Black Sunday

Floor Speech

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Mr. LUCAS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor and remember the 91st anniversary of a solemn day for the people of Oklahoma: Black Sunday.

While perhaps there are not many Americans who know about that consequential Sunday on April 14, 1935, I want to take a few minutes to tell you about it, Mr. Speaker, based on what my ancestors told me and the hardships that came from that day.

I still remember my grandfather, Fred Lucas, telling me and my cousins about Black Sunday. You see, Mr. Speaker, in Crawford, Oklahoma, on Sunday afternoon in those days in the 1930s, they would have a community baseball game which would last after church through the afternoon and into the early evening hours.

My grandfather described that particular Sunday because they had just finished a multi-night hellfire and brimstone revival, and the community was very fired up about the things going on in the world and their responsibilities. Remember, this is 1935. It was tough times, but if a community could afford a bat, a ball, and at least a glove for the catcher, they could play baseball, the American pastime.

My grandfather described that afternoon. In the course of the baseball game, this giant, dark cloud appeared in the northwest sky. It rolled in, and the closer it got, literally, it was a miles-tall cold front full of nothing but dust.

Finally, someone in the crowd said: Oh, my goodness, we have not repented. We have not followed the advice, and the Lord is going to take action against us.

The entire community scattered. They may have misgauged 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. 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 conservation disasters of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

It was so bad that it brought it to the attention of my colleagues, our predecessors here in Congress, that not just were the Great Plains suffering, but so was the rest of the country.

The House Agriculture Committee, the United States House, and the United States Senate took action. Thirteen days later, on April 27, 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.

That great ecological tragedy was based on years and decades of bad decisions. In 1935, Congress chose to address that and began the process that we now think of as the NRCS, the EQIP programs, all the things to protect the soil, the water, and the air quality in this great Nation. It was an accomplishment.

Mr. Speaker, when I was sent by my neighbors to represent them in the United States Congress to serve on that very same Ag Committee, I was very focused on making sure that the mistakes that had gone back almost a century would not be repeated and that we would do better going forward. Every farm bill that we passed since I have been here, we have strengthened those provisions in the conservation title. It is why we have not had a Black Sunday again on the Great Plains of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, we have to remember the ominous things in our past, not just the good. Black Sunday was an ominous event that reflected decades of bad policy, but it started the process of correcting that.

I am proud of the conservation accomplishments we have made. I am proud that my children, my grandchildren, and I have never seen something like my grandfather, Fred Lucas, described.

Let's stay at the forefront of conservation. Let's continue to protect our water, our soil, our air; and let's move this country forward.

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