Florence Owens Thompson Migrant Mother Dorothea Langes photo

Florence Owens Thompson (Migrant Mother) " "אם נודדת Dorothea Lange's photo

Florence Owens Thompson (born Florence Leona Christie; September 1, 1903 – September 16, 1983) was the subject of Dorothea Lange's famous photo Migrant Mother (1936), an iconic image of the Great Depression. The Library of Congress titled the image: "Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California. "

Florence Owens Thompson was born Florence Leona Christie on September 1, 1903, in Indian Territory, presentday Oklahoma. Both her parents were of Cherokee descent. Her father, Jackson Christie, had abandoned her mother, Mary Jane Cobb, before Florence was born, and her mother remarried Charles Akman (of Choctaw descent) in the spring of 1905. The family lived on a small farm in Indian Territory outside of Tahlequah. Seventeen-year-old Florence married Cleo Owens, a 23 -year-old farmer's son from Stone County, Missouri, on February 14, 1921. They soon had their first daughter, Violet, followed by a second daughter, Viola, and a son, Leroy (Troy). The family migrated west with other Owens relatives to Oroville, California, where they worked in the saw mills and on the farms of the Sacramento Valley. By 1931, Florence was pregnant with her sixth child when her husband Cleo died of tuberculosis. Florence then worked in the fields and in restaurants to support her six children. In 1933 Florence had another child, returned to Oklahoma for a time, and then was joined by her parents as they migrated to Shafter, California, north of Bakersfield. There Florence met Jim Hill, with whom she had three more children. During the 1930 s the family worked as migrant farm workers following the crops in California and at times into Arizona. Florence later recalled periods when she picked 400– 500 pounds (180– 230 kg) of cotton from first daylight until after it was too dark to work. She said: "I worked in hospitals. I tended bar. I cooked. I worked in the fields. I done a little bit of everything to make a living for my kids. “ The family settled in Modesto, California, in 1945. Well after World War II, Florence met and married hospital administrator George Thompson. This marriage brought her far greater financial security than she had previously enjoyed.

Dust Storm Texas 1935

A farmer and his two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936. Iconic photo taken by Arthur Rothstein.

The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930 s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent the aeolian processes (wind erosion) caused the phenomenon. The drought came in three waves, 1934, 1936, and 1939– 1940, but some regions of the High Plains experienced drought conditions for as many as eight years.

Buried machinery in a barn lot; Dallas, South Dakota, May 1936 With insufficient understanding of the ecology of the plains, farmers had conducted extensive deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains during the previous decade; this had displaced the native, deep-rooted grasses that normally trapped soil and moisture even during periods of drought and high winds. The rapid mechanization of farm equipment, especially small gasoline tractors, and widespread use of the combine harvester contributed to farmers' decisions to convert arid grassland (much of which received no more than 10 inches (~250 mm) of precipitation per year) to cultivated cropland. [4] During the drought of the 1930 s, the unanchored soil turned to dust, which the prevailing winds blew away in huge clouds that sometimes blackened the sky. These choking billows of dust – named "black blizzards" or "black rollers" – traveled cross country, reaching as far as the East Coast and striking such cities as New York City and Washington, D. C. On the plains, they often reduced visibility to 3 feet (1 m) or less. Associated Press reporter Robert E. Geiger happened to be in Boise City, Oklahoma, to witness the "Black Sunday" black blizzards of April 14, 1935; Edward Stanley, the Kansas City news editor of the Associated Press, coined the term "Dust Bowl" while rewriting Geiger's news story

While the term "the Dust Bowl" was originally a reference to the geographical area affected by the dust, today it usually refers to the event itself (the term "Dirty Thirties" is also sometimes used). The drought and erosion of the Dust Bowl affected 100, 000 acres (400, 000 km 2) that centered on the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma and touched adjacent sections of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. The Dust Bowl forced tens of thousands of povertystricken families to abandon their farms, unable to pay mortgages or grow crops, and losses reached $25 million per day by 1936 (equivalent to $460, 000 in 2019). Many of these families, who were often known as "Okies" because so many of them came from Oklahoma, migrated to California and other states to find that the Great Depression had rendered economic conditions there little better than those they had left. The Dust Bowl has been the subject of many cultural works, notably the novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck, the folk music of Woody Guthrie, and photographs depicting the conditions of migrants by Dorothea Lange.

