April 13, 2020 11th Grade US History 1

11th Grade US History

for the week of April 13, 2020 April 13, 2020 11th g11thrade Grade US US History History Distance Learning Enrichment Activities2 Week of April 13, 2020

Migrant Mother Lessons Central Historical Question What does Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” photograph tell us about conditions facing migrant workers during the Great Depression?

Materials: Migrant Mother Photograph Dorothea Lange’s iconic “Migrant Mother” photograph is often used to • Migrant Mother illustrate the toll of the Great Depression, but many neglect to examine PowerPoint the photograph as historical evidence. This lesson asks students to think • Documents A-G carefully about the strengths and weaknesses of the photo as evidence • Guiding Questions of the conditions facing migrant workers during the Great Depression.

Note: This lesson features photographs from the Library of Congress’s collection of Farm Security Administration photographs. More about this collection can be found at https://www.loc.gov/collections/fsa-owi-black-and-white-negatives/about-this-collection/.

Instructions:

1. Introduction. View the Migrant Mother PowerPoint handout to explore with a brief introduction to Lange and her work.

a. Slide 2: The Dust Bowl. The “Dust Bowl” refers to an area of the Southern Plains of the United States struck by severe drought in the 1930s, including parts of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, New Mexico and Colorado. In previous decades, the federal government had given away 160 acre plots of land to encourage settlement and farming in the region. The farmers who settled in the area plowed under the native grasses that had evolved to survive periodic droughts, leaving the soil exposed. When years of drought descended on the area starting in 1931, the dry topsoil was swept up in massive dust storms. Dust drifted like snow, and wind storms left areas of the Midwest covered in inches of dust. Airborne dust was a serious health hazard, even causing death in some cases. The drought and dust storms also destroyed the economy of the region, which was already reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. Tens of thousands of destitute farmers abandoned the region, many moving to California to seek agricultural work.

b. Slide 3: Resettlement Administration. Many of the impoverished Dust Bowl immigrants to California settled in temporary shanty communities. Safety and disease were major concerns in these makeshift encampments. To help poor migrants, the Roosevelt Administration created the Resettlement Administration. Among other things, this New Deal program built dozens of camps to house Dust Bowl migrants in California.

c. Slide 3: Dorothea Lange. The Resettlement Administration was unpopular in many California communities because residents didn’t want “Okies”—a

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disparaging term for the migrants—staying in their towns. To build support for its programs, the Resettlement Administration hired several photographers to take pictures to sway public opinion. Dorothea Lange, who owned a successful photography studio in San Francisco, was one of the photographers hired. Lange travelled up and down the West Coast taking photos of impoverished migrants and the conditions they faced.

d. Slide 4: “Migrant Mother”. Are you familiar with this photograph, where might you have seen it before, and what did you think of it? Lange’s most famous photograph—which later became known as “Migrant Mother”—depicts Florence Owens Thompson and three of her seven children at their makeshift shelter in Nipomo, California. Thompson, who was Cherokee, had moved from Oklahoma to California with her husband in the 1920s, years before the Dust Bowl. Thompson claimed decades later that Lange had promised her that she wouldn’t publish the photo. However, Lange sent it to the Resettlement Administration and to the San Francisco News. The News published the photo in a story about Thompson’s camp. Over time, it became an iconic image, with many citing it as evidence of the terrible conditions facing Americans during the Great Depression.

e. Slide 5: Central Historical Question. Although the photograph is often used as an example of the human effects of the Great Depression, many neglect to think carefully about the photograph as historical evidence. This week, we are going to look closely at this photograph and consider its strengths and weaknesses as evidence of the living conditions facing migrant workers during the Great Depression.

