Mattison Moran

Dr. Hannah B. Rockwell

CMUN 398

Through Mamas eyes: Okie Women, Oral Histories and Depression Era
Annotated Bibliography
1.Gregory,JamesN..DustBowlLegacies:TheOkieImpactonCalifornia,19391989.
CaliforniaHistory68.3(1989):7485.Web.19Feb.2016.
Begins with analysis of John Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath novel.
Gregory argues that Steinbeck (and others) were wrong about the
expectations of the Dust Bowl migrants and their assumptions about
long-term difficulties. The Dust Bowl migrants had nothing like longterm difficulties that Steinbeck foresaw, and deliverance had nothing
to with labor unions or any dismantling of California agribusiness.
Equally, Steinbeck was wrong about the terms of cultural negotiation
that the Dust Bowl migrants would conduct with California. The issue,
it turned out, was not modern culture versus rural backwardness, but
rather one regional culture versus another.
He also discusses common misconceptions about the Dust Bowl
migration. One is that there was no migration of consequence as a
direct result of the dust bowl storms of the mid 1930s because few
people were living in those specific areas. Another was that migration
was not simply a 1930s phenomenon. According to Gregory, people
had been migrating there since World War I and continued up until the
1960s.
Gregory states that, the tragic images of the migration have
been overblown. According to Gregory, the struggles were
incomparable to that of the pioneer migrations of the 19th century (77).
While the 30s migrants suffered low paying unskilled worker wages,

World War II allowed for a drastic opening in jobs. He mostly talks

about the job opportunities for men.
Fox, Carly. Radical Geniologies: Okie Women and Dust Bowl Memories.
Diss. Sarah Lawrence College, 2015. Digital Commons. Web. 20 Feb.
2016. <http://digitalcommons.slc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1000&context=womenshistory_etd>.
2. Gavin, Christy: California Odyssey: Dust Bowl Migration Archives: A
School of Their Own: Educating Okie Children in 1930s California.
This is a history of the Okie childrens adaptations to the school
systems of California that is recounted predominately by the words of
those involved in the school systems- teachers, students and parents.
This paper is a portion of the SCUB Dust Bowl Migration Archives by the
librarian Christy Gavin. The schools were microcultural portraits of the
harsh reactions of the central Californian communities to the influx of
these dispossessed individuals- especially the children. The harshness
of the school childrens response to these Okies is clearly biased and
prejudiced. Even teachers were at fault though this paper
predominately discusses the vision of the Kern County School
Superintendent Leo B. Hart who started the emergency Weedpatch
School that later morphed into the Sunshine School. This was a
stunning success by gifted and concerned teachers interacting with
their students and community.
The author uses numerous quotes from students, teachers and
parents to present the difficulties that the school system imposed upon
these Okie students. The schools became rapidly overcrowded, there
was civil unrest presenting as numerous fights or brawls during and
following school hours. The children were isolated by categorizing their
manners, poverty, dress, speech, and social awkwardness as those
people, retarded, and Okies. The poverty of these migrants was

reflected in their poor nutrition which had obvious consequences upon

their academic performance. 10 percent of school age children
were getting 1 to 2 pints of milk daily, the amount considered
optimum for growth and development, while 15.8 percent were getting
no milk[such nutritional deficits cause the] mental dulling which
occurs with constant inadequacy of food and frequent lack of it. The
Weedpatch School solved this problem by developing their own
vegetable gardens, dairy and meat facilities as well as cooking classes.
Some migrant children did thrive despite the many hardships
and oppressive racism. Goldie Farris [originally from Texas] stated,
being a good student, speaking up, reading and doing my homework.
When we left there [Waukena, Tulare County, California] and went to
Brawley we went through the same thing [subject matter] again. The
teacher started me in arithmetic clear back: at the beginning of the
book. Every child was working at his own speed in arithmetic. She
started me way back at the beginning but by the time we left in March
I was not only caught up but I was almost through with my book. One
mother who was obviously dedicated to her childrens education
opined, [making] it a point to get acquainted with the teachers. I
tried to take part in the functions of things. I think that really helped
and I joined the PTA. I could hardly afford it but I always managed. I
didnt join at first and my first child said the teacher would always say
something about it so then I was aware that it was very important to
my daughter so then I joined the PTA.
The school problems were largely a sense of isolation to the
migrant children due to their way of dressing and their speech. You
dont call shoes slipper. Youre suppose to call your shoes shoes. She
was trying to make me understand that slippers were bedroom
slippers that you wore at home. We called what what we wore at
home house shoes. If we wore dress shoes like patent leather or
Sunday shoes those were our slippers. It was a fancy shoe. Theard

lots of things like that. Speech and the manner of communication

was an easy method for children to pick on or make fun of other
children. Every time I uttered a word that first year we were here
somebody say, Oh, I can tell where youre from. The California voices
sounded very harsh to me. My first day at school in California the
girls voices sounded so harsh. The first year I was here, my sister
and I really worked at getting rid of our accent and by the end of a
year nobody could tell. If I get tired and my voice kind of drags a little
bit I can hear it.
Leo B. Hart was the Superintendent of Kern County Schools at
the heart of the Okie resettlement. It was his idea that resulted in the
founding of the Weedpatch emergency school. He was at first a
teacher who observed first hand that the children had to endure the
embarrassment, humiliation and disapproval they had so often
experienced in their search for a better life. With scant funds he was
able to scrape together enough supplies to open the emergency school
in September, 1940 with just two temporary buildings. There was
reported no grass, no sidewalks, no playground equipment, no toilets,
and no water. With the help of locals, the teaching staff and Mr. Hart
laid 1,000 feet of inch piping to a neighboring families water main
for drinking water. They bought their first desks of one dollar apiece
from other schools upgrading their equipment. The second year they
built an auditorium and a home economics building. Hart was
instrumental in hiring truly caring teachers and actually paid them
more for working in this unusual environment ($36,00-$45,000). The
teachers in turn helped the children with personal troubles, helped dig
ditches at the school and came up with innovative programs such as
the famed aviation studies. The school obtained an old C-46 airplane
and taught students about planes and flight.
The author references 35 additional works at the conclusion of
this excellent monograph of students of the dust bowl.

Gavin, Christy: California Odyssey: Dust Bowl Migration Archives.

<https://csubdspace.calstate.edu/bitstream/handle/10211.3/46994/DBEducRevJuly1
3.pdf?sequence=1>> February 27, 2016
3. Shindo, Charles J: The Dust Bowl Myth. Wilson Quarterly Autumn
2000:25-30.
This is a fascinating article from the author of a major work on the
history of the dust bowl immigrants to California and he is intent on
busting some of the myths that were largely woven into John
Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath, Bruce Springsteens The Ghost of
Tom Joad, John Fords Hollywood depiction of Steinbecks novel in
1940, and even questions Dorothea Langes famous 1936 photograph
Migrant Mother. It is not that the portrayal is totally false, it is that
the overwhelming sense that these people all represented the sort of
urban myth that they were dispossessed, hard-working tenet-farmers
is largely not true. He gives us the statistics that of the 300,000
migrants from the Southwest the overwhelming majority were white
and young. Most were not even farmers, but unemployed small
business and the from the collapsed oil industry and moved to Los
Angeles and San Diego disproportionately. Only about 130,000 were
farm folk. Also, the stereo-type implied by Steinbeck was not at all
true in his depiction of Tom Joad. Joad states at one point when the
family finally discovers the New Deal resettlement camp, Why aint
they more places like this? In fact the first of twelve such camps was
started in Marysville, Yuba County in October 1935.
The description of Dorothea Langes famous photograph of
Florence Thompson which so captured Americas sense of purpose
needs some re-consideration. In Shindos words- Langes famous
portrait of one migrant mother with her children, their faces hidden,
hers showing strain and worry and fear for the future, has come to

stand not just for the anxiety Americans felt during the depression but
for the end of the Jeffersonian dream of the yeoman farmer, the
Americans inevitable movement from the farms to the cities, and for
something indomitable in the American spirit. He notes of course that
Lange and her husband, Paul S. Taylor combined his work for the
regional labor adviser with her photographs in their 1939 book An
American Exodus: A Record in Human Erosion. They took the
reformers notion that the migrants wanted merely to earn decent
wages in order to accumulate enough wealth to reinstitute their selfmade ways of agrigarian life. He recounts Langes own documentation
of what happened on the fateful day she made those photographs.
The photograph of Migrant Mother was taken in Nipomo, California
on a rainy March day in 1936. Driving home after a month in the
field, Lange passed a sign for a pea pickers camp just off the highway.
Having already shot a boxful of film documenting the conditions of
California agriculture, she kept driving. But 20 miles later, she turned
around and went back. I was following an instinct, no reason, she
remembered. I drove into that wet and spongy camp and parked my
car like a homing pigeon. I saw and approached the hungry and
desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. Skipping the questions
she usually asked about family history and local conditions, Lange
began right away to photograph the mother and her children. The
woman, Lange later recalled, mentioned that her husband was a native
Californian, that she was 32 years old, that they had been living on
frozen vegetables they found in the fields and on birds caught by the
children, and that they had just sold the tires from their car for money
to buy food. Lange did not get the womans name (it was Florence
Thompson), and took only six shotsAs it turned out, her sixth
exposure became her most famous photograph.
The Okie migrant agricultural myth was that these workers
believed that after a year or two of hard field work they would be able

