Dust and Dreams: Colorized Remembrances of the Great Depression's Harsh Realities
May 2, 2024
A Migrant Child Living in an Oklahoma City Shantytown in 1936
In the 1930s, severe droughts plagued the Great Plains states, causing extensive dust storms and erosion on farming homesteads. As a result, approximately 3 million residents, starving and broke, migrated from parts of affected states – Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas – to seek work in more fertile places such as California.
The Dust Bowl spawned the greatest domestic migration the country had ever seen. Families loaded up their pickup trucks and jalopies with their belongings and set out into an uncertain future. Physical and financial hardship followed in their wake. The country's Great Depression only exacerbated their troubles as they fought to survive.
Photographer Dorothea Lange snapped this photo of a girl who lived in a migrant encampment in Oklahoma City in the mid-1930s. These temporary settlements were also known as “shantytowns,” a term referring to the makeshift nature of the buildings, which were little more than unsightly shacks. Of the many families that ended up in shantytowns during the Great Depression, some were Dust Bowl refugees just passing through while others ended up staying longer.
In the early 1930s, approximately 10 percent of the displaced farm families in Oklahoma lost their land through foreclosure rather than natural disaster. The poor economy, government subsidies for not growing certain crops and big agricultural conglomerates all contributed to this phenomenon. Many who lost their land moved to shantytowns while determining what to do next. Local officials and residents frowned upon shantytown squatters who built patchwork structures on land they didn’t own and lived without power, plumbing and sanitation.
From Dreams to Dust: The Big American Migration
1930 marked the beginning of disaster, ushering in a killing drought on the heels of the productive 1920s. Homesteaders who had staked claims on millions of acres of government land grants on the American prairies had razed the soil-saving grasses to plant cash crops. An extended drought and prairie winds desiccated these farmlands, lifting up gigantic black clouds of loose topsoil, locally known as “black rollers,” and carrying it away, along with their dreams of prosperity.
With no prospects for quick recovery and no resources to buy food or pay off their farm loans, people began leaving. Sickened by blowing dust and weak from starvation, they took to the highways, many heading west toward the rumored land of plenty. Due to the Great Depression, though, which coincided with the horrible Dust Bowl conditions, most migrants faced a daunting struggle to feed their families. They had to fight for the few migrant jobs available to them and learn to live in makeshift one-room shacks that were all they could afford.
Typical Migrant Housing: A Shack on the Edge of a Pea Field
Many Dust Bowl migrants found work harvesting the pea fields of California, which peaked primarily in May. Nearly two-thirds of the 21,000 pea harvesters employed in 1935 were migrant workers. Once the pea harvest was complete, they moved on to harvest the next crop that was ready to pick. The derogatory term “pea picker” originated during the influx of migrant labor from the Dust Bowl, meant to describe uneducated, unskilled workers.
Due to the transitory nature of the work, migrant workers and their families would occupy makeshift housing, such as the shack in this photograph. Cobbled together from scrap wood, cardboard, mud and newspaper, these one-room, temporary dwellings often sheltered families with young children during the harvest season. Typically, they lacked plumbing, electricity and furnishings other than a cooking stove, but they provided penniless migrant families in distress with a place to shelter and sleep, even though the roof might leak.
A Chance Encounter in 1936: Florence Owens Thompson and Dorothea Lange
A fateful meeting between Florence Owens Thompson and government photographer Dorothea Lange produced this iconic photo. Titled “Migrant Mother,” it made Thompson the face of the Dust Bowl era. Surrounded by her young, rag-clad children, the pensive woman stares into the distance, a tortured expression on her careworn face. Behind them, the sodden canvas of their traveling shelter helps convey the hardships they endured during their journey from the Dust Bowl to the fertile California fields.
Fresh from working the beet harvest, the family’s car broke down as they headed to their next job prospect in the lettuce fields. While her partner went for repair parts, Thompson set up the tent for shelter. In the photo, she was just 32 years old and had six children.