2. Inquiry.

a. Examine the “Migrant Mother” photograph (Document A) and answer the corresponding guiding questions. Consider both the strengths and limitations of the photograph. On the one hand, this is a photograph of a migrant worker and her family in their shelter at the time, which provides evidence of the living conditions that migrants faced in this area of California at the time. It also humanizes the suffering that many faced during the Great Depression. In contrast to high- level statistics detailing the scale of devastation wrought by the Dust Bowl, “Migrant Mother” provides an intimate portrait of one family affected by the disaster. However, Lange was paid to take photographs that would build support for the

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Resettlement Administration, which may have influenced what she decided to capture. You might also wonder if the photograph is posed or candid. Although we can’t say with certainty that the photo was staged, Thompson’s poignant pose, the positioning of the children, and the close- up angle of the photograph raise questions about whether the shot was candid. Finally, you might identify the limitations of any single photograph as evidence of a broad phenomenon.

b. Now examine Document B and answer the guiding questions. Lange’s account suggests that the photograph may not have been completely candid. For example, she says Thompson “seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me,” which could suggest that the photograph was posed to some extent. However, Lange also gives the overall impression that she was unobtrusive and she does not give readers the impression that she intentionally arranged the scene. Although this is a firsthand account of what transpired, Lange had incentive to describe her process in a positive light. The account was also recorded decades after the photograph was taken, and the passage of time may have affected how she remembered the events.

c. Take out Documents C-F and complete the corresponding guiding questions. These photographs provide additional context for the Migrant Mother photograph and reveal more about Thompson’s circumstances in California at the time. Viewed together, the photographs could be used to build a circumstantial argument that Lange may have manipulated the scene for the “Migrant Mother” photograph. The children appear in very different positions in the sequence of photos and the teenage daughter is omitted from some of the photographs. (Some have speculated that Lange omitted the teenage daughter out of concern that viewers might not be as sympathetic to a young mother with a teenage daughter. For example, see James Curtis’s 1986 article in Winterthur Portfolio, “Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, and the Culture of the Great Depression”.) Curtis also posits that the photograph in Document D was a deliberate allusion to the Madonna, which would suggest a high degree of manipulation by Lange to communicate a message through her photographs.

d. Examine Document G and answer the remaining guiding questions. The scene in Document G seems more candid, which provides an interesting contrast to the other photographs and makes it seem more

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likely that the other five photographs were indeed posed. The fact that Lange chose not to send this photograph to the Resettlement Administration could suggest a desire to communicate a message more than capture unvarnished evidence. It could also indicate that Lange believed the Resettlement Administration wanted to receive particular kinds of photographs.

3. Final Reflection. Think about the strengths and weaknesses of “Migrant Mother” as evidence of the past. Based on the limitations of the photograph discussed in the lesson, you may be tempted to disregard the photograph altogether. However, think about the photograph in a balanced and scholarly way, highlighting both the strengths and limitations. For example, if we seek to dismiss “Migrant Mother” as evidence of the consequences of the Dust Bowl entirely because we believe Lange may have posed the photographs, we should think about how the photograph depicts Thompson and her children, who were directly affected by the Dust Bowl. Next, what else does might this photograph be evidence of? Think about historical evidence flexibly. Beyond working conditions facing migrants, what else can this photograph tell us about the past? We might focus on how the photograph might be evidence of how the Resettlement Administration wanted the public to view migrants. We might also reason about how “Migrant Mother”, along with the other photographs from the shoot, could be evidence of Lange’s methods and her own perspective on the migrants. We might also reason about how “Migrant Mother” might be a more useful piece of evidence when corroborated with other photographs from Lange and with other evidence about the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Additional Final Activity: If you have access to a textbook that uses the “Migrant Mother” photograph (or one of Lange’s other Resettlement Administration photographs), examine how the textbook uses the photograph and consider how the authors have framed it as evidence of the past.

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Sources

Document A Lange, Dorothea, photographer. “Destitute Peapickers in California; a 32 Year Old Mother of Seven Children. February 1936.” Photograph. Nipomo, CA, 1936. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017762891/

Document B Lange, Dorothea. “The Assignment I’ll never Forget: Migrant Mother.” Popular Photography 46, no. 2 (1960): 42-43.

Document C Lange, Dorothea, photographer. “Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged thirty-two. Father is native Californian. Nipomo, California.” Photograph. Nipomo, CA, 1936. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017762908/

Document D Lange, Dorothea, photographer. “Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged thirty-two. Father is native Californian. Nipomo, California.” Photograph. Nipomo, CA, 1936. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017762907/

Document E Lange, Dorothea, photographer. “Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven children without food. Mother aged thirty-two. Father is a native Californian. Nipomo, California.” Photograph. Nipomo, CA, 1936. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8b29523/

Document F Lange, Dorothea, photographer. “Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged thirty-two. Father is a native Californian. Destitute in pea picker's camp, Nipomo, California, because of the failure of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tent in order to buy food. Of the twenty-five hundred people in this camp most of them were destitute.” Photograph. Nipomo, CA, 1936. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017762905/

Document G Taylor, Paul. "Migrant Mother: 1936." American West 7, no. 3 (1970): 41-45.