to save money and buy some land of their own, the Jeffersonian ideal.
The populists notion that the dignity of hard work and plain living was
enough to get ahead in the world was falling apart. Shindo notes that
the complex, large farming systems existent in California at the time
were not applicable to this notion- most farms were conglomerates and
large industries at this time- the 1930s-1940s. He states, Like other
reformers, Lange and Taylor saw the solution to the migrants
problems in the creation of a self-conscious agricultural working class
strong enough to win decent wages and working conditions. In the
meantime, the New Deal would help the migrants adjust. In fact, the
author claims, the average migrant farmer distrusted the government
and were largely opposed to taking government hand-outs. If people
stay on relief too long it takes somethin out of them. The folklorists
vision of the Okies struggle largely centered upon this notion that they
would struggle and overcome via conservative political methods. This
is what is enshrined in Woody Guthries songs, I might not know what
its all about,/Ill join with the Union and soon find out. But the reality
of the agricultural scenario was not amendable to the small farmer in
Califonia. Tom Joad is forced into this conclusion in Steinbecks novel,
I been thinkin a hell of a lot, thinkin about our people livin like pigs,
an the good rich lan layin fallow, or maybe one fella with a million
acres, while a hundred thousand good farmers is starvin. An I ben
wonderin if all our folds got together an yelled, like them fellas yelled,
only a few of em at the Hooper ranch-
The author Shindo summarized the plight by using a quote from
the San Francisco News- The new migrants to California are here to
stay. They are the best American stock, intelligent, resourceful; and, if
given a chance, socially responsible. They can be citizens of the
highest type, or they can be an army driven by suffering and hatred to
take what they need. He concludes with observation on long-term
follow-up studies on many of these migrant families concluding they

never really returned to the status that they so often sought. They
eventually left their simple rural ways and were acclimated into the
cities and industries of California. He believes that their popularist and
conservative ways though were to survive in the next several
generations and were accurately portrayed by the historian Dan
Morgan in his book Rising in the West (1992) which culminated in
the popularity of Ronald Reagan to become the governor of California
in 1966 and 1970.
Shindo, Charles J: The Dust Bowl Myth. Wilson Quarterly Autumn
2000:25-30.
4. Gavin, Christy, Milam, Garth: California Odyssey: Dust Bowl
Migration Archives: A Flat Tired People: The Health of Californias
Okies During the 1930s.
This is another in the series of essays about the Okies from the
University of Californias archives and librarians that utilize many of the
primary sources to look into specific historical questions about these
migrants. This particular piece focuses intensively upon the health of
the Okies. The failures of Californias State Programs as well as other
programs such as the American Red Cross all left many of these
peoples and families at risk for needless suffering. Formal U.S. medical
services and the county hospital systems particularly in the Central
agricultural vallies of California were ill prepared for the onslaught of
interstate immigrants. The average income of these seasonally
employed migrants were from $300-450 a year. This was borderline
enough just to maintain a marginal living. Healthcare, nutritional
luxuries such as fruits, dental care, pediatric and pregnancy care were
all left to languish. Of course, the medical establishment was as prone
to the stereotyped hypocrisy as was the general public in California.
Physicians at the time blamed the Okies poor health on their

traditional diet of pork, beans, biscuits, gravy, and potatoes- foods rich
in salt and fat.
Let us review what the librarians have to say about healthcare
during the 1930s in the Okies. Dr. Walter M. Dickie was the Director of
the California State Department of Public Health said, By heritage
they [migrants] have become accustomed to a diet lacking both in
quantity and in essential food elements. No mention is made of their
continued poverty or ability to afford nutritious foods. A subsequent
Health Department memo noted that large numbers of migrants in
Riverside and Kern counties, many of whom were tuberculous, were
living on potatoes and onions. A local PTA stated, felt that the
migratory children were responsible for the frequent epidemics
breaking out in the schools. This was probably true in fact. A Kern
County health official noted, infant mortality, tuberculosis and
typhoid cause more trouble. Scarlet fever, whooping cough, measles,
pneumonia and infantile paralysis are constant hazards. The county,
which had forty percent of the states migrant population, hasnt the
money to isolate the patients properly. A local doctor penned the
following, The many diseases of humanity often necessitated care in
shacks, tents, rear seats of automobiles, or ditch banks. Another
county health bulletin reported and the possible infestation of the soil
with intestinal parasites by persons coming from southern and middle
western states where intestinal parasites are prevalent. Migrants
were susceptible to other ailments associated with poverty- eczema,
impetigo, conjuncitivitis, diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid and pneumonia.
The American Red Cross was so distressed by the high numbers of
migrant health issues that they claimed the national office had
instructed all chapters that no relief should be given to transients.
Kern County Hospital reported a net increase by 40% of migrant health
care from 1930 to 1940. One Kern County physician stated about the
Okies- a strange people- they dont seem to know anythingThere is

such a thing as a breed of people. These people have lived separate

for too long, and they are like a different race. A physician named
Lee Stone goes even further, If you came down to me, I would say,
sterilize the whole bunch of them.
Finally, in 1933 the federal government stepped in by
establishing the Federal Transient Service which helped on 3 frontsnutrition improved at the labor camps, federal aid for a socialized
medicine and preventative care was instituted at the camps. The first
attention was given to the provision of free immunization for smallpox,
typhoid and diphtheria. By 1940 there were 112 free clinics that
were authorized to provide diagnosis and treatment of diseases,
especially venereal diseases. Next the Agricultural Workers Health and
Medical Association (AWHMA) was devised to provide medial
treatments. This was a cooperative program with the California State
Board of Public Health and the California Medical Association. In all,
between 1938-1940 approximately 27,378 individuals received medical
treatments.
The Okies were most certainly not innocent bystanders accepting
the status quo and the hypocrisy. Also not all employers took
advantage of their workers or their families. Our boss was real good.
He would tell all of his hands, Pick as many of these peas you want
and take them home and cook them. Needless to say, we took home
plenty of peas and shelled and cooked them. We ate a lot raw, I often
said I ate about as many raw as I picked to begin with. We always had
green peas while we were there Some bosses wouldnt let the
pickers take any home to eat. They would sneak them in their clothes
and take them home. I think thats being very rude. Loye Holmes
was a mother who despaired about her childrens poor health, My
milk was no goodI thought about committing suicide. Thats the only
time in my life the thought has ever crossed my mind. There was this
huge, huge canal that ran down through the Imperial Valley that

irrigated the whole country. One night I got up and couldnt get any
sleep. The other daughter slept well but I didnt want to leave one of
my children. I got up and tucked the baby under one arm and the
other under the other arm. Ther was this big walk that went across
the canal. It was like a river. I thought Ill go out there and get in the
middle and jump right off into it. I couldnt see no other way outI
thought, well, Ill just get rid of it all but when I got her under my arm it
was like a voice spoke to me that said, Dont do it. The people
realized their plight and many tried to overcome the situation for
themselves and for their families. Hattye Shields wrote the following,
we set up our tent and built a brush arbor and had a beautiful little
camp. It was just so clean and under eucalyptus trees and just really
lovelyDad built his own little outhouse and we had that. Then for
bathing, of course, we had to do that inside the tentWe would take
our buckets and go over and put it under the spout and the water
came out of the pipe at the reservoir. We had nice, clean fresh water
However, my father and sister started having boilsJust these horrible
carbuncles all over their bodies. Doctors said it was the living
conditionsand the dirt and all the unsanitary conditions, just coming
out. You just dont have any way to keep your food as clean.
Gavin, Christy, Milam, Garth: California Odyssey: Dust Bowl Migration
Archives: A Flat Tired People: The Health of Californias Okies During
the 1930s.
<<https://www.csub.edu/library/_files/DB_files/OkieHealth.pdf >>
February 28, 2016
5. Fox, Carly: Radical Genealogies: Okie Women and Dust Bowl
Memories. http://digitalcommons.slc.edu/womenshistory_etd
This is one of the better structured historical reviews that Ive read so
far, especially based upon the Okie woman and her centrality to the

communities of these migrants in California. She centers her

discussions upon three Okie women and their little appreciated
contributions to social history. The first is Lillie Dunn who was a liberal
union organizer who supported all of the farm workers regardless of
race. The second was the radical writer and poet Sanora Babb who
shared her field notes with John Steinbeck and unintentionally resulted
in the delay in publishing of her own award-winning novel Whose
Names Are Unknown.