Buried machinery in a barn lot; Dallas, South Dakota, May 1936

In 'Last West, ' poet Tess Taylor responds to Dorothea Lange This Dorothea Lange photograph, captioned "Mexican bathing facilities at Japanese ranch camp near Indio, March 3, 1935, " is reproduced from Last West: Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange, Tess Taylor's new collection of poetry written in response to Lange's work—on view now at Mo. MA. One poem ends: Like crooked highrises stacked grape crates gleam In low sun we keep driving: dusk falls & they dim— https: //www. tess-taylor. com/tess-newbooks

Iconic photo On March 6, 1936, after picking beets in the Imperial Valley, Florence and her family were traveling on U. S. Highway 101 towards Watsonville "where they had hoped to find work in the lettuce fields of the Pajaro Valley. “ On the road, the car's timing chain snapped and they coasted to a stop just inside a pea-pickers' camp on Nipomo Mesa. They were shocked to find so many people camping there—as many as 2, 500 to 3, 500. [3] A notice had been sent out for pickers, but the crops had been destroyed by freezing rain, leaving them without work or pay. Years later Florence told an interviewer that when she cooked food for her children that day, other children appeared from the pea pickers' camp asking, "Can I have a bite? " While Jim Hill, her partner, and two of Florence's sons went into town to get the car's damaged radiator repaired, [6] Florence and some of the children set up a temporary camp. As Florence waited, photographer Dorothea Lange, working for the Resettlement Administration, drove up and started taking photos of Florence and her family. She took seven images in the course of ten minutes. Lange's field notes for the Resettlement Administration were typically very thorough, but on this particular day she had been rushing to get home after a month on assignment, and the notes she submitted with this batch of negatives do not refer to any of the seven photographs she took of Thompson and her family. It seems that the published newspaper reports about this camp were later distilled into captions for the series, which explains inaccuracies on the file cards in the Library of Congress.

Lange took seven photos that day, the last being the famous Migrant Mother. These are the five other photos: Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. en : Nipomo, California In the 1930 s, the FSA employed several photographers to document the effects of the Great Depression on Americans. Many of the photographs can also be seen as propaganda images to support the U. S. government's policy distributing support to the worst affected, poorer areas of the country. en : Dorothea Lange's image of a migrant pea picker, en: Florence Owens Thompson, and her family has become an icon of resilience in the face of adversity. Lange actually took six images that day, the last being the famous "Migrant Mother". This is a montage of the other five pictures. Persons in picture (left to right) are: Viola (Pete) in rocker, age 14, standing inside tent; Ruby, age 5; Katherine, age 4, seated on box; Florence, age 32, and infant Norma, age 1 year, being held by Florence. Pete has moved inside the tent, and away from Lange, in hopes her photo can not be taken. Katherine stands next to her mother. Florence is talking to Ruby, who is hiding behind her mother, as Lange took the picture. Florence is nursing Norma. Katherine has moved back from her mother as Lange approached to take this shot. Ruby is still hiding behind her mother. Left to right are Florence, Ruby and baby Norma. Florence stopped nursing Norma and Ruby has come out from behind her. This photograph was the one used by the newspapers the following day to report the story of the migrants. Portrait shows en : Florence Owens Thompson with several of her children in a photograph known as "Migrant Mother".

Tom Collins was the manager of the Kern migrant camp in 1936 when Dorothea Lange took this photograph of him with a migrant mother in the background.

Photo by Dorothea Lange of a migrant family in Kern County. The "new migrant worker" Steinbeck discusses is that who comes with his family. 1936

The Harvest Gypsies is a series of articles by John Steinbeck written on commission for The San Francisco News focusing on the lives and times of migrant workers in California's Central Valley. Published daily from October 5– 12, 1936, Steinbeck delves into the hardships and triumphs of American migrant workers during the Great Depression, tracing their paths and stories from crop to crop as they eked out a stark existence.

