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Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother depicts Florence Owens Thompson, a mother of seven children and migrant worker, in March 1936. Lange's photograph was instrumental in raising awareness about the conditions faced by migrant workers. [1] A pea-picker is a derogatory reference to poor, migrant workers during the Great Depression.
Published daily from October 5 to 12, 1936, Steinbeck explores and explains the hardships and triumphs of American migrant workers during the Great Depression, tracing their paths and the stories of their lives and travels from one crop harvest to the next crop harvest as they eked out a stark existence as temporary farmhands.
The photo captures the plight of migrant farm workers who arrived in California en masse looking for employment during the Great Depression. Initially anonymous, the woman in the photo was identified as Florence Owens Thompson in 1978, following the work of a journalist for the California-based newspaper The Modesto Bee .
Florence Owens Thompson (born Florence Leona Christie; September 1, 1903 – September 16, 1983) was an American woman who was the subject of Dorothea Lange's photograph Migrant Mother (1936), considered an iconic image of the Great Depression. The Library of Congress titled the image: "Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children.
In the midwest and southwest, drought and dust storms added to the economic havoc. During the decade of the 1930s, some 300,000 men, women, and children migrated west to California, hoping to find work. Broadly, these migrant families were called by the opprobrium "Okies" (as from Oklahoma) regardless of where they came from. They traveled in ...
Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace (left) with Will W. Alexander, appointed to head the Resettlement Administration (December 22, 1936). The main focus of the RA was to build relief camps in California for migratory workers, especially refugees from the drought-struck Dust Bowl of the Southwest. [4]
Sometimes, accidents or injuries prevent migrant workers from making enough to send money that can accumulate as wealth. In some households, remittance money is “spent on something without any ...
Migrant workers often have poorer health and shorter life expectancy relative to the general population. Migrant workers are often undocumented, making it much harder for them to seek protections under the labor laws of the country they are in. Many employers take advantage of this fact and create dangerous working conditions.