The third woman she focuses her attentions

upon is Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel whose poetry carries the dissident

thread of feminism and discontent not typically associated with the
conservative matriarchs that so dominate the Okie historical theme.
She begins with the most outspoken of the 3 women she will
highlight, Lillie Dunn a liberal, perhaps even communist organizer who
migrated to the central valley of California in 1931. Dunn was born
one of eight children in Porum, Oklahoma into a family crumbling from
destitution in the sharecropper farming lifestyle. Her father left the
family, the step-father did as well and her and her 11 year old brother
were left to provide for the family. By the time I was fifteen we were
the sole supporters of our mother and the children. We didnt know
too much about how to farm but we did what we could. We picked
cotton in the fall and hauled it off to the cotton gin in town to buy
enough food to last through the winter. We raised hogs and we usually
had a cow. My mother made a garden. By all of us working we
survived. The Roosevelt legislation of the Agricultural Adjustment Act
(AAA) of 1933 virtually killed the small tenet farmers. Dunn left home
at age 19 and moved to Wewoka, Oklahoma to work at a hotel in the
oil fields and she married Dell Dunn. He proved to be no better than
her step-father and they eventually migrated to California, Dell proving
to be more of a hindrance she would eventually divorce him. In
January 1931 with ninety dollars and two young boys the Dunns drove
to California in the old Essex car. There they settled in a one-room

cabin on the Vetter Ranch in the San Joaquin Valley town of Tipton in
Tulare County. She lost her two-year-old son, Donald Ray when the
Tulare Hospital refused to admit the sick child because they were
migrants. She had her daughter Bonnie Rae soon after. I would
bathe her every morning and put her in a wicker basket and take her
to the field. I had a wire that went over the top and a mosquito net to
keep the mosquitoes and flies off of her. Id take her in the basket and
sit it on the end of the row and pick cotton. Id pick down a ways and
then back. Then I would move her to the other end or the middle of
the field then Id pick down and back so I could watch after her. She
became an outspoken and even active participant in the civil unrest
that began amongst the farm workers between April and December
1933. She was picking grapes at the time, but the strike spread to the
cotton pickers as well. Soon the organizers Pat Chambers, Caroline
Decker, and Dorothy Ray Healey were all arrested. She became known
as The worst red-headed agitator in Tulare County. She managed to
get into the courtroom for the sham-trial and stated, They barred me
from the courtroom so one time I put on a hat and lipstick which I
never wore and dressed up a little different than what Id been
dressing with borrowed clothes, and I went into the courtroom. I was
sitting there listening to the things they were saying and it was all a
farce. She was ultimately arrested as well in Visalia for the riot at the
Pixley Food Depot. She noted the particular kindness paid her by a
black man, There was a colored man out there in the country and he
would kill rabbits and give them to us for meat. Id milk this old cow
and give him milk. When they had me on trial in Visalia for rioting he
wanted to be a witness for me. Bless his heart. He got up- he was an
old fellow- and he didnt wait for them to ask him any questions- he
said, This woman is a good woman! He was waving his cane at them
and they kept saying, Sit down, sit down. He was telling them how
good a woman I was but they made him sit down, bless his heart.

Dunn created alliances with the other minority migrant workers and
continued her social activism thoughout her long life even helping
Ceasar Chavez in the 1960s and 1970s. A poignant fact or perhaps a
metaphor for the mothers suffering is recounted in the success of her
youngest son, Michael. He eventually attended Junior College and has
become a very successful businessman now worth millions of dollars.
Sanora Babb is the second in this trilogy of liberal, outspoken
woman Okies. She is the most unique of the three- in that she lifted
herself out of mire and misery only to help other woman and families
trapped by the migrant working conditions in California. She was born
in Leavenworth, Kansas on April 21, 1907. She too endured family
problems under the brutal reign of a despotic father, whom Marriage
vows had become a prison sentence for her mother, Jennie. In 1924
Sanora Babb graduated from Forgan High School as valedictorian and
attended Garden City Junior College and received a teaching
certificate. She moved in 1929 to Los Angeles to begin working for a
newspaper meeting many of the intellectuals who would take interest
in the Okie migration- William Saroyan, Tillie Olsen, John Fante, Caros
Bulosan, and others. She began to collect stories of migrant woman
and even returned to the Oklahoma Panhandle in 1934, I saw the
people I used to know who had lived smugly in their imaginary stratasthe best people who had bathtubs and cars, the middle ones who had
bathtubs and white collar jobs, the unacceptable one who had no
bathtubs, manual jobs or doubtful means of support- standing in line
together. She returned to California, married famed ChineseAmerican cinematographer James Wong Howe in 1936 and became the
assistant to Tom Collins the director of the Federal Camps for the FSA.
She became a FSA camp administrator and employed her sister
Dorothy Babb and they travelled along Highway 99 documenting
conditions and taking copious notes for her own writings. When I was
working in the California fields in 1938, and at brief periods for several

years afterwards, I asked some of the women I knew if they would like
to write down some of their experiences. They were pleased and
enjoyed writing and later seeing their pieces in print. Interestingly
she befriended John Steinbeck and shared her notes. She had sent
several chapters of her novel, Whose Names Are Unknown to
Random House, but Steinbeck published his Grapes of Wrath first.
Random House did not want to publish two novels about similar issues,
so her piece remained unpublished until just before she died, in 2004.
An anonymous editor at Random House penned in 1939, Whereas
GRAPES had color, excitement, and humor, Babbs book is more
uniformly intenseIf there hadnt been a GRAPES, I would say
unreservedly, here is something new, something fine, we must publish.
Moreover an unusual talent is displayed in this first novel. Babbs was
wholeheartedly unique from Steinbeck and she focused with laser
precision onto the plight of these migrant women and their children.
She would write another history of these Okies as well as other literary
themes that were liberal minded and outspoken about the abuse of
peoples by wealthy landowners. In her novel, the heroine is Julia
Dunne with two young daughters. She is sensitive to the other migrant
minorities and an outspoken ally to the workers revolt and the need to
improve working conditions and pay. She also promotes the awareness
that the Okie woman would come together to support one another in
times of birth, food scarcity, and the loss of a child. Through mutual
exchange, they create informal economies whereby the necessities of
survival- winter clothes, domestic labor, mild, and food- are shared. In
the words of this thesis author- Foregrounding womens domestic
experience and blurring the line between the public and private, Babb
articulates a distinctly proletarian feminism that highlights the
inherent interconnectedness of class and gender. For Babb, poverty
had a specific effect on women. To be poor and to be a woman meant
painful childbirth, inadequate or nonexistent medical care, the threat

of emotional and physical abuse from men, and ongoing

responsibilities to cook, clean, and care for children.
The third and final female is known as the Okie poet, Wilma
Elizabeth McDaniel who has written over fifty books of poetry and
prose. She was the fourth child of Benjamin and Anna McDaniel born
near Stroud in Lincoln County, Oklahoma on December 22, 1918. She
and her family migrated to California in 1936 and she recorded most of
her observations in her poetry and writings. Fox focuses upon her use
of prose early- Her poems, often written on scraps of paper, the backs
of receipts, or recycled cards, stand as an archive of sorts, preserving
an often overlooked Okie history of hard work, the kind that hurts the
back and carries little prestige- cotton picking and ditch digging; of
poverty and making do; of little-known towns- Tulare, Oildale, Herndon,
Depew, Bowlegs- far in both space and imagination from Greenwich
Village and Los Angeles; of painful childbirth and calloused hands; of
flower-sack dresses and two-room school houses; of uprootedness and
loss. This almost single-handedly encompasses the passionate
messages of McDaniel whom she seems to quote the most often- Fox
in fact sought out Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (another Okie historical
author) who knew personally Wilma McDaniel. One poem- Picking
Grapes 1937 she opines Magic seventeen/and new in
California/working in bursting/sweet vineyards, dreaming of the first
breath of/Eve in Paradise/the last gasp of Jean Harlow/in Hollywood.
She is not the overly sentimental type, she recalls her past almost
whimsically, I suppose as far as suffering, ill health, non-existent
medical attention for years at a time, and lowered expectations go, I
could probably swap horror stories with some of the best whiners, but
that would be ridiculous and a waste of energy. I am simply not a
whiner. I do not enjoy it, or the ones who indulge in it surrounded by
taxpayer luxuries I never dreamed of. Her first book of poetry was
The Okie Poet in 1973 and she began to attract some attention- both

