of Tom Higginbotham and family (Sept. 28, 1940), Thomas Derryberry, Marvin Montgomery, Robert Norris; the California State Chamber of Commerce migrant report; Carey McWilliams; Varden Fuller. Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin, field notes and recordings, 1940-1941, "Voices from the Dust Bowl," American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown (1929) and Middletown in Transition (1937). James N. Gregory, American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (1989), and "The Dust Bowl Migration," University of Washington. Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160 (1941). City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, 603 U.S. ___ (2024). Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information photograph captions (Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, John Vachon), Library of Congress. Federal Highway Administration, Highway Statistics Summary to 1995 (car registrations). Today's prices: BLS CPI-U. CREDITS Real voices: Tom Higginbotham (Aug. 18, 1940) and Sherman Loop (Aug. 30, 1941), recorded by Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin, Todd and Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection (AFC 1985/001), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. Photographs: Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information photographs by Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein, John Vachon and Marion Post Wolcott; Todd-Sonkin collection photographs; Library of Congress (public domain). Color home movies: Dr. Charles E. Smith, Kern County, California, 1938, Prelinger Archives (Internet Archive). Archival film: The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936), The River (1937), The Land (1942), U.S. Department of Agriculture films, Prelinger Archives and other public-domain films (Internet Archive). Music: "Lost Time", "Fig Leaf Rag" (Scott Joplin, arr. Kevin MacLeod), "Clear Air", "Windswept", "Disquiet", "Americana" and "Simple Duet" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... "Amberlight" and "Resolutions" by Scott Buckley (scottbuckley.com.au), CC BY 4.0. Additional music, film and sound: Storyblocks. Period recordings: "The Waltz of Long Ago" (1923) and "Good Night Waltz" (1919), public domain, Internet Archive Great 78 Project. Sound effects: "Rubber seal dabbed on ink pad" by Subhashish Panigrahi, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. "WWS Washboard" by Work With Sounds / Konrad Gutkowski, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. BigSoundBank.com (Joseph Sardin). #AmericanHistory #Nostalgia #GreatDepression