Did you know not all Okies are from Oklahoma? And not all Okies migrated west during the Great Depression. I'm an Okie. A Sooner. An Oklahoman, and proud of it. I grew up in the Oklahoma Panhandle. Reckless farming practices in the early decades of the 20th century had stripped the region of the grasslands which once protected the soil. Without moisture or cover crops, never-ending windstorms whipped across the prairie to create the ecological disaster of the Dust Bowl. John Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath, made the term a nationwide epithet. Set in the Great Depression of the 1930s, the story focuses on a family migrating from Oklahoma to California to escape the hardships of the severe drought that withered the Great Plains during the Depression. A celebrated Hollywood film version, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford, was made in 1940. Both the novel and the film have become iconic portrayals of the challenges endured by Oklahomans during the Great Depression.
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