good and bad. The literary scholar Janet Zandy said of her, She is not
a darling of the Left nor a labor organizer; she is not sanctioned as a
suitable subject for graduate students; she is part of no literary
establishment; she definitely is not postmodern chic. She is uniquely
different that the stereotypical Okie woman because she simply does
not dismiss the diversity of women and the everyday working
experiences. She calls herself a witness in the Biblical sense to the
humble nature of women and their almost undaunted courage to
survive and thrive. This is what McDaniel celebrates the most in her
art. An interesting aside to her saga is that she also makes decorative
paper-dolls which Fox specifically calls to our attention- McDaniels
playful, yet astute, dismantling of gender norms is evident not only in
her prolific poetry, but also in a collection of hand-made paper dolls
that she included in her archive. McDaniel made her paper dolls from
cut-out images of magazine models. Almost all of the dolls she made
are women. Brightly colored an unaligned to traditional rules of
perpective and proportionality, they resemble folk art. Her poem
Agreement expresses her non-normative feminine individualityI look in my full-length mirror
From Ace Hardware-(six ninety-five/once in a lifetime price)
And agree with the mirror
That I am a beautiful woman/for the type I am
My hair is a haystack
My head classic pumpkin
smooth in the jaws
Halloween I dont fakethese are my teeth
So many prizes go out
to cookie-cutter beauties
parading through life

what does that matter to me

I look in the mirror
thump on my head
agree again with the mirror
I am the best of my kind.
In Remembering Farm Women she states Why did rough
farmers/dream of girls/from the Ziegfeld Follies/when wives were
vomiting/with another pregnancy. No getting around the candid
reality of dealing with things as they are here. In a McDaniel interview
she recalls how it really was, I close my eyes and see her with head
tied up in a baby diaper taking down frozen laundry from the
closesline. This sometimes had to be accomplished by hauling water
two miles from a neighbors well. The smell of lye soap assails my
nostrils in memory. I see Mamas hands so reddened and raw from the
homemade soap. I learned firsthand how caustic it was, I took my turn
at the washboard early. McDaniel never married or had children
herself, perhaps her reliance upon herself and her art was what
mattered.
I cannot leave this particular anthropologic history without
commenting upon Ms. Foxs commentaries which contribute to her
overall thesis. In addition, she utilizes some other literary sources to
make some insights into the feminine roles of Okie women. While a
majority of literature focuses on Okies racism and anti-unionism, I also
discovered a tradition of women who did not fit the traditional
narrative about Oakies in California. She discovers that in fact there
were plenty of women breadwinners along with the hard working males
in these displaced Okie communities. Some of them promoted the
radical political sentiments of the organized union workers and plenty
of them felt deeply connected to the African-Americans, Mexicans and
Filipino minorities that labored along side. The normal characterization

of the Okie from Walter Steins California and the Dust Bowl
Migration (1974) with the tradition of rugged individualism and were
racially biased against their co-workers of color might not be altogether
factual. She proceeds to question James Gregorys classic American
Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California
(1989) as well as looking with a biased eye which is considered a social
anathema nowadays. He looked into their social history with blinders
on the womens perspective. In another, less well known social history
by Devra Weber, Dark Sweat, White Gold: California Farm
Workers, Cotton, and the New Deal (1994) there is a more careful
interpretation of the Okies interactions with the Mexican farm workers
that show the role of the families, their interactions and support for
one another makes a far more complicated picture of working-class
consciousness and organizations. She finally comes to two very
contemporary social histories to make her point. Jan Goggans
California on the Breadlines: Dorothea Lonage, Paul Taylor, and
the Making of the New Deal Narrative (2010) offers an in depth
suggestion that the politics of Langes photographs and Taylors
writings combine to show that migrant women were involved in
establishing an identity for themselves in these transitory and unstable
environments that precludes the suppositions of previous historians.
Erin Battat in her Aint Got No Home: Americas Great Migrations
and the Making of an Interracial Left (2014) goes even further
suggesting that the females of all of the displaced workers actually
interacted to produce a very common ground in the arts and literature
of these commonly oppressed groups. For Battat, Depression-era
migrations were interconnected responses to the capitalist collapse
and political upheavals of the twentieth century. Fox states that her
thesis pursues the disruption of the grand narrative that commonly
exists about the Okie migration and cultural responses that are usually
told.

Fox, Carly: Radical Genealogies: Okie Women and Dust Bowl Memories.
<<http://digitalcommons.slc.edu/womenshistory_etd>> February 29,
2016
6. Linda Rumier: Dust Bowl poet Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, 19182007. www.back40publishing.com
This is a small written biography that rather summarizes the larger
biographical book that is hard to find- Chasing Fireflies, The Dust
Bowl Childhood of a Poet by Jeanie Harris. Wilma began her writing
life at the age of eight when she began writing poetry on precious
scraps of paper and old mail which she would stash away and save
them. She first experienced the tragedies of the post WWI influenza
epidemic where she lost her mother. Then she was a young girl
exposed to the poverty and dust storms in Oklahoma and the horrors
of massive dust storms. She was of mixed descent with German,
Scotch-Irish tradition with a mixture of Cherokee growing up near the
Creek Indian Nation. She recalls her childhood through the fire and
burden of poetry. Rumier documents the many commentaries that
followed her late in life recognition for her poetry. Cornelia Jessey
praised her poetry as dry and burning phraseology. The novelist
James D. Houston called her language as absolutely unique and
magical. Gerald Haslam describes her work as Ms. McDaniel is
arguably the finest poet to have emerged from the Oklahoma
Dustbowl exodus. In fact, the collective body of her work has made
her the most important voice to emerge from the Dust Bowl
migration. Rumier goes on to acknowledge that McDaniels work
should be remembered for her brilliant, insightful poetry
recognized and instantly accessible by an unpretentious, pared-down
simplicity that belies the strength, depth and ingenious beauty of the
story conveyed in each poem. Her poetry is extensive and carries the
reader from the beginnings in the Dust Bowl and the miseries of

sharecropping in Oklahoma to the childhood delight in beginning over

in California. The harsh realities of migrant life are interspersed with
beauty as well. Wilma said of herself, Isnt it difficult for us poets to
assess ourselves in relation to our writing? I meet some poets who are
nothing like their work. It causes me to judge that I am rather similar
to my work. We are so interwoven. My late spiritual director once told
me that a poets artistic and spiritual life cannot be separated. That
helped me so much. At his point in my long life I am surprised to be
writing quite new and different poetry and getting much of it published
by the small, small presses, all praise and gratitude to them.
Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel was honored as the standing Poet
Laureate of Tulare, California and was interviewed by the librarian from
Oklahoma State University for their 2009 oral histories. Trudy
Wishcemann recounts her as absolutely diligent, adamant, forceful
about being her own self. On April 13, 2007 Wilma McDaniel died in
Tulare, California with a group of friends and nurses aides gathered
around her bed and reading poems out loud. She was buried in the
Tulare District Cemetery off Blackstone Avenue on Friday, April 20,
2007. Her works are lovingly available in the Tulare Historical Museum
in California which published her biography that is cited above.
Linda Rumier: Dust Bowl poet Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, 1918-2007.
www.back40publishing.com
<<http://tularehistoricalmuseum.org/wilma.html>> February 29, 2016
7. Lenhart, Gary: Burning Beauty: Diane Wakoski, Eileen Myles, Wilma
Elizabeth McDaniel, Tracie Morris. In The Stamp of Class: Reflections on
Poetry and Social Class. Univ. Michigan Press, 2005.
This work begins with an unusual comment made by U.S. Presidential
candidate Senator John Edwards in September 2003 when his wife
stated, as the son of a South Carolina mill worker, her husband grew
up without class consciousness. This apparently allowed the Senator

to overcome many problems and was his greatest tool in surviving and
thriving in politics. In a review of Wakoskis poetry the following
comments are made, which because of their nature will be quoted in
full, Class is still among the most undiscussed subjects when writing
about poetry. What Wakski says is often distasteful and, as I believe
she would be first to admit, ugly. But she pronounces an unyielding,
sad truth, that the ordinary claims of ego and envy can be more
powerful than the beauty created by Chopin or Beethoven. All happy
instances of beauty are vulnerable to the attacks of jealous, inflexible
justice. Because we recognize pain and deprivation as sources for
such notions, they sometimes have the power to elicit our sympathy
and complicity. Its a bitter fruit this cactus bears, but for those of us
from the lower classes, Im afraid its not at all exotic. The mention
that racism reveals at least a failure of imagination comes from Henry
Louis Gates, Jr. and the author defends the poetry of Wilma Elizabeth
McDaniel as representative of the working-class community. He
interprets much of her poetic works as One feels she misses those
days of her youth, perhaps the last time in anyones memory that the
working class was represented in American popular culture as a classbefore the leveling explosion of television, before the McCarthy era
intimidated union leaders and branded the articulation of class politics
as unpatriotic. This most certainly seems to be a rather harsh
interpretation of McDaniels intentions. I perceive almost no nostalgia
in many of her poems. He goes on to mention that she appears to be
deeply connected to her community, friends and neighbors. He
admires her style of poetry. He states of them, Her poems still imply
the virtues of radical redistributive politics within an encompassing
framework of Christian devotion. Its a representation of working-class
beliefs with economic implications always ignored by political
conservatives, and social implications that often discomfort liberal