Mexicans bound for the Imperial Valley to harvest peas near Bakersfield, California - 1936

‘Migrant mom’ later surprised by massive exposure Second in a three-part series 13 By BRAD AGNEW/ TDP Special Writer Apr 10, 2016 In early March 1936, Florence Christie Owens and her family were traveling from the Imperial Valley of California where they had been picking beets, to Watsonville, where they hoped to find work harvesting lettuce. Near Nipomo, about 50 miles north of Los Angeles on U. S. Highway 101, the family’s old Hudson broke down. They moved the car off the road into a pea-picking camp. Since no work was available there because icy rain had destroyed the crop, Florence and her older daughters set up a temporary camp, while her friend Jim Hill and her two sons went into town to repair the vehicle. Photographer Dorothea Lange, who was just completing a month’s assignment documenting the plight of uprooted Americans on film for the Resettlement Administration, was returning to Berkeley from Los Angeles. Anxious to get home, she drove past the camp sign, but second thoughts compelled her to make a U-turn and drive back. There she saw Florence sitting under an improvised shelter with her children and shot at least six photographs of them. She took pictures of no one else in the camp, returned to her car, and completed the trip home. The encounter took only a few minutes and was remembered differently by both women. Lange’s notes were sketchy: “Nipomo, Calif. Mar. 1936. Migrant agricultural worker’s family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged 32, the father is a native Californian. Destitute in a pea pickers camp, because of the failure of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tent in order to buy food. Most of the 2, 500 people in this camp were destitute. ” In a 1960 article in “Popular Photography, ” Lange said, “I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five [actually at least six] exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. ”

Rainy Day in Camp of Migrant Pea Pickers, Nipomo, California

Years later, Florence claimed Lange promised the photographs would never be published. Her son, Troy Owens, pointed out, “There’s no way we sold our tires, because we didn’t have any to sell. The only ones we had were on the Hudson and we drove off in them. ” Lange insisted she told Florence the pictures would be used to mobilize public support for destitute farm workers. She sent the photographs to the Resettlement Administration in Washington, D. C. , and to the San Francisco News, which ran two of them March 10 to accompany a story headlined, “Ragged, Hungry, Broke, Harvest Workers Live in Squalor. ” The next day, the newspaper featured the “Migrant Mother” image to illustrate a story about New Deal programs to help victims of the Depression. Florence’s son Troy Owens, who had a paper route, recognized his mother in the newspapers he delivered and showed her the picture. “She just looked at it. She didn’t say nothin’, ” he recalled. The image produced a greater reaction among others. Newspapers across the nation reran it, and before the end of the month, federal officials delivered 20, 000 pounds of food to the camp near Nipomo. By that time, Florence and her family, who had left the camp the day Lange took the pictures, had secured work near Watsonville. The photograph produced no change in the family’s circumstances. In a 1979 interview, Florence said, “Me and my kids we lived in tents, and lived in bamboo houses and everything else so I could make a living. I chopped cotton in Firebaugh [a small community in the San Joaquin Valley] down there for 40 cents an acre. I picked cotton. . . for 50 cents a hundred, 40 cents a hundred. I’d hit that cotton field before daylight, and stayed ‘til it got so dark I couldn’t see, and I didn’t even weigh a hundred pounds. I worked in hospitals, I tend bar, I cooked, I worked in the field, so I done a little bit of everything to make a living for my kids. ”

Thompson (seated) with three of her daughters Katherine, Ruby, and Norma, in 1979— 43 years after Migrant Mother