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Migrant Mother April 13, 2020 11th Grade US History 8

Dust Bowl and Resettlement Administration

Dust storm in Amarillo, Texas in 1936 Farm in Oklahoma, 1936

2 April 13, 2020 11th Grade US History 9 Dorothea Lange

Lange with her camera in California (1936) 3 April 13, 2020 11th Grade US History 10 “Migrant Mother”

4 Lange’s famous photograph of Florence Owens Thompson and children in 1936 April 13, 2020 11th Grade US History 11

Central Historical Question What does Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” photograph tell us about conditions facing migrant workers in the Great Depression? April 13, 2020 11th Grade US History 12 Document A

6 April 13, 2020 11th Grade US History 13 Document C

7 April 13, 2020 11th Grade US History 14 Document D

8 April 13, 2020 11th Grade US History 15 Document E

9 April 13, 2020 11th Grade US History 16 Document F

10 April 13, 2020 11th Grade US History 17 Document G

11 April 13, 2020 11th Grade US History 18

Document A

Dorothea Lange took this photograph of Florence Owens Thompson and three of her seven children in Nipomo, California in 1936. Thompson and her husband were migrant laborers, which meant they often moved to find work. Lange had been paid to take photographs of migrant workers by the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal program designed to help impoverished migrants, especially in California where there were large numbers of Dust Bowl refugees. The leaders of the Resettlement Administration hired Lange because they wanted photographs that they could use to raise public support for its programs.

Title: Destitute Peapickers in California; a 32 Year Old Mother of Seven Children. February 1936 Location: Nipomo, California Date: 1936 Photographer: Dorothea Lange

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Document B

The following excerpt is from an article titled “The Assignment I’ll Never Forget” that Lange wrote about taking her famous “Migrant Mother” photograph. It appeared in the magazine Popular Photography in 1960.

I was following instinct, not reason; I drove into that wet and soggy camp and parked my car like a homing pigeon.

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. 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. There was a sort of equality about it.

Vocabulary

homing pigeon: type of bird that can find its way home from hundreds of miles away

exposures: photographs

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Documents C-F are photographs that Lange took just before she captured the famous Migrant Mother shot. She sent each of these photographs to the Resettlement Administration along with the “Migrant Mother” photo.

Document C

Document D

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Document E

Document F

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Document G

This is the first photograph that Lange took of the family as she arrived on the scene. Lange chose not to send this photograph to the Resettlement Administration with the other five photos in the collection. It was published in an article by her husband, Paul Taylor in 1970, five years after Lange’s death.

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Guiding Questions

Document A

When evaluating a historical photograph, historians consider various questions, including:

• When and where was the photograph was taken? • Who took the photograph? What was their perspective on the events or people being photographed, and how might that have influenced what they chose to shoot? • Why was the photograph taken? Might the photographer have wanted to portray a scene in a particular way? • Under what circumstances was the photograph taken? How might these circumstances have limited or enabled what the photographer captured? • Was the photograph candid or was the scene manipulated or posed? • What technology did the photographer use, and how might that have influenced the image created?

1. (Sourcing, contextualization) Considering the questions above, what are the strengths and limitations of Lange’s photograph as evidence of the conditions facing migrant workers in California at the time? Explain.

2. (Corroboration) What else would you want to know about the photograph to help you evaluate its reliability?

Document B

1. How does this document affect your understanding of “Migrant Mother” as evidence of what living conditions were like for migrants in California during the Depression?

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2. Why might a historian question the reliability of this document?

Documents C-F

1. How do these photographs affect your understanding of the “Migrant Mother” photograph or how it was taken?

2. Do these photographs affect your understanding of Lange’s “Migrant Mother” as evidence of the past? Explain.

Document G

1. How does this photograph affect your understanding of the “Migrant Mother” photograph or how it was taken?

2. Does this photograph affect whether you think Lange’s “Migrant Mother” photograph is strong evidence of the past? Explain.

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