professors. He believes that McDaniels poetry thrives upon the

distance of class disparity in American society, and this might be true.
Lenhart, Gary: Burning Beauty: Diane Wakoski, Eileen Myles, Wilma
Elizabeth McDaniel, Tracie Morris. In The Stamp of Class: Reflections on
Poetry and Social Class. Univ. Michigan Press, 2005.
8. Alexander, Toni Ann: From Oklahomans to Okies: Identity
Formation In Rural California. http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd04152004-155709/unrestricted/Alexander_dis.pdf
This is a Ph.D. doctoral thesis largely written by a female historian from
a third generation Okie herself. She largely utilizes information derived
from a substantial list and readings of one local Newspaper- the
Modesto Bee which would reflect the sentiments of the average
Califorinian and the writings of the Okies which were published from
FSA (Farm Security Administration) newspapers and the California
State Bakersfield Odyssey Project (oral histories). Really the premise of
her thesis is rather simple- the Okie migration to California parallels
the migration or immigration of almost any other group- isolation and
condemnation, struggle for identity, and ultimately achievement of
independence and free speech. She does this with six chapters with
chapter two basically a summary of the literature of historical Okie inmigration to California. Chapters 3 and 4 cover her methodic
investigation of the sources listed above- how did the Okies identity
develop. Chapter 5 is largely devoted to how the Okies defined
themselves. Chapter 6 is about the rediscovery of the legacy of the
Okies by their heirs in California and back in Oklahoma. Her chapter 7
is about how the Okie saga is really not at all different from that of
other ethnic groups, largely immigrant who had similar experiences.
I will spend much of this summary of the thesis on her chapter
two- because it largely deals with the literature and certain facts about
historiography and setting the commonly perceived facts. For instance

she begins with a quote from John SteinbeckThe wind grew

stronger. The rain crust broke and the dust lifted up out of the fields
and drove gray plumes into the air like sluggish smokeAs the day
went forward the sun became less red. It flared down on the dustblanketed land. The men sat in the doorways of their houses; their
hands were busy with sticks and little rocks. The men sat stillthinking-figuring. Contrast this with the lyrical poetic rendition of the
Okie poet McDaniel (Last Dust Storm Before Leaving Oklahoma- 1934):
The wind blew Zilpha
over twice, before she learned
to brace herself and take it
by both horns, eye-to-eye
The third time, when it blew
at her with a mouthful
of red angry dust
she met it on her own terms
wrestled it down
and rode away triumphant
in a wired-together truck
toward California.
Compare these both to Dorothea Lange and Paul Shuster Taylors
(1939), dried by years of drought and pulverized by machine-drawn
gang disk plows, the soil was literally thrown to the winds which
whipped it in clouds across the country. The winds churned soil,
leaving vast stretches of farms blown and hummocked like deserts or
the margins of beaches. They loosened the hold of settlers on the
land, and like particles of dust drove them rolling down ribbons of
highway. These comments parallel nicely with her comments on the
interpretations of oral histories- that like Laurel Richardson suggested
that history is a concept of crystallization and there are always more

than three sides to a story. She looks at Woodie Guthries musical

legacy, John Fords cinematic production of Steinbecks Grapes of
Wrath. She finally comes to the Modesto Bees letter by Bob Robison
(1938)- Oklahoma had dust storms and drouth with the depression
which quite naturally caused a great number to migrate from that
state. Why slander and curse them for their misfortune? They are
human, educated and as deserving as any other. So things are not as
tidy as all of that. Most of the rest of this very interesting chapter is on
the real facts about the Dust Bowl and the in-migrants themselves.
First the Great Plains were populated by a group of hardy toiling
American souls pushed by Jeffersonian concepts of economic
expansion- they wanted a piece of land to earn a living, support a
family and live a simple life and six million people called sodbusters
came since the 1880s. The dry southern plains farmers shifted to dry
farming methods centering upon Turkey Red winter wheat and various
types of sorghums. By 1909 the Enlarged Homestead Act allowed for
even greater development of advanced machinery farming equipment.
Thus the tractor, combine, one-way plow and the truck allowed for
large supplies of manual labor to disrupt the land leading up to the
great droughts of the late 1920s.

Large farmers succeeded and small

farmers failed secondary to tax liens, foreclosure, and the eventual

absorption into the growing numbers of tenant farmers. Another fact is
that most of the Oklahoma panhandle residents following the dust
storms in fact, stayed put. They happened to feel their economic
troubles were no different than for most other Americans dealing with
the Great Depression. The vast majority of tenant farmer migrants to
California came from non-dust storm afflicted areas of Oklahoma,
Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. In fact, less than six percent (16,000)
of the known Depression-Era migrants bound for California were from
what Bonnifield designates as the ecological region characterized by
overpowering dust storms. Oklahoma in fact contributed only of

all of the agricultural migrants arriving in California in the 1930s. I

thought the following graphs she utilizes might be of some interest

This pretty much sums up the great western migration that occurred in
the Depression era to the state of California. The Governor of
Oklahoma, Leon C. Phillips in 1940 investigated the specific causes of
migration out of Oklahoma and he noted five factors: 1- over-reliance
upon agriculture fostered by discriminatory tax rates on Oklahoma
manufactured goods, 2- crop curtailment, 3- farm mechanization, 4drought, 5- soil depletion. These have been adopted as the major
push factors for the farmers migration, but this does not include
those who left for the California cities. In addition, little heralded in the
migration was a boll weevil infestation of the western cotton-growing
areas of Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Missouri. By 1939 about 12.5
million acres of cotton had been removed from production uprooting
large numbers of these workers. So the Okie migration and infestation
of California is much more complicated than previously stated.
9. Mason, Samuel: Hard Work: The Okie Migration to Kern County,
California. Thesis, San Diego State University, 2010.
http://www.ibrarian.net/navon/paper/HARD_WORK__THE_OKIE_MIGRATI
ON_TO_KERN_COUNTY__CAL.pdf?paperid=17751578
This particular work is based upon the Okie engulfment of the World
War II manufacturing work opportunities, the subsequent rise of
economic farm work payments and the post WWII full incorporation of

the Okie cultural tradition in Kern County, California. There are four
sections to this masters thesis- first an introduction, second the
struggles during the depression during the 1930s and early 1940s.
Then Mason turns his attention into the FSA camps and the Okies
adaptation to California. Finally he goes into the second and third
generations that remained in California and their rise to prosperity. He
uses 61 references which are thoroughly disclosed during the thesis
and summarized at the end.
10. Grill, Samantha L: Dust Bowl Days: A Study of Womens Lives and
Experiences. Thesis, William & Mary College, 2009.
This thesis focuses upon womens attitudes predominately about New
Deal Legislation and Federal Directed assistance programs that largely
involved Dust Bowl families. It predominately utilizes the published
diaries of two women in particular- Ann Marie Lows Dust Bowl Diary
and Caroline A. Hendersons Letters from the Dust Bowl to make
her points. In addition it focuses intently upon how womans work was
increased by the Dust Bowl, how their perceptions were altered and
how their family dynamics were all changed. It augments comments
from these two diaries by a third, Mary Knackstedt Dycks Waiting on
the Bounty: The Dust Bowl Diary of Mary Knackstedt Dyck, this
is a Menonite womans viewpoint of the hard times during the Dust
Bowl. Grill begins with the following comment, The Dust Bowl
changed womens understanding of their lives and reshaped some
womens self-perceptions. The demands placed upon women by the
Dust Bowl led to a disruption of conventional gender responsibilities as
women became increasingly responsible for the familys well-being.
This then is her study investigating this idea through the eyes of 3
journals and with some historical references thrown in.
She begins by noting that the Federal relief function of much of
the New Deal legislation was directed towards the male roles-however

