When thinking about the Dust Bowl or Great Depression my mind always goes to the iconic 1936 photo taken by Dorothea Lange titled Migrant Mother. This photo depicts a middle-aged mother and her young children, all dressed in rags, the mother with a look in her eyes that makes you feel her pain and worry. I had always known what this photo looked like, but it wasn’t until recently that I learned the story behind it.
Like many others during this time, this mother of seven was migrating west from her home in Oklahoma where the dust bowl had made life almost impossible. She and so many others traveled to California in hopes of finding a better life. These people were nicknamed “Okies” and when they arrived in California were probably saddened to find that it was not the land, they thought it would be. The Great Depression had taken its toll their too and jobs were not as abundant as they had originally thought.
This made me wonder how the Okie’s much have felt before and after this journey. I wondered if they ever regretting leaving the great plains. I found my answer in the Library of Congress’s Collection of Voices from the Dust Bowl in a two-part interview with a man named Tom Higginbotham. Higginbotham was also an Okie who spoke about his experience both in Oklahoma and California. He spoke about how he left Oklahoma because he didn’t want his family dying of starvation like his livestock. He didn’t exactly want to leave his land but he listen. It seems like Higginbotham and so many others saw life in California as hard but nowhere near as bad as living on the dust covered plains.
My research brought me to think that although life didn’t get much easier the Okies were incredibly grateful for the opportunities they were given in California. Higginbotham himself had said listen. Life was rough in Oklahoma and it wasn’t too much better in California, but these people were so appreciative of the government FSA camps. They were grateful for the opportunity to work hard and try to make life even a little better for their families.
Citations:
1. Dana Cochran et al., “The Great Depression,” Matthew Downs, ed., in The American Yawp, eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).
2. “The Migrant Experience”, Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940 to 1941, Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/collections/todd-and-sonkin-migrant-workers-from-1940-to-1941/articles-and-essays/the-migrant-experience/
3. “Interview about life in Oklahoma and how and why he came to California part 1 of 2”, Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940 to 1941, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/toddbib000198/.
4. “Interview about life in Oklahoma and how and why he came to California part 2 of 2”,Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940 to 1941, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/toddbib000199/.
