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Family of four to be returned to Oklahoma by the Relief Administration. "They won't go until they get so hungry that there's nothing else for them to do. They won't go--not twenty-five percent will go" said a transient case worker in Imperial County. This family was hungry. They lost a two-year-old baby as the result of exposure during the winter. Holtville, California

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Family of four to be returned to Oklahoma by the Relief Administration. "They won't go until they get so hungry that there's nothing else for them to do. They won't go--not twenty-five percent will go" said a transient case worker in Imperial County. This family was hungry. They lost a two-year-old baby as the result of exposure during the winter. Holtville, California

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Summary

Public domain photograph of rural California, dust bowl refugees, 1930s-1940s, no copyright restrictions image - Picryl description

The Dust Bowl exodus was the largest migration in American history that happened during the Great Depression. Although overall three out of four farmers stayed on their land, the mass exodus depleted the population drastically in certain areas. By 1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the Plains states; of those, 200,000 moved to California. Arriving in California, the migrants were faced with a life almost as difficult as the one they had left. Like the Joad family in John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”, some 40 percent of migrant farmers wound up in the San Joaquin Valley, picking grapes and cotton. They took up the work of Mexican migrant workers, 120,000 of whom were repatriated during the 1930s.

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Date

01/01/1937
person

Contributors

Lange, Dorothea, photographer
place

Location

california
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Source

Library of Congress
copyright

Copyright info

No known restrictions. For information, see U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black & White Photographs http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/071_fsab.html

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