they did in fact impact upon the feminine side as well. Historians
Sonya Michel and Robyn Muncy argue that New Deal programs helped
maintain differences between men and women and whites and blacks.
For example, the highest paying jobs offered by government
employment programswere usually reserved for white men. Grill
now shifts to the diaries of these Dust Bowl women to show how this
was perceived by these ladies. Ann Marie Low thought that the CCC
(Civilian Conservation Corps) and the AAA (Agricultural Adjustment
Act) destroyed the land and drove people to migration. Low wrote,
people were too proud to accept welfare if they could help it.
Caroline Henderson wrote about the humiliation of scenario that
families found themselves, a country blessed with Americas actual
and possible wealth ought to feel humiliated by the thought of a single
ragged, undernourished child. Low commented upon some the
subsidies provided under the auspices of payments by the AAA which
was ultimately found to unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court
(U.S. vs. Butler, 1936), the largest amount of direct cash benefit has
come through the rental checks under the wheat acreage control
program. Henderson actually wrote a letter to the Secretary of
Agriculture, Henry A. Wallace on July 2, 1935 stating, credit must be
given for the continued occupation of the plains country to the various
activities of the federal government. Without some such aid as has
been furnished, it seems certain, that large sections must have been
virtually abandoned. Ms. Low though was more critical of federal
attempts than was Henderson. Ann Marie Low did note grudgingly that
a man named Nelson, whi is hired to administer relief in this country,
has taken the unusual step, for a bureaucrat, of trying to find out what
the score is. She was generally more cautious with her appraisals of
government projects and people. She was particularly angered by the
the stupidity and callousness of the land acquisition agents. These

were men who were grabbing farmers land for under market values
essentially taking advantage of people who were losing everything.
One particular observation by Low is poignant, The country is
overrun with surveyors these days. The Missouri River Diversion
Project has three automobiles full of them running around. Others are
here about the game refuge idea, and some on a shelterbelt project.
The Missouri D.P. people are going to turn this area into a huge lake.
The game refuge people are going to let it revert to the wild. The
shelterbelt people intend to put in a lot of trees to keep the wind from
doing damage to the farms the other two outfits intend to eliminate.
The geodetic survey has built a tower on a hill south of us to flash light
all night long, though I dont know why. Low astutely concludes that
the New Deal relief plans are poorly coordinated and pretty much deal
a death blow to peoples who are already devastated by poverty, bad
luck and environmental disaster. Yet she and her extended family will
stay and try to cling to the land and region that they love. Oh, how I
wish the government had stayed out of my Stony Brook country! It is
all spoiled. she laments.
Though leaving the land and their communities was one option,
that resulted in the Okie migration to California it most certainly was
not the only option. Henderson stated in her diary, To leave
voluntarily- to break all these closely knit ties for the sake of a possibly
greater comfort elsewhere- seems like defaulting on our task. We may
have to leave. We cant hold out indefinitely without some return from
the land, some source of income, however small. But I think I can
never go willingly or without pain that as yet seems unendurable.
Low too wanted desperately to stay she saw the government land
acquisition agents running around trying to buy all the land around
the lakes and river at ridiculously low pricescant get Dadhe has
not mortgaged the land. Yet he too was forced to sell some of their
precious estate to survive.

Women also now had the added burden of contributing to the

financial needs of their families, in addition to their normal house-hold
duties. Daughters were sent out to find work. Domestic additions such
as milking a cow, raising poultry, gathering eggs were all added to
womens chores to add much needed income to families. Even if the
female was able to find outside work, as Ann Marie Low did as a
librarian assistant, she was expected to provide funds to the families
overall needs. In addition, there was also the normal daily house-hold
duties that could not be left to the males- cleaning, dusting, preparing
meals, washing clothes, making beds and the like. The paid labor a
woman might find, frequently just added to the amount of work that
was expected of her, because she had all of these unpaid labors of the
domestic. Grill calls these unpaid domestic labors a remnant of
Victorian English custom. (quoting another historian- Katharine Dupre
Lumpkin, What the Husband and Wife Ought to Do and Ought to Feel.)
Keeping the household clean in the wake of a Dust Bowl was difficult
and many times a discouraging proposition. The dust just comingleaking into houses through any nook or cranny. Dirt and dust lead to
further burdens caused by respiratory illnesses that most likely
affected the aged and young. The women paid this price as well. They
also had to double-duty as nurse to family members, parents and
children; sometimes even as doctor- since many could not afford
medical care. During the 1930s according to a historical reference
(Joel Mokyr: Why More Work for Mother? Knowledge and Household
Behavior, 1870-1945. J Economic History 2000;60(1):1-43. found this
article- will quote from it in detail later*) the women accepted this new
addition to their already heavy burdens.
One often overlooked burden faced largely by the women of the
Dust Bowl was nutritional support to their families. They were in
charge of providing food and cooking. The Smith-Lever Act of 1914
made the public health education by teaching basics of sanitation and

nutrition in Americas schools so that most women of this era were

more than aware of the risks of starvation diets- a clean body and
clean mind are the attributes of a good citizen quotes one of the
references of this era. The Federal Relief Emergency Administration
adopted and promoted an emergency food budget capable of feeding
a family of five for about five dollars a weekThe menu consisted
primarily of whole grain bread, milk, fruit, potatoes, and beans while
recommending the consumption of small amounts of meat only two to
three times a week. And the dust made even the preparation of food
more difficult. Plates had to be covered and washed, the re-washed
because they become covered with dust. Women would scavage for
wild berries. Low writes that she found weeds greens for salad long
before anything in the garden was ready. Dandelions, lambs quarter,
and sheep sorrel. Some women made butter to trade at stores to with
other neighbors. Vegatable gardens could both augment the dinner
table as well as the economics by selling excess produce, but only if
water and tillable land existed. Women also canned fruits and
vegetables to have produce in the winter months. One woman recalled
that she canned everything that wasnt movin. The Red Cross also
had emergency resources for those in dire need- Low recounts she
knew of a woman who received one cabbage and three carrots for
herself, husband, and their six children.
What about the dust? This was a domestic problem, largely dealt
with by the woman in the household. The families sealed their homes
with putty, tape, felt, and soaked rags in order to keep the dust out of
their homes. Wet sheets were used that would capture and hold the
dust within the rooms. Women covered everything in order to keep the
dust out of household things, especially in the kitchen. Sometimes the
air was so electrically charged because of the dry conditions that
shocks could be obtained by touching utensils. All of this added even
more to the overwhelming burdens of Dust Bowl women. Low notes

with sardonic wit that she could not feel any enthusiasm as of all the
washing, ironing, and baking to be done at home. The dust sifts into
everything. After we wash the dishes and put them away, so much
dust sifts into the cupboards we must wash them again before the
next meal. She notes following one particularly bad dust storm, Dirt
had blown into the house all week and lay inches deep on everything.
Every towel and curtain was just black. There wasnt a clean dish or
cooking utensil. The added duties of dealing with dust and grime is
reiterated in her journal- We had no time to wash clothesI had to
wash out the boiler wash tubs, and the washing machine before we
could use them. Then every towel, curtain, piece of bedding and
garment had to be taken outdoors to have as much dirt as possible
shaken out before washing. The water often had to be carried from
wells or cisterns that had water, sometimes miles away because of
drought adding to the everlasting drudgery. Yet the hardiness of
these people is expressed by their steadfast adaptation to the miseries
they faced, week in and out- The same old business of scrubbing
floors, washing all the woodwork and windows, washing the bedding
curtains, and towels, taking all the rugs and sofa pillows out to beat
the dust out of them, cleaning closets and cupboards, dusting all the
books and furniture, washing the mirrors and every dish and cooking
utensil. Cleaning up after dust storms gone on year after year
getting awfully tired of it. The dust probably blow again.
Samantha Grill summarizes that the difficulties placed upon the
women of the Dust Bowl were enormous. The emotional toll
experienced by women during the Dust Bowl, especially as caused by
their increased amount of work and its seemingly never ending status,
could not be assuaged by a bit of assistance. Some felt unfulfilled
optimism regarding the potential for cleanliness and an end to the
Dust Storms while others experienced a loss of hope and a sense of
despair. She will go on to examine how these women developed a

wide range of coping strategies so well personified by Hendersons

letter to a friend, Perhaps you wonder whether amid all our futile
efforts and disappointments, we do find any flowering islands, any
place of rest and refreshment for continuing the struggle. Yes, we do.
Writing is one of the simplest forms of coping.
One of the coping mechanisms for dealing with the stress of this
ardous new lifestyle was enjoyment of the natural beauty of the
country. All three of these lady diarists make some mention of these
abilities. Low writes, I went for a moonlight horseback rideI sat for a
long time on a hill southeast of the lake looking over the area once
loved so much. Its beauty is gone. CCC roads penetrate coulees
where only cattle, Roany [her horse], and I used to go. The river is
spoiled with their dams. The camp and its activities are everywhere
the landscape is blotted with that ugly and expensive Refuge
Headquarters and even more ugly sprawling set of buildings housing
the CCCs. This isnt home any more. Low sought to extricate herself
from the system by going to school and got a job part-time in a library
to make twenty-five cents an hour. That bought a few things Ethel
[her sister] and I needed, such as hairpins, notebooks and stockings.
She loved shoes and noted that while at college, she sold two of old
books for enough to buy a pair of shoes. Low found pride in school
and her outside job and this probably added to her ability to cope with
the pressure.
Knackstedt Dyck found comfort in the closeness of family and
friends. For Christmas of 1936 she reveled in the simple delights of
family and the holidays. She says, every body having a great time
with the Xmas Spirit peace on Earth & good will to men. Caroline
Henderson found her greatest inspiration and encouragement in the
blossoming plants in windows. Ann Marie Low noted Last night I
stayed awake a long time enjoying the coyotes singing up in the hills.
Their songs are beautiful and unique. They seem to throw their voices-

