Tom Dunkel

Bismarck car dealer Neil Churchill built his dream semipro baseball team at the worst possible time in terms of financial viability. He paid players out of his own pocket and they performed superbly...but the team had difficulty drawing steady crowds large enough to cover Churchill's cash outlay.

Many families strained to make ends  Read More 

Some say North Dakota has yet to fully recover from the Depression. The state population at the time of the 1930 Census was 680,000. The 2010 Census count was 672,591.

Some 6 percent of the state's residents fled during the Depression. From April 1935 to December 1936 the short-lived federal Resettlement Administration provided grants to farm families eager to pull up  Read More 

Symbolizing of the collapse of agricultural life in North Dakota, a farmer sits inside his empty barn near the town of Beach during the broiling summer of 1936.

photo by Arthur Rothstein courtesy of the Library of Congress

Emma Knoll's farm in Grand County, North Dakota, dying of thirst because of the lack of rain and picked clean by grasshoppers. Photographed by Arthur Rothstein in July 1936.

photo courtesy of the Library of Congress

Color Blind takes place in Depression-battered North Dakota, which makes the building of Neil Churchill's semipro baseball team all the more remarkable. The state got beaten to its knees by drought, farm foreclosures, and a multi-year invasion of grasshoppers.

Arthur Rothstein, who later became director  Read More