This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land


Dust Bowl Folk singer and songwriter Woody Gurthrie (1912–67), born on this day in Okemah, Oklahoma, painted scenes of American life with his music.

Many of Guthrie's songs addressed the hardships of the Depression and the Dust Bowl that he experienced first hand. Woody Guthrie wrote these lyrics from "The Great Dust Storm (Dust Storm Disaster)" in the 1930s.

"On the 14th day of April of 1935
There struck the worst of dust storms that ever filled the sky.
You could see the storm a comin', the cloud looked deathlike black,
And through our mighty nation, it left a dreadful track.…

The storm took place at sundown, it lasted through the night,
When we looked out next morning, we saw a terrible sight.
We saw outside our window where the wheat fields they had grown
Was now a rippling ocean of dust the wind had blown.

It covered up our fences, it covered up our barns,
It covered up our tractors in this wild and dusty storm.
We loaded our jalopies and piled our families in,
We rattled down that highway to never come back again."

Artist Alexandre Hogue's painting Dust Bowl from 1933 tells the same sad story.

Source: Lyrics as recorded by Woody Guthrie, RCA Studios, Camden, NJ, 26 April 1940. Transcribed by Manfred Helfert. Copyright 1960, Ludlow Music, Inc., New York, NY.

Pictured: Alexandre Hogue, 1898–1994, Dust Bowl, 1933, oil, 24 x 33 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of International Business Machines Corporation.