they can sound far away or very near, and just one coyote can sound
like several part of the time, and like a single singer the rest of the
time. Henderson was fond of Pearl S. Bucks The Good Earth and
quoted from it in one of her inspiring notations, it is rarely that one
finds a person able to understand and sympathize with the primitive
feeling of kinship with the earthStill more rarely can such a person
express that feeling so that other people may realize and possibly
share it. Another fascinating coping method was gossip. As a
traditional female mode of communication, gossip provided women
with entertainment, information, and a sense of power. Grill reviews
several social historians accounts regarding the worth and problems of
gossip, however, she fully sides with the merits of this ancient form of
coping. Gossip gave women power within their communities, for it
offered them a means of influencing others views and knowledge
while also distracting them and other women from the harsh realities
of their lives. Low stated, Mama kept entertained with the stories of
what had been going on at the camp last winter. Her winters
amusement had been listening in on the phone conversations of the
CCC camp. Phone lines back then were open and you would have to
announce yourself if you wanted people to know that you were
listening. The radio was another form of amusement and distraction if
one could afford a radio.
A final coping mechanism utilized by the women of the Dust Bowl
was the sense of community. Those who lived in the Dust Bowl often
found themselves close to their neighbors despite the fact that those
neighbors likely lived miles away, for Dust Bowl residents often relied
on each other for support and assistance. Many communities relied
upon this to eke out meager existences for those families in need.
Living so near the edge of poverty, gave when they had plenty and
accepted when they were in need. Samantha Grill noted Women
made such acts of generosity without expectation of repayment. The

sense of security obtained from this informal community support

system helped women maintain strength during the Dust Bowl.
Offering assistance to neighbors provided women with a sense of
fulfillment as well, for women were quick to help their neighbors in
need. Yet, these brave women despaired despite all of the efforts,
Henderson tells us, The road ahead seems blocked. All sense of
security for our old age has vanished. Low in 1934 also states, I love
Stony Brook, but am not going to. Everything I loved will be gone.
But memory and time are great healers- fifty years following the Dust
Bowl Low added an epilogue to her diary- the term Dust Bowl days
means little now to young people, and even to many people who lived
though those days seem to have forgotten. After all, they may
believe, it is a period of history that can never recur and is best
forgotten.
11. Riney-Kehrberg, Pamela: Separation and Sorrow: A Farm Womans
Life, 1935-1941. Agricultural History 1933;67(2):185-196.
This is clearly a womans perspective on life upon the high-plains
farm and not the usual tale about the wives of the tenet farmers that
have more often portrayed. This is an article about the writings of a
Mennonite farm womans perspective on the Dust Bowl tragedy,
Martha Elizabeth Schmidt Friesen from her diary. Martha married
George Friesen in 1904 and moved to Lamont township, Hamilton
County, Kansas a small, rural Mennonite community. She remained on
the farm, raising three children, losing one, with her husband until her
death in 1955. She stayed throughout the miseries and loss of the
dust bowl. Her diary begins in 1936 when she was 52 years old. Her
children had grown and she and her husband managed the farm with
their oldest daughter, Sally along with her husband and two
grandchildren. Sally lived upon the neighboring farm. Margaret her
second daughter was in business and she noted that the Friesen farm

amounted to 1200 acres, with 100 acres of wheat, 80 in broom corn,

25 in sweet sorghums, 15 in sudan grass, and 400 fallow. They sold
$75 worth of milk and $350 worth of poultry, and made 100 pounds of
butter. They owned 144 hens, 1 horse, 4 milk cows, 9 other cattle, and
abundant swine.
Maarthas daily routine is well documented in the diary. She
spent much of her days churning butter, ironing, cooking and baking,
washing, sewing, and preserving food. She also would go into the
barnyard to care for the chickens, draw water, and chop and gather
wood. Her husband was busy tending to the large farm, fixing the
machines and running errands to town. The sometimes shared milking
duties, calving and watering trees. The dust bowl years were similar,
but the increased work of cleaning secondary to dust storms added
significantly to her workload. She did not have to attend to the family
vegetable garden though. The dust bowl added to their expenses
significantly because they could not grow enough greens and fruits to
support the family. She would go to purchase tomatoes, lettuce,
carrots, peas, peaches, strawberries, string beans, potatoes,
cantaloupe, cabbage, and bananas.
The dirt and high winds plaguing southwestern Kansas during
the 1930s handicapped Martha Friesens homemaking efforts as well.
These conditions significantly increased her housekeeping burdens.
She would have to lay aside her normal duties because the dust storms
created havoc inside the familys home. On March 19, 1937 she
writes, to-day were drying the remains of our clothes in the house
& some of them ought to be washed over & will have to be. Two
weeks later another dust storm intercedes. blowed hard after
midnight when we got up this morning house was all sifted full of dust.
Couldnt see that Mo had it all cleaned up yesterday. This continuous
cycle of cleaning along with the grueling efforts of keeping the farm
functioning was emotionally, as well as physically overwhelming at

times. She lamented, Mo has been a Blue Monday all day long so far.
She feels like a Black Thunder Cloud looks. First thing after breakfast
she cleans dust then she get bluer and bluer cries & cries & cries some
more Then when this Terrific Dust Storms approaches. She thinks
things are as worse as they can get. On nice days, though all was
well with the world. well one feels like singing this song now for
several days. What the farmers are getting now is a farm relief since
dust has not blowed for 4 daysIt looks very cheerful one can rejoice.
One has a new lease on life.
The late summer and fall found Martha in the throes of canning
and packaging food stores for the winter. From August and November
1937 she preserved 20 gallons of peaches, 18 gallons of tomatoes, 28
jars of jams and jellies, a gallon of peach butter, 16 jars of dill and
bread and butter pickles and 49 cans of assorted fruits. She also
process pork and rendered lard for cooking from the butchered hogs.
In many ways Martha Friesen was the typical Midwestern farm
woman of her day; she was hard working and God-fearing, as well as
an economic and emotional pillar of her family. It appears that typical
of women at this time and place, Martha participated at the center of
networks of other women, both kin and neighbors. But she was closest
to her daughters, son and their families. Many of the close neighbors
and families though were giving in to the burdens of the dust bowel
conditions, selling out and moving on. By the mid to late 1930s her
diary reveals that her closest social networks were principally her adult
daughters, Sally and Margaret with her husband George. Much of the
time, her children would visit and stay at the Friesen home through
1936 and 37. Martha became ill in March of 1937 and Margaret came
to the rescue, doing much of her mothers work. Her oldest daughter,
Sally would come and spend the day with her children. Sally &
kiddies stayed here all day, & sewed Patsy [granddaughter] a dress &
sewed up her quilt.

Riney-Kehrberg gives us some statistics about

the social networks from Hamilton County and how this probably had
an impact on Marthas life. The population of Hamilton County in the
1930s was 3328 in 1930 and diminished to 2645 by 1940 (21%
decrease). Between 1936 till 1940 was the worst of times and the
greatest loss from the county. In 1937, things were so bad that on one
occasion George stormed into the house and told Martha, pack your
Suit Case lets go, and get clear out of the County. Moving along some
where the River isnt far enough. They ended up visiting one of the
girls in Oregon instead.
Will, Margaret and Sally all moved away from Hamilton County
leaving Martha and George essentially alone on the farm homestead.
She most certainly missed the closeness she had with Sally and the
children as she continued her daily routines of chores. Martha did
occasionally travel to a neighboring farm to quilt with other women,
but increasingly she turned for entertainment to the family radio. The
static electricity caused by larger dust storms though could easily
interfere with her one remaining social connection. She became
increasingly unwell, because of rheumatoid arthritis and she lost all of
her teeth in 1938, leaving her to wear dentures. She contented her
lonely hours by writing to her children 3 to 4 times a week. She also
kept a clipped poem near the letters from her children in her diary- it
reads:
I think oftimes as the night draw nigh,
Of an old house on the hill,
Of a yard all wide, and blossom-starred
Where the children played at will.
And when the night at last came down,
Hushing the merry din;
Mother would look all around and ask,
Are all the children in?
Tis many and many a year since then,

And the yard is still, so still.

