Migrant Workers
"Okies"
-Farming families left the Mid-West to escape the Dust Bowl and find work.
“The land just blew away; we had to go somewhere.” — Kansas preacher, June, 1936 -These migrant workers were called "Okies" short for "Oklahoma," although they came from all over the Great Plains and states in the Mid-West -By 1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the Plains states; of those, 200,000 moved to California. -“Migrant Mother” most famous photo by Dorothea Lange
-February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California -Dorothea Lange was a photojournalist who documented life for ordinary people during the Depression. -Her photos became very famous and drew attention to the human consequences of the Depression. |
“When they need us they call us migrants. When we’ve picked their crops we’re bums and we’ve got to get out.”
- migratory worker, in This Fabulous Century. |
Mexican-Americans
Before the Depression, “the Mexicano had been needed as a laborer… [Mexicans] had reduced the cost of labor for agribusiness, working at stoop labor which few Anglo-Americans, even the poorest, would perform. The 1930s, however, brought hungry hordes of Arkansans and Oklahomans to the Southwest, displacing the Mexicans in the farm and in the city. Many Mexicanos were forced to go on relief.”
- from A Mexican American Chronicle. |
“The economic crisis and intensified class struggle of the 1930s resulted in the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers from the U.S. As unemployment in the southwest soared... as urban Mexican communities in such cities as Los Angeles began to rebel against their oppression, and as farm labor strikes flared up throughout California, … the border [patrol] swept through the Mexican barrios. In California, in particular, the militancy of the Mexican workers - many of whom were active trade unionists and members of the Communist Party - met fierce repression. More than 75,000 Mexicans were deported from Los Angeles alone in 1931.”
- from Beyond the Border: Mexico and U.S. Today |