Asked if she ever lost hope, she replied, “Nope, if I’d ever lose hope, I’d never make it. I walked from what they called a Hoover camp ground right there at the bridge [in Bakersfield], I walked from there to way down on First Street, and worked at a Penny a Dish [Restaurant] down there for 50 cents a day and the leftovers. Yeah, they give me what was leftover to take home with me. Sometimes, I’d carry home two water buckets full. ” The family continued to move frequently until after the American entry in World War II. Florence’s youngest daughter, Norma Rydlewski, the infant in the iconic photograph, estimated she had attended 50 schools by the time she reached eighth grade. The war brought a degree of stability to the family, and in 1945, Florence secured a job in a hospital in Modesto, where, she said, “I worked 16 hours out of 24. Eight-and-a-half years, seven days a week. ” Eventually, she wed George B. Thompson, a hospital administrator born in Missouri in 1902. The marriage was supposed to have given her a measure of financial security, but after his death in 1974, her economic situation was adequate to provide the necessities of life, but not to weather adversity that can confront the elderly. The matriarch of her extended family, Florence had earned their love and esteem. Her daughter Norma credited her mother for holding the family together. She said, “My mom was the one who went out and found the work. My mom would talk to the farmers and make the arrangements for us to all go work. She was a very strong lady, and we really relied on that. We knew that when we got up in the morning there was going to be work or there was going to be food and the reason was that my mom was going to see to it that we survived that day. ” Ruby Sprague, Florence’s oldest daughter, said, “If she could have gave us all these material things, maybe she would have, but that I don’t think it would have replaced what she did give us. She gives us all a sense of worth that nobody owes us anything. We have pride you wouldn’t believe. ” Norma said, “My mom would get discouraged, but she really never gave up hope and I think that she left us with that legacy because we have always thought things would get better, but you had to work for it. You just can’t sit down and think that someone’s going to hand you something, and she always told us that and what she did give us was to just keep working, keep plugging away, you’ll finally get there, and that was her theory. ”

In 1983, Florence was diagnosed with cancer. Heart problems contributed to a stroke, which left her speechless and confronted the family with huge medical expenses beyond their means. Her son Troy Owens, who had promised the family would not put her in a nursing home, appealed to the public and established a “Migrant Mother” fund at a local bank. More than 2, 000 small donations poured in, most with notes mentioning the impact the photograph had on the donor. Owens said the response led to a re-appraisal of the photo: “For Mama and us, the photo had always been a bit of curse. After all those letters came in, I think it gave us a sense of pride. ” Daughters Norma Rydlewski and Katherine Mc. Intosh echoed their brother’s sentiment. Florence Leona Christie Owens Thompson died Sept. 16, 1983; under her name on her gravestone, the inscription reads, “Migrant Mother – A Legend of the Strength of American Motherhood. ” That legend did not die with her. In 1998, the U. S. Postal Service used Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” photograph on a 32 -cent stamp in its “Celebrate the Century” series. In thousands of books, articles, and exhibits the Florence Thompson’s image reinforces verbal descriptions of the Great Depressio

Florence Thompson is shown in Oct. 10, 1978, during an interview with Modesto Bee reporter Emmett Corrigan. Acting on a tip, Corrigan found her at Modesto Mobile Village. THE MODESTO BEE https: //www. modbee. com/latest-news/article 3114135. html

A copy of the American Observer Newspaper from 9/20/37 featuring a Dorothea Lange cover photo

Dorothea Lange’s First PPS: http: //www. clarita-efraim. comorothea%20 Lange%20. ppsx We welcome everyone to view more English presentations in our website : http: //www. clarita-efraim. com/PPSCat. aspx? Cat=14&Sub. Cat=42 For English photography presentations in our website, click: http: //www. clarita-efraim. com/PPSCat. aspx? Cat=8&Sub. Cat=14

Sources: https: //www. haaretz. co. il/gallery/art/. premium-MAGAZINE אם נודדת https: //www. tamarshenker. https: //www. exibartstreet. com/news/dorothea-lange https: //www. loc. gov/pictures/resource/fsa. 8 b 29516/ https: //he. wikipedia. 5: Florence_Owens_Thompson http: //100 photos. time. com/photos/dorothea-lange-migrant-mother https: //picryl. com/media/-pickers-camp-canyon-countyhttps: //www. widewalls. ch/dorothea-lange-photos-jeu-de-paume/ https: //www. exibartstreet. com/news/dorothea-lange/ https: //petapixel. com/2019/08/24/a-look-at-migrant-motherhttps: //www. khanacademy. org/humanities/art-1010/ Clarita-Efraim pps: www. clarita-efraim. com chefetze@netvision. net. il June 2020