Oral Histories-Success and Reslience

Livingfarmhistory.org offers oral histories, short biographies, and pictures of the same Okies photographed by Dorothea Lange.  This information originates from Bill Ganzel’s 1984 work, Dust Bowl Descent, where he, in the 1970’s, tracked down and interviewed those who were once photographed across the great plains.

The oral histories possess humanizing and emotional stories of familial resilience.  Most of the Okies that Ganzel interviewed eventually found economic security after weathering the Dust Bowl and Great Depression.  Madge and Lynn May from near Lincoln, Nebraska recounted how after failing as young farmers, they survived off an FSA loan.  Having been introduced to bookkeeping, Lynn soon started his own Purina feed franchise in town. He later sold it and ran a propane delivery service instead.  His wife Madge went to work as well, keeping the books for a local clothing store.

Still, not every story featured successes like the May’s.  Nettie Featherston shared how in 1937, her family ran out of money in Carey, Texas while on their way to California.  While picking cotton, she constantly feared her children’s starvation.  They lived almost solely off black-eyed peas.  Her desperation was captured in her words to Lange: “If we’re dead, we’re just dead.”

African American Artist Fred Wilson articulated his belief that it in trying to get people to understand events, it is best to humanize people  in the “Mining the Museum” chapter of Reinventing the Museum. His belief in the power of personal stories could not be more evident.  In presenting the Okie story to the public it is paramount to include individual Okie trials and tribulations.  Leon’s article in Past Meets Present also offers the insights of connecting public exhibits to current events to have your audience interact and think analytically.  This can often come in the form of questions.  Would Nettie Featherston have been better helped by a loan in the way that Madge and Lynn were?  Should government agencies today supply assistance to those struggling or should they help themselves? In what form should any aid come?

Link to livingfarmhistory.org: http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_06.html

Secondary Sources:

Anderson, Gail. Reinventing the museum: historical and contemporary perspectives on the paradigm shift. Lanham: Altamira Press, 2004. Print.

Blatti, Jo. Past meets present: essays about historic interpretation and public audiences. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987. Print.

Images from: http://ganzelgroup.com/index.html

Shindo on Okie Myths

In an article for The Wilson Quarterly, Charles J Shindo assesses the varying degrees of truth regarding Dust Bowl myths.  He argues that a true depiction of Okie refugees slightly differs from that portrayed in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Lange’s photography, and Woody Guthrie’s folk songs.

Shindo first addresses that although the Dust Bowl was caused by the unstoppable forces of drought and dust storms, migrants were equally pushed west by their own crop failures that exhausted the soil.  Competition with new agribusinesses, made possible by mechanization, also forced many Okies off their land.  Thus, the migrants were not helpless victims, suffering only from the wrath of nature, but were also entrepreneurs who failed due to their crop choices and inability to harness the advantages of technology.

• Link to Woody Guthrie’s Talking Dust Bowl Blues calling senators to action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkAxuqrVNBM

Hundreds of thousands of Okies fled to California in search of a better life.  Although this influx did strain the Californian economy, Shindo notes that the Golden State had experienced larger waves of migration in earlier years.  The fact that the new Okie migrants were white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant as opposed to Mexican, Indian, Chinese, or Japanese, was what captured the nation’s attention and helped lead to the creation of the Farm Security Administration and the Resettlement Administration.

The story of the Okies in California was typical of the seasonal wage-laborers.  Conditions were horrible, they worked long, hard hours, and received little pay.  Artists like Guthrie, Steinbeck, and Lange used their depictions of the Okies to advocate for federal aid and the rise of a rural, farming proletariat through unionization.  Yet, Okies did not agree with this liberal view.  By in large, the Okies were conservatives who disliked federal intervention, opposed relief, and clung to the yeoman notion of self-subsistent farming.  The migrants did not understand that their dreams had become outdated.

 

Steinbeck’s character reflecting on the collective power of laborers.  Source: http://quotesgram.com/tom-joad-quotes/

Citation:

Shindo, Charles J. “The Dust Bowl Myth.” The Wilson Quarterly (1976-), vol. 24, no. 4, 2000, pp. 25–30. www.jstor.org/stable/40260110.

Dust Bowl and Okie Images

More Dorothea Lange photography as mentioned in the last post.  All images are available through the Library of Congress.

Dorothea Lange’s Okie Photography

Dorothea Lange originally captured most of the black and white images of packed jalopies, barren fields, and human desperation that people  conjure when they imagine the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and Okie refugees from 1935 to 1939.  Lange made a name for herself as a studio artist specializing in portrait photography in San Francisco for most of the 1920’s.  When the depression made living in San Francisco no longer possible, Lange and her first husband moved to the Southwest.  Although they appreciated the setting and honest people, life was still economically straining.  She was even forced to have her children boarded in foster homes.

Later, Lange met and married Paul Schuster Taylor.  Taylor was a military veteran who became a pioneering labor economist at the University of California Berkeley.  His work called for job site analysis and often sought insight regarding Mexican labor, Okie migrants, and their horrendous work conditions mining or picking crops.  Lange came to be his invaluable photographer- capable of adding emotion and intimacy to Taylor’s dry economic assessments.  Lange’s Great Depression and Dust Bowl centered work was made possible after the Farm Security Administration (FSA), which was newly created thanks to FDR’s New Deal, commissioned her to capture and report back on Dust Bowl conditions.

The images she captured spark emotional responses.  Supporters claim her work depicts the timeless concepts of human suffering, determination, and hope for a better life. Yet, critics go as far as calling her collections propaganda, aimed at verifying the need for the FSA, her husband’s economic theories, and her own political ideology.  Although Lange’s work remains iconic and a statement on an era of American history, her inherent bias and tendency to stage pictures must be considered when evaluating her images’ truth.  Her Migrant Mother is recognizable today and has been retailored for many differing social movements.

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Source:

Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning. Dir. Dyanna Taylor. PBS, 2014. DVD. American Masters. Web.

• All of the photos taken by Lange for the Farm Securities Administration are available online as a part of the National Library of Congress

What this is all about

Hello internet.

Before this site begins its journey from an empty, unfinished website to what I hope will become an interesting and frequented blog, I feel it necessary to explain its structure and set expectations for readers.

A bit of background will help as well.  My name is Patrick Tilden.  I am currently a sophomore at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio studying History and Economics.  I grew up in Valparaiso, Indiana but went to the nearby Chesterton High School.  I enjoy following politics, movies, baseball, basketball, and more.

This blog however will focus exclusively on public history with the aim to both inform and entertain. Specifically, this blog will focus on the story of Okie Dust Bowl refugees during the 1930’s.  Their story is one of struggle, perseverance, and re-imagination.  I hope I can present their chapter of American history in a worthy manner. Normally I will post one or two times a week.

Thank you so much for stopping by. Please enjoy