More commonly known as "Black Tuesday," October 29, 1929 was the last of four so-called "black" days which ushered in the Great Depression. In fact, the stock market collapse in the U.S. for at least one month after Black Tuesday. Eventually, the Great Depression grew into a worldwide financial calamity that lasted, by most conventional accounts, until the end of World War II.

By 1933, the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) was cut in half. The Depression caused many farmers to lose their farms. At the same time, years of erosion and a drought created the “Dust Bowl” in the Midwest, where no crops could grow. Many traveled to California to find work, a subject written about by John Steinbeck in "The Grapes of Wrath."

Many others ended up living as “hobos” or in “Hoovervilles”, make-shift homeless encampments named after then-President Herbert Hoover. During the 1928 Presidential campaign, Hoover campaigned on a number of slogans, one of which was "Vote for Pros