WASHINGTON, D.C. (RFD News) — This week marks the 91st anniversary of Black Sunday, one of the most devastating dust storms in American history. Oklahoma Congressman Frank Lucas spoke on the House floor about the storm’s widespread impact, which stretched far beyond the Southern Plains.
“Well, they may have missed gauge the dust storm, but the dust was so bad that literally for the next few days, the skies were dark. The sun was clouded, and everyone stayed in to avoid that. Now that dust storm did not just come across Oklahoma. It came across the entire plains,” Lucas continued. “It worked its way across North America, and it made it all the way to Washington, D.C., where ironically, that next week, the House Agriculture Committee was in meetings to discuss how to address the conference, conservation disasters, the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.”
Lucas says the disaster helped push Congress to take action, eventually leading to the creation of federal soil conservation programs still in place today.
“And the House Agriculture Committee, the United States House, the United States Senate took action 14, 13 days later on April 27th. They passed the act, and it was signed into law by the president that created the Soil Conservation Service. What we now refer to as the NRCS,” Lucas said. “You see that great ecological tragedy was based on years and decades of bad decisions. And in 1935, Congress chose to address that and began the process that we now think of as the NRCS and the EQIP programs. All the things to protect the soil, the water, the air quality in this great nation.”
Lucas says those efforts have helped ensure events like Black Sunday are not repeated on the same scale.
