Primary Source Assignment
Wing Yiu Tsang
November 10, 2015
Hist 173
Migrant Mother Series
The resource “Migrant Mother Series” conveys the message of difficulties of poor migrants during Great Depression. The images were captured at a migrant farmworker camp in Nipomo, California, in 1936. The woman in the picture was a thirty-two-year-old mother of seven children. She was an underprivileged migrant moving from her home in Oklahoma to follow the crops in the Golden State. This migrant mother and her children were working as pea-pickers in Nipomo during spring in 1936. As the season ended, this family was staying in a tent and searching any food from the surrounding fields.
In one of the photographs, the migrant mother sits down under a tent. …show more content…
After the stock market crash in the United States, the Great Depression was the key cause of many problems. The United States had experienced a long term of economic downturn. In the images, migrant mother’s poverty and depression were reflecting the migrants’ dilemmas during the Great Depression. In addition to the environmental disaster caused a long term agricultural crisis in the United States. Since 1932, severe droughts negatively affected from Texas to the Dakotas including the migrant mother’s hometown Oklahoma and lasted until 1936. The region’s farmers were affected by years of foreclosures and the decrease of their farm goods’ prices, which put them in an extremely hard time on making a living. The migrant mother was just like the majority of migration families moving out from Oklahoma to the urban areas of California and hoped to find new job opportunities for survival. However, many state and local officials firmly restricted new migrants to receive relief and to find employments. Some state legislatures regulated that poor migrants enter the states can be a crime and that local officials can deport poor migrants to neighboring states. California became one of the states that blocked poor migrants in order to minimize job competition for local residents. This was a harsh restriction for newcomers like the migrated mother who needs to raise seven children by herself without any financial supports from employments and the
Wing Yiu Tsang
November 10, 2015
Hist 173
Migrant Mother Series
The resource “Migrant Mother Series” conveys the message of difficulties of poor migrants during Great Depression. The images were captured at a migrant farmworker camp in Nipomo, California, in 1936. The woman in the picture was a thirty-two-year-old mother of seven children. She was an underprivileged migrant moving from her home in Oklahoma to follow the crops in the Golden State. This migrant mother and her children were working as pea-pickers in Nipomo during spring in 1936. As the season ended, this family was staying in a tent and searching any food from the surrounding fields.
In one of the photographs, the migrant mother sits down under a tent. …show more content…
After the stock market crash in the United States, the Great Depression was the key cause of many problems. The United States had experienced a long term of economic downturn. In the images, migrant mother’s poverty and depression were reflecting the migrants’ dilemmas during the Great Depression. In addition to the environmental disaster caused a long term agricultural crisis in the United States. Since 1932, severe droughts negatively affected from Texas to the Dakotas including the migrant mother’s hometown Oklahoma and lasted until 1936. The region’s farmers were affected by years of foreclosures and the decrease of their farm goods’ prices, which put them in an extremely hard time on making a living. The migrant mother was just like the majority of migration families moving out from Oklahoma to the urban areas of California and hoped to find new job opportunities for survival. However, many state and local officials firmly restricted new migrants to receive relief and to find employments. Some state legislatures regulated that poor migrants enter the states can be a crime and that local officials can deport poor migrants to neighboring states. California became one of the states that blocked poor migrants in order to minimize job competition for local residents. This was a harsh restriction for newcomers like the migrated mother who needs to raise seven children by herself without any financial supports from employments and the