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Seeing the Invisible People and Mexican Repatriation Act - Part 4

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I watched a movie last night on TCM called Double Harness from 1933. It was the story of two sisters, one who could not control her spending and the other who believed that marriage was a business. She wanted to marry a playboy and help redeem him in order for him to achieve his potential.  There were no poor people to be seen, even the butler had it good.  It was a fantasy. In recognition of Women’s History Month we need to look at Florence Thompson.  Florence was not living in a fantasy but the reality of the depression. 

You might not know her name but you might know the photographer that made her famous, Dorothea Lange and her classic photo “Migrant Mother.”

Florence Thompson by Dorothea Lange

Under assignment from the U.S.government, Dorothea Lange and other photographers documented the people of the country during the Depression and into World War II.  Here are a few examples of photography taken during that time, some are Lange’s and other are possibly from the governmental archives.

The performer is Tom Waits doing his rendition of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?

There are many women who have been inspired by Dorothea Lange work and have documented people in plain sight. Holly Pickett has a gallery of her photojournalism both within and outside of the country. Her blog, The Pickett Lens,  contains photos and commentary about her experiences. Amanda Lucier also documents the everyday as memories held in trust for future times.

1930’s Mexican Repatriation Act

Not all of the citizens of the country were Anglo-American. Depressions and Recessions bring out the best or the worst in people. Although there was equality in the number of Americans thrown in financial chaos old behaviors and racism rose to discriminate against people of color.

There was a force removal of Mexican workers and Mexican-American citizens to Mexico. To be specific, not just undocumented workers or visitors were affected by this act. People who were born and raised in the United States and who were of Mexican decent were force to relocate to Mexico.  Approximately 2.5 million people were removed from their homes.  California alone relocated 400,000. This was done in Texas, Illinois, and Michigan and other states as well. 

The reason for the relocation was that it was felt that Anglo-Americans, primarily male, needed and deserved work above anyone else. You can read an edited version of the events or the full text from the Texas State Historical Association. In 2006 USA Today had an article about the force expulsion of Mexican American citizens and the possibility of an apology.

The state of California has already provided their apology:

8722.  The State of California apologizes to those individuals described in Section 8721 for the fundamental violations of their basic civil liberties and constitutional rights committed during the period of illegal deportation and coerced emigration. The State of California regrets the suffering and hardship those individuals and their families endured as a direct result of the government sponsored Repatriation Program of the 1930s.

2009 New Voices of the Diaspora

Bloggers that write about topics that reflect their heritage and interest are on mission. Over at Latino Politics blog there is a look at the financial crisis from the point of view of Latino/a citizens and immigrant Latinos. How is the housing crisis maybe affecting Latinos:

The Latino community has been one of the hardest hit by the recent foreclosure crisis. A recent Pew Center report indicated that nearly one in ten Hispanic homeowners say that they have missed a mortgage payment or were unable to make a full payment in the last year. In addition, 3% say that they have received a foreclosure notice according to the Pew Center survey, and over a third of those surveyed are worried that their home may go into foreclosure.

Another good post concerns the need for attention and a bit of that stimulus money to reach the Latino community.

Wendy Carrillo would like there to be more discussions about the current conflicts between Latinos and African Americans. The session she attended didn’t quiet start the dialog:

A visiting African American attendee who introduced himself as a former gang banger turned at-risk youth mentor asked the

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blindedbyblonde
blindedbyblonde 5 pts

Historians have since clarified some of the dimensions of the
misnamed migration. Numbers are elusive but it is safe to say that
300-400,000 Oklahomans, Texans, Arkansans, and Missourians moved to
California and settled there during the 1930s. This would have been a
significant population transfer in any era but was particularly momentous in
the context of the depression when internal migration rates for other parts
of the country were low and when high unemployment made any kind of
relocation risky.

            Distinctive too were certain demographic features of the migrant
population. Whites comprised roughly 95 percent of those moving. African
Americans were well represented in the populations of Oklahoma, Arkansas,
and Texas and some left during the 1930s, but usually for the cities of the
North. It was not until World War II that large numbers of African Americans
would move to the West Coast. Among the migrating whites gender was pretty
evenly balanced and the number of families quite large. A small family
headed by young adults was the most common profile.

            Many of the people moving west were not farm folk. At least half
had been living in a town or city and doing some kind of blue-collar or less
frequently white-collar work before unemployment or stories of California
opportunities encouraged them to pack the car and hit the road. Most of
these migrants headed for the cities of California where they usually found
jobs and a decent standard of living in fairly short order. They were the
overlooked half of the illnamed Dust Bowl migration; their urban stories
lost in the concern and fascination that centered on the relocating farm
families who had chosen to look for work in the agricultural valleys of
California.

             John Steinbeck and Dorothea Lange created the most memorable
portraits of what some families faced in those areas. Lange toured farm
labor camps in the spring of 1936, snapping photographs of ragged children
and worried parents living in tents and waiting for work. Some were
completely out of funds and food.  Her most famous picture, "migrant
mother," showed a gaunt young widow holding her three daughters, her
careworn face suggesting that hope was running out. John Steinbeck wrote a
set of newspaper articles that year depicting in similar terms the desperate
plight of thousands. Then he sat down to write the book that became, three
years later, The Grapes of Wrath. His 1939 fictional account of the
Joad family, who lose their Oklahoma farm to dust and avaricious bankers and
then set out for the California promised land only to find there even
greater challenges and hardships, became an instant classic, the publishing
phenomena of the decade. When Hollywood followed up with an equally
brilliant movie directed by John Ford, the memory of the Dust Bowl migration
was secure. These works of art--by Steinbeck , Ford, Lange, and others--gave
the Joads and their kind a place in American history that would last
indefinitely.

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