Migrant Mother

Reading Watkins' history of the Depression, I came across this photo, Migrant Mother, by Dorothea Lange.  Working for the Resettlement Administration (RA), Lange took several photos of a mother and her children in a pea pickers' camp in California.  This exposure soon became the defining image of Depression misery.

Migrant Mother, by Dorothea Lange

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection

Dorothea Lange

Florence Owens Thompson and the photo.

Florence and her daughters (l. to r.) Katherine,
Ruby, and Norma, in 1979

The subject, Florence Owens Thompson (1903-83) was 32 years old when she and Lange crossed paths.  In March 1936, as the Thompsons were traveling on California's Highway 101 in search of work, the family's car broke down at a pea pickers' camp at Nipomo Mesa.  Her husband and his sons went to town to get the car fixed, and Florence pitched a tent to shelter the younger children.  It was here that Dorothea Lange, working to document RA activities in California, found her.  Of the six photos Lange took of Florence and her children, Migrant Mother was the best.

Four decades later a newspaper reporter tracked down Florence and identified her from Lange's photo.  The family seemed unhappy with the photograph, because it depicted them in poverty.  Only at the end of Florence's life did they come to appreciate how much their mother's image defined a unique moment in American history.  A reference to Migrant Mother was included on Florence's grave marker.

Florence's headstone at Lakewood Memoria Park in
Hughson, CA, reads: "Migrant Mother — A Legend
of the Strength of American Motherhood."

We think of the Depression as ancient history.  In fact, my father was 14 years old in 1929, and the Depression was the backdrop for his adolescence and young adulthood.  Today many argue that the Depression finally ended with the termination of World War II.  If so, then by just a few months I myself am a child of the Depression.  We stand much closer to this era than we realize, and because our parents shaped us, we carry in us the fruit of their experience in desperate times. •••