One day in 1936, photographer Dorothea Lange pulled up at a pea-pickers camp in California and snapped some pictures. Seven of those pictures were of Florence Thompson and her kids. One of those pictures, entitled “Migrant Mother”, became the most famous photo of the Great Depression. Lange’s notes read: “Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age 32. Nipomo, California.” Thompson was born in Oklahoma from parents of Cherokee descent. She married at age 17 and they moved to California, living a poor existence with a large family to provide for. Her husband died with her pregnant with their seventh child in 1931. She later remarried and had three more kids. (So Lange’s notes was off by three kids.) “I worked in hospitals. I tended bar. I worked in the fields. I done a little bit of everything to make a living for my kids.” She mentioned picking over 400 pounds of cotton from dawn to dark. The family had been picking beets and were heading for the lettuce fields when their car broke down outside a pea-pickers camp. There were over 2,500 migrants in the camp and the hope of a job had been quashed by a recent freezing rain that had destroyed the crop. The family was living off frozen vegetables they picked and birds the kids managed to kill when Lange appeared. She took seven pictures in ten minutes. She sent them off to a newspaper which ran them and almost immediately “Migrant Mother” was recognized as a masterpiece. Unfortunately, Lange was in a hurry that day and did not take good notes, including not getting Thompson’s name. Thompson was not identified until 42 years later. She did not benefit from the picture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Owens_Thompson
the migrant mother
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