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    Migrant Mother: How a Photograph Defined the Great Depression
    Migrant Mother: How a Photograph Defined the Great Depression
    Migrant Mother: How a Photograph Defined the Great Depression
    Ebook74 pages25 minutes

    Migrant Mother: How a Photograph Defined the Great Depression

    By Don Nardo

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    In the 1930s, photographer Dorothea Lange traveled the American West documenting the experiences of those devastated by the Great Depression. She wanted to use the power of the image to effect political change, but even she could hardly have expected the effect that a simple portrait of a worn-looking woman and her children would have on history. This image, taken at a migrant workers' camp in Nipomo, California, would eventually come to be seen as the very symbol of the Depression. The photograph helped reveal the true cost of the disaster on human lives and shocked the U.S. government into providing relief for the millions of other families devastated by the Depression.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCapstone Young Readers
    Release dateMay 1, 2019
    ISBN9780756565329
    Author

    Don Nardo

    Noted historian and award-winning author Don Nardo has written many books for young people about American history. Nardo lives with his wife, Christine, in Massachusetts.

    Read more from Don Nardo

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    • 5/5
      Migrant Mother: How a Photograph Defined the Great Depression is the second title I've read in the "Captured History" series (after Little Rock Girl 1957), and I really can't say enough about this series. It's amazing! The photographs, of course, are stellar, but the text is just as compelling. Migrant Mother focuses on the photographs of Dorthea Lange, the Farm Security Administration photographer who took the title photograph, an almost-missed opportunity that would later become one of the most iconic pictures of the Great Depression. It starts out telling of the event from Lange's point of view, explaining how her spur of the moment decision to visit the pea picker's camp came about. Next, the author backs up a bit to explain the Great Depression itself, focusing especially on the plight of migrant workers, in both pictures and text in a way that is very accessible to young readers. The background of the "mother", Florence Thompson, is discussed (ironically, Lange never knew the identity of her subject. She died of cancer before Thompson's identity was revealed to the country at large.) Then the author takes us into a closeup of the six photos--their sequence, composition, and what Lange was probably trying to achieve with each. (An interesting sidebar discusses the "thumb contraversy"--apparently, for the final and most famous photo, Tompson felt the need to brace herself by grasping the tent pole in front of her as she rested her chin in her right hand. Consequently, the thumb of her left hand became visible in the foreground when the picture was developed. Lange's boss thought the thumb added to the composition, but Lange disagreed and had it airbrushed out. Now I've got to know--does the photo in my school textbook have the thumb, or no? I've got to head back to school and check it out.) The journey of Lange's photographs continues the story--their publication, the impact they had on both the public and the government (which sent 20,000 pounds of food to the camp; however, Thompson and her family had already moved on) and their continuing influence today, including the fact that the image was used on a U.S. postage stamp. Lange's career as a photographer is highlighted, and Thompson's later life is discussed. One of her daughters, Katherine, was also interviewed for the book--Katherine was one of four daughters also photographed by Lange. The book wraps up with a timeline showing the pertinent U.S. and world events as well as those in the lives of Thompson and Lange. Altogether this is a well-written, informative, and thought-provoking book that would be a great addition to any library.
    • 3/5
      Telling the story behind an iconic photograph and discussing its historical importance is a cool idea, and this book is successfully concise and informative doing that. The suggestions for further reading and list of suggested web sites are disappointingly skimpy.

    Book preview

    Migrant Mother - Don Nardo

    Captured History: Migrant Mother by Don Nardo

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Cover

    Title Page

    Chapter One: SNAPPING AN ICONIC PHOTO

    Chapter Two: A NATION FALLEN ON HARD TIMES

    Chapter Three: TO CAPTURE THE CAREWORN

    Chapter Four: A TRUTH AS OLD AS HUMANITY

    Timeline

    Glossary

    Additional Resources

    Source Notes

    Select Bibliography

    Index

    Copyright

    Back Cover

    Chapter One

    SNAPPING AN ICONIC PHOTO

    A driving rain was falling on California’s Highway 101 that March day in 1936. The driver, 40-year-old professional photographer Dorothea Lange, sat alone in the car. She later recalled what had been on her mind: Sixty-five miles an hour for seven hours would get me home to my family that night, and my eyes were glued to the wet and gleaming highway that stretched out ahead.¹

    Home for Lange was San Francisco, in northern California. She had just finished a monthlong picture-taking assignment in the southern part of the state. Working many days with little sleep had made her weary. So she could think of little else but her warm, dry house, her husband, and her young sons, Daniel and John. She had no inkling that in the next hour she would create a famous piece of history.

    An Inner Argument

    As she drove along the nearly deserted road, Lange suddenly saw something interesting. Later she described it as a crude sign with pointing arrow which flashed by at the side of the road. In hand-written letters on the sign were the words Pea-Pickers Camp.

    She knew full well what those words meant. The U.S. economy was just beginning to recover from the Great Depression, a terrible worldwide economic downturn. But tens of millions of people in the United States were still out of work. Many jobless moved from place to place seeking temporary work picking fruit and vegetables—any opportunity to make a few dollars. The camp the sign mentioned, Lange realized, must be where local pea pickers had pitched their tents.

    picture

    Dorothea Lange was a photographer for the Farm Security Administration.

    Lange passed the sign and had no intention of stopping. But then she was torn by what she later described as an inner argument. Among the questions she asked herself were:

    "Dorothea, how about that camp back there? What is the situation back there?

    "Are you going back?

    "Nobody could ask this of you, now could they?

    To turn back certainly is not necessary. Haven’t you plenty of negatives already on this subject? Isn’t this just one more of the same? Besides, if you take a camera out in this rain, you’re just asking for trouble. Now be reasonable, etc., etc., etc.

    Lange drove on for about 20 miles (32 kilometers). All the while she kept making

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