Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" Photographs in the Farm Security Administration Collection: An Overview The photograph that has become known as "Migrant Mother" is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made of Florence Owens Thompson and her children in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month's trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience: I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction.
In “Passing Likeness: Dorothea Lange’s ‘Migrant Mother’ and the Paradox of Iconicity,” Sally Stein sifts through the legacy of a familiar image with a history of misrecognition. Migrant Mother, which Stein asserts is the “most widely reproduced photograph in the entire history of photographic image-making” is a portrait of Florence Thompson that Lange took at a labor camp in Nipomo, California in 1936 [1]. Since its conception, the photograph has been criticized from various points of view, and Stein spends the beginning of her essay recording these reactions, from the outrage of Lange’s boss at the Farm Security Administration (FSA), Roy Stryker, when he learned that Lange had retouched the “documentary” image, to cultural historian Wendy Kozol’s critique of the image as “a quintessential example of the FSA traffic in conservative stereotypes” [2]. Stein’s real interest lay in how Thompson gained iconic status as a white “New Deal Madonna” despite her Cherokee heritage and unmarried status, information that began to circulate as part of the photograph’s history only half a century after it was taken. The paradox of iconicity thus seems to be that Thompson was not the iconic white matriarch that she was initially taken to be; she is instead an icon of the Euro-American tendency to misrecognize Native Americans as both heirs and foils to their own racial identity.
Dorothea Lange's photograph “Migrant Mother” is a very historical photograph and has been able to give society a view into the past. The photograph was taken during the Great Depression. Dorothea Lange's purpose in taking the photograph was to show the government and the public how the rural areas needed help. This photograph is one of the most famous of the time period because of how well it was able to get its message across to the public. The photograph shows the struggles and sufferings of these people through the details shown on the mother and the children.
By: David Kim Chicago Housing Authority The Chicago Housing Authority was first established in 1937, and was built under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Chicago Housing Authority provided housings for the people who receives low income, or people that are having trouble with poverty. Chicago Housing Authority also dealt with segregation between the African-Americans and the whites. However, HUD took over in 1995 after seeing the poor performance and mismanagement and within that same year, high-rise buildings were demolished in order to redevelop this entire community. HUD abolished segregation and allowed middle-class families to join with the lower class, creating a harmonizing community.
It is during this time, in the fictional town of Maycomb in southern Alabama, that the novel is set. The Great Depression brought distress to many people throughout America. It was with the Wall Street Crash in October 1929 that suddenly ended the strong American economy, and the Great Depression began. The crash led to many companies and banks closing, and industries suffering as no one wanted to spend any money. Many were left unemployed and had to take to the road to find work.
Millions of acres of farmland became useless and hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes and migrated to California and to other states. Owning no land, many migrant workers traveled from farm to farm to pick fruit and other crops at starvation wages (Hornbeck, pg16-18). During The Early European and American Exploration of the Great Plains, the region in which the Dust Bowl occurred was thought unsuitable for European-style agricultural endeavors were primarily cattle ranching with some cultivation, however a series of harsh winters beginning in 1886, followed by a short drought in 1890 which led to an expansion of land under cultivation (Egan pg20-22). It was an important determinant of The Great Depression because throughout the 1930’s more than a million acres of land were affected by The Dust Bowl, thousands of farmers lost their livelihood, property, and mass migration patterns began to emerge, farmers left rural American in search of work in urban areas (Haberler, pg 70-72), During The Great Depression, severe drought conditions prevailed much of The United States plains soil turned to dust and large dark clouds could be seen across the horizon in Texas. Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico.
This novel was set during the Great Depression in which the country suffered a great economical down fall. During that time people lost their jobs and became poor. Also at that time it was a man dominated society. Therefore it was very harsh and difficult for the American male workers as they had to travel long distances to find suitable jobs. Also the American dream was a big belief each American had during the time.
Mildred D Taylor was born on the 13th of September 1943 in Jackson, Mississippi. I think she thought of the story because she was born in Mississippi (where the novel was set) and she was born during the Great Depression where black people where discriminated against. Many of her books are based on stories of her family that she heard whilst growing up. She experienced some of the unfairness so decided to show her hurt in literature so everyone could see how hard it was to live during the Great Depression. The plot is well written and is told in first person narrative by Cassie.
After graduating with a Masters in Fine Arts O’Connor spent the next several years living and writing in New York State until she was diagnosed with Lupus, the disease that had killed her father. At that point she moved with her mother to their family farm Andalusia where she would spend the last 13 years of her life writing and raising exotic birds. It was here that Flannery would be inspired to write her longest short story “The Displaced Person” A story which, like much of her work, borrowed heavily from her own life. “The Displaced Person” was a critical commentary on the times in which she lived and she fearlessly confronted controversial issues like racism and emigration. The inspiration for “The Displaced Person” came from an emigrant family that moved to her mother’s farm Andalusia in 1953.
Book Review for Farewell to Manzanar The book entitled Farewell to Manzanar is a memoir written by Jeanne and her husband James Houston. It is a book that tries to give a vivid description of the hardships that the Japanese-Americans faced during the Second World War. It was a painful period for every Japanese family living in America after the bombing of the Pearl Harbor by the Japanese and this was the move that led to the Americans to join the war. The story is recounted through the eyes of the young Jeanne Wakatsuki. It explores a non-fiction work of the experiences that she underwent at the interment camps that were set up for the Japanese families.