Migrant mother: The famous photograph has become a symbol of fear, poverty and hunger, but also of the power of motherhood

The famous photo was taken during the crisis

In the mid-thirties of the 20th century, the American Farm Security Administration, which was created to improve conditions for poor agricultural workers, decided to hire several photographers to document the work of the agency and the social problems of the population. American Dorothea Lange was among them. The documentary photographer, whose ancestors immigrated to the United States from Germany, became most famous for her images from the difficult period of the economic crisis, which broke out in 1929 and whose effects were felt by the entire world at the time.

Ten-minute photo shoot in the camp of pea pickers

In 1936, Dorothea Lange was driving past a sign near the California town of Nipomo that pointed to a nearby pea-picking camp. She was in a hurry, that’s why she didn’t stop, but after a while she couldn’t help it and decided to turn her car around. After all, in a camp full of migrant agricultural workers, she could take interesting photos for her office. When she got among the pea pickers, who numbered up to a few thousand and survived in poor conditions without money or work, as the pea crop was destroyed by bad weather that year, she noticed a young mother of several children. The photographer didn’t even ask her name, she only learned that the woman was 32 years old. In ten minutes, a series of several photographs was created, one of which made the author famous and earned her the recognition of colleagues and the public.

The anguish of the poor mother aroused the sympathy of the public

The portrait of a mother, carefully supporting her head and looking fearfully into the distance, who has her two children at her side and an infant on her lap, soon traveled around the world and became a symbol of the entire economic crisis, which affected all strata of the population. Dorothea Lange sent the photograph to the agency that employed her, but before that she gave it to a newspaper in San Francisco, which immediately printed it and added to the picture a report that thousands of migrant workers were starving in California. The emotive black-and-white picture of a mother with children did not leave the public cold, and a few days later the camp of impoverished pea pickers received generous food aid from the government. But the main character from the iconic photo was no longer there.

The world did not learn the identity of the woman in the picture until the seventies

For many years, nothing was known about the fate of the woman from the world-famous photograph. Her identity was unknown until the 1970s, when a reporter sought her out. Her name was Florence Owens Thompson and she was born in 1903 in Oklahoma. She had Cherokee Native American blood in her veins and spent her childhood on a farm. At the age of seventeen, she married a farmer’s son, and after the birth of three children, the young family moved to California, where Florence and her husband worked tirelessly on farms and sawmills. When the woman was expecting her sixth child, her husband succumbed to tuberculosis, and the mother of many had a lot to do to support herself and her offspring. In time, more children were born to her, and Florence toiled from dawn to dusk as a migrant farm worker. She made a living by harvesting seasonal crops, such as cotton or beets.

If Florence could turn back time, she would not have been photographed

It was after one such beet picking in 1936 that she and her family were traveling along the California highway to another job when their car suddenly broke down and stopped right in the pea picking camp. Her then-partner and older sons went to a nearby town to get the necessary parts for the broken car. Meanwhile, Florence and the younger children temporarily camped among the local pea pickers. It was here that Dorothea Lange discovered her and convinced her to let herself be photographed. She allegedly promised the woman that the pictures would never be published, so Florence agreed. Dorothea went on to become a renowned photographer and celebrity, but the mother of her iconic image wishes the famous photo had never been taken. It also bothered her that although her face was known by people almost all over the world, she didn’t get a cent from it. Her children felt the same way.

She became a symbol of the crisis, but she always managed to feed her children

The family of Florence Owens Thompson took one of the most famous photographs in American history at the mercy of them only in the early eighties, when they were forced to ask the public for financial help. Florence became seriously ill and had no money to pay for medical expenses. Along with the money came a huge number of letters expressing interest in the fate of the woman and mother, whose face symbolized not only the difficult life during the crisis, but also the strength of motherhood, when a mother’s greatest concern is to provide for and feed her children. The Florence family reconsidered their once negative attitude towards the picture and after a wave of touching support from people began to feel proud of the photo. Florence Owens Thompson succumbed to her illness in the same year, 1983. One of her daughters remembered her as a very strong woman who sometimes had nothing to eat but always managed to make sure her children had enough to eat.

https://www.history.com/news/migrant-mother-new-deal-great-depression

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Florence_Owens_Thompson&wprov=rarw1

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