But I see it all as the shadows cree,
And through many years have been
Since then I can hear our mother ask,
Are all the children in?
How very melancholy. The occasional visits were periods of brief
respite, but she missed her children, And another very lonely day to
content with since the vacancy of Will Our Toastie eater we certainly
miss him. All the emptiness is staring Mo in the face ever where she
goesMo cant keep from sobbing. She missed Sally and the little
ones the most. the lonesome couple enduring the Dust Bowl rolled
in the Hay at 9:30. She and George really were struggling with the
loss of family, leaving the Friesen home quiet without the high-spirited
grand children.
The individuals who were left behind during the Dust Bowl years
forms the backdrop of this exploration of Martha Friesens diary. It is
ironic that the ten years of misery, though which the family toiled
simply to maintain themselves might have been the happiest years of
Marthas life. Her son, Will was tragically injured in a saw mill accident
in Oregon in May of 1941. This tragically affected both her and George
and they became increasingly distant from one another. Fortunately
Sally and her family returned to Kansas much to the comfort of Martha.
The author of this article concludes that the historians have not
thoroughly explored the impact of community disruption upon the
individuals who were left behind during the Great Depression and the
Dust Bowl.
12. Babb, Sanora, Babb, Dorothy: On the Dirty Plate Trail:
Remembering the Dust Bowl Refugee Camps. Univ. Texas Press, Austin
TX 2007.

This is a somewhat difficult read only because the interwoven editorial

comments of Douglas Wixson are inserted throughout. It begins with
one of the Babb sisters poems- entitled Migrant Farmer:
Self-pity is not their way of telling you!
This migrant life is hard.
That it is unaccustomed and deplored.
The wives say almost half apologetically:
You must excuse the way things look;
We aint yet used to managing this way,
But well soon learn.
In the Preface, Wixson gives us some insight into the natural history of
migrants and is worth quoting his second paragraph in part:
Longer than recorded history, mass displacements of people,
uprooted by famine, war, disease, natural disaster, or economic failure,
have created permanent migration flows that move through and
around human settlement. In the long chronicle of uprooting and
dispassion a single episode resembles every other in its account of
losses and gains; only the proportion of each differs. Forced by
extenuating circumstances or drawn by the promise of a better life,
people will take great personal risks, severing ties with place,
loosening personal bonds, forgoing familiar resources. They become
migrants: marketable human commodities, statusless outsiders,
figures in statistical surveys. The terms of their contingent status
frequently compel migrants to accept undesirable living and work
conditions, discrimination, and exclusion. As individuals they are
condemned to silence, valued for their labor power, not for other
human attributes they possess. Driving through Californias
agricultural valleys travelers glimpse brown-skinned migrants
harvesting in fields, timeless figures of toil like Millets Gleaners.
This work though represents Sanora Babbs field notes during
1938-1939 while working as the assistant to Tom Collins of the FSA in

setting up migrant camps for the Federal government from California

to Oregon. It is accompanied by her sister, Dorothys photographs,
being an amateur, quite different from the professional photographic
records that were taken by Dorothea Lange and others. The notes are
peppered with interview impressions recorded on her journey through
the Dirty-plate trail or Route 99 running through the Californian
agricultural central valley (see below). Sanora was not an Okie farmer,
though she did come from the same region but rose out of the
agricultural pathway by attending college, getting an education and
became a reporter and author. Her first novel- Whose Names Are
Unknown became eclipsed by Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath which
was published using these self-same field notes. I will quote her notes
for the remainder of this written summary- since her words frankly
were utilized by her for her novels and eventually by both Steinbeck
and herself. I cannot summarize Dorothys photographs however- but
quoting again from Wixson (p40-41):
Babbs photographs, by contrast, are the work of a gifted
amateur whose purpose was not simply to portray the refugees as
victims of a failed economy and bad luck but also to explore the
material causes of their condition and what they were doing about
them. Her method was investigative in the manner of the Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens, whose film of the Spanish Civil War, The Spanish
Earth, depicted not merely people fighting and dying, but why they
were fighting and dying. Absent are stylized framing and selection.
Their authenticity, one might argue, derives from the circumstances of
their making.

Sanora Babb inspired frank openness amongst her bretheren and

families from the migrant camps. When we left they said they wished
we didnt have to go because it was like visiting with old friends. That
made me feel very happy. These people dont say things they dont
mean, in fact, they wont say much of anything unless they think they
can trust you. Mixon summarizes the writings and meanings of
Babbs invaluable record of these dryland farmers plight. The fate of
the farmer-refugees was to be caught between a fading dream and the
reality of speculative economic forces that dictated the price of crops
and livestock. The creation of a class of landless wage earners who
sought uncritically mass-market-produced culture and consumer goods
conflicted with the long-held convictions- personal autonomy, frugality,
resourcefulness, and independence. What remained unaltered,
however, was a conservative faith in hard work, individual initiative,
and moral strictures. Babb was not immune to the scale of human
tragedy that daily presented itself to her careful observations. Once

during the day I almost broke, but I had to hold myself tight against it,
because they have enough troubles without that, and if we felt bad,
theyd feel worse. They know we like them and want to help them
without seeing our teers. When Steinbeck first came, he had to stop
seeing them before the day was out. Tom Collins said he said: By
god! I cant stand anymore! Im going away and blow the lid off this
place.
Sonoras rhetoric is at times inspiring and at times she wallows in
the self-doubts of her fellow brethren from the dust bowl. She
interrupts her storytelling to relate an anecdote to her sister, on a
small thing that happened. Have to stop and leave now. Something
nice just happened. An old man who helps the woman hotel manager
her a little, just brought me a big piece of angel food cake- the best
one I ever tasted. I was surprised, and needless pleased. She goes
on to speculate about the qualities of these migrant families,
comparing them to other people around the world she has witnessed
first hand. They are, as you said, heroic. They are like the people of
Spain, and of China: they are the salt of the earth kind, the honest,
direct patient people, who have worked hard all their lives, owned their
homes, and farms, or worked on them and lived decently at least.
They are the real descendents of the American pioneers, and if youd
see the spirit in them, youd never cease to wonder.
And unlike the superficial stories of other Federal Agencies, Sonora
give specific details of her visits, showing her instinctive attraction to
the families themselves:
When we finished we went to visit a family from Oklahoma and
stayed about an hour and a half. They were such nice people and had
eight of the best-looking children: 6 boys and 2 girls, all clean and
bright looking. When we came in they told us: Everybody in camp
was talking about you folks this morning; said you worked day and
night and in the rain, and are the only case people who are human

beings. (Of course, I dont deserve this, even though I was there the
night before, but is shows their feeling.) Their bedding was wet from
the leaky tent and they had piled thing up in the dry part and we all
sat there. The woman was patching. The clothes are more patches
than anything else. They wanted to give us a rag rug she had made of
the rags they couldnt wear. It was very pretty, but they need it
themselves. They said it would be to remember them by. They made
some boilded-over coffee, and we all had some and talked together.
When we left they said they wished we didnt have to go because it
was like visiting with friends. That made me feel very happy. These
people dont say things they dont mean, in fact, they wont say much
of anything unless they think they can trust you. I took a picture of
them, and I surely hope it is good. The smallest boy, about 5, was
surely cute. He was bashful, and kept hiding his head, and looking at
us shyly. Finally he felt all right and talked some. When I looked at
him, he would laugh and hide again. He had on some little coveralls,
and all toes were out of both shoes, no stockings. (p.127-28)
This book concludes with a selection of articles that Sonoma
Babb had writte for various newspapers. These included The Dark
Earth, Working in the Imperial Valley, and Whose Names are
Unknown (excerpt). These were selections of her own chosing and
just highlight more of her prose, her connection, and her sense of
worth about these migrants, but do not clearly look into the family
scenario or the womans role in the solidarity of the families.
13. Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne: Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie. Verso Publ.,
New York 1997.
14. Gardiner, Judith Kegan: On Female Identity and Writing by Women.
Critical Inquiry 1981;8(2):347-361.

15. Roberts, Evan: Married womens work in war and depression, 1911940. Presented at the 5th European Social Science History
Conference, Berlin March 2004.
16. Pearce, Sharyn: Changing places: working-class women in the
Fiction of the Depression. Westerly 1986;4:41-52
17. La Chapell, Peter: At the Crossroads of Whiteness: Anti-Migrant
Activism, Eugenics, and Popular Culture in Depression-Era California. In
Moving Stories: Migration and the American West, 1850-2000, (ed. Scot
E. Casper and Lucinda Long) Nevada Humanities Committee, Reno NV
2001.
18. Stein, Walter J: The Okie as farm laborer. Agricult Hist
1975;49(2):202-215.
19. Heinz, M. Elizabeth: Mothers of the Great Depression: Aesthetic
Intent of Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. Thesis, University of North
Carolina Wilmington.