LANE — Faith James of Lane was a young girl who lived near Liberal and she remembers Black Sunday, which occurred 75 years ago today. James and her husband Albert lived during the “Dirty Thirties” when giant dust storms blasted the Great Plains during the Great Depression. Her mother grabbed a box camera and took what is considered a classic the onrushing storm – a photo husband Albert James calls his wife’s “dirty picture.” ““It was rolling in, and I mean just was that, it looked like it was billowing in and rolling in from the northeast,” Faith James recalled. Albert James remembers that a ceiling loaded with the dirt fell and narrowly missed his brother during the dust storm. Black Sunday and the dust storms of the Great Depression rank as one of the worst natural catastrophes in American history. The Kansas Senate recently passed a resolution commemorating the 75th anniversary of Black Sunday. James said she agrees with those historians. It ruined farms and the dust storms sickened and killed people who endured them. James has her own momento of the Dust Bowl, the bottom of her lungs still contain the some of the sand and dirt she breathed during those years – she said she was mistakenly diagnosed with tuberculosis because of the dust created a false positive.
Wednesday, April 14, 2:30 p.m.