Migrant Family on the Move
The family of six in the photograph is typical of Dust Bowl refugees in several ways. Like many of the displaced farmers, their mode of transport is a weathered buckboard and a horse. The father and his sons are dressed in overalls and long-sleeved shirts, typical farming garb of the era.
The mother, with babe in arms, wears a hand-sewn sunbonnet to shield her face from punishing solar rays. The little girl shades herself with a parasol. While the dust of travel and the stress of living rough are plain to see, the faint hints of a smile on each of the parents’ faces suggest a glimmer of hope as well.
Forced off Their Homesteads, Tens of Thousands Flee Devastating Dust Storms
After losing everything due to extended droughts and destructive dust storms, homeless migrant families had few resources necessary for survival. While they were on the road west, they had no choice but to sleep in their vehicles or to camp out, like this family did. When their vehicles broke down or they ran out of gas, they would pitch a temporary shelter like the tent in the photo.
They might use old blankets or clothing to supplement a tarp held up with sticks to create a space sufficient for sheltering. They might repurpose an old washtub brought from home to hold water drawn from a nearby creek. Objects they picked up along their route might serve as seating for meager mealtimes.
Once they arrived in California, they might discover that other migrants had already filled the jobs that were available. While Dust Bowl families waited for a second chance at work when the next crops came in, they would occupy their temporary shelters in informal settlements with other migrant families.
Workers Line up to Collect Their Wages
Migrant farm workers in the 1930s toiled long hours for very little pay. Partially due to the Depression but also because of fierce competition for a limited number of jobs, wages were low. Employers paid by the pound for the produce the workers picked, and a person typically earned about a dollar a day.
When word spread that a field was ready for harvest, pickers would line up in hopes of securing a spot. The experienced would bring old potato sacks or burlap bags to hold the produce they picked.
As the harvest progressed, the company bookkeeper would log in the quantity each person gleaned from the fields in a ledger. Then, on payday, workers lined up to collect their earnings, which for many represented the first full meal they had eaten since their previous payday.
Calipatria Pea Pickers Cooked Their Meals in Giant Tents
The Farm Security Administration was a 1930s-era government agency that documented the plight of Dust Bowl migrants to generate more public support of financial relief for them. Some of its programs included migrant resettlement, the establishment of schools and improving sanitary conditions.
As one of the FSA’s top photographers, Dorothea Lange submitted photos like this one, which showed a large tent where the pea pickers of Calipatria, CA could prepare and eat their meals. The tent housed a cook stove for meal preparation and seating for families. Photos like these would eventually make their way to the Library of Congress, where they remain as testament to a dark era of American history.
1940 - Faro and Doris Candill of Pie Town, New Mexico, a Dust Bowl Settlement
A town that consisted of around 400 families in 1940 when this photo was taken, Pie Town was home mostly to migrants from the Dust Bowl era. Long before the Great Depression, one of the first settlers sold pies at his General Store, and later, the locals started calling the settlement Pie Town. The name stuck.
A very isolated community, Pie Town was 180 miles from the nearest city, Albuquerque. The lack of nearby medical care meant women had their babies at home. In 1940, FSA photographer Russell Lee arrived on the scene to document the small community, offering rare insight into the poor yet sometimes fulfilling lives of those who lived there.
Doris Candill, pictured, was one of the people Lee featured in his photos of Pie Town. As a result, she later became the subject of a biography by Joan Myers entitled “Pie Town Woman.”
Pie Town 1940 - Jack Whinery and His Young Family in Their Sunday Best
The Jack Whinery family of seven also lived in Pie Town in 1940. The photo shows them dressed their best, which is a significant departure from earlier photos of Dust Bowl migrants. Taken at the tail end of the Great Depression, the family appears to be stable, clean and healthy.
Jack Whinery’s family photo represented a country that was beginning to recover from the hard times of the previous decade. Although their living conditions in a dugout home were rudimentary and their community isolated, they seem confident of a better future ahead.
