Dust storms born in Texas and the Dakotas darkened skies all the way East to Washington. Prices of wheat and corn and cotton fell so low, the crops were left to rot in the fields. In Boston, children with cardboard soles in their shoes walked to school past silent shoe factories with padlocks on the doors. In New York, a jobless couple moved into a cave in Central Park and stayed there for a year. They could find nowhere else to live.
Hard times hit black America hardest.
In some northern cities, six out of 10 African-American workers lost their jobs. Poor southern migrants continued to come north, crowding into neighborhoods already packed with people, competing for the fast-dwindling number of jobs. Black businesses failed, crushing the entrepreneurial spirit that had been an essential element of the Negro Renaissance. But the people of Harlem endured. The music business came close to collapsing.