Great Depression, Dust Bowl, and American Migrations Aaron Weiss

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Great Depression, Dust Bowl, and American Migrations

Aaron Weiss Spring 2014

CIEP 475 Workshop – Teaching with Primary Sources Course

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Unite Topic: Great Depression, Dust Bowl, and American Migrations Background: This unit is designed with students in an American History course at a selective enrollment public high school in mind, but includes many notations about possible ways to modify it to create the right fit in various classes. By the time this unit is taught in the second semester students will be quite familiar with and experienced at analyzing primary sources, however they will not have had very much practice examining photographs as documents. Therefore, the first lesson focuses on skills of historical inquiry when dealing with photographic evidence. Then the second lesson examines a recurring question of the course: How and why do the definitions of American citizenship (inclusion and exclusion, formal and informal) change over time? In this case, the question is examined in regards to how Mexican-Americans and Mexican migrant workers were affected by the Great Depression. Finally, in the third lesson students craft their opinions on the question of how much government intervention is appropriate. Table of Contents: Lesson 1: ……………………………………..1 Resources for Lesson 1………………………..9 Lesson 2: ……………………………………..16 Resources for Lesson 2………………………..20 Lesson 3: ……………………………………..27 Resources for Lesson 3………………………..32

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Lesson One Plan 1. Title How to analyze photographic evidence of the Great Depression like a historian. 2. Overview In this lesson students will examine photos as primary sources to practice collecting evidence and interpreting point of view. 3. Objectives

• Students will be able to use specific evidence to answer the following essential questions: To what degree can photographs be considered objective primary sources? To what degree can they be considered valid primary sources?

4. Standards (Common Core)

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.5 Analyze how a text uses structure to emphasize key points or advance an explanation or analysis.

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.6 Compare the point of view of two or more authors for how they treat the same or similar topics, including which details they include and emphasize in their respective accounts.

5. Time Required One 90 minute block period 6. Recommended Grade Range 9-12 7. Subject/Topic Social Studies: American History PREPARATION 8. Materials Used “Alike but Different” graphic organizer

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9. Resources Used

Title: Dust Storm. Amarillo, Texas URL: http://loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998018986/PP/ Author/Creator: Arthur Rothstein Date: April, 1936 Title: Oklahoma dust bowl refugees. San Fernando, California URL: http://loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998018535/PP/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: June, 1935 Title: Quotation about choice of photography subjects URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/docchap1.html Author/Creator: Ben Shahn Date: 1964 Title: Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, quotation to introduce homework Pages: xvi-xvii Author/Creator: Linda Gordon Date: 2010 Title: Mexican mother in California URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998017774/PP/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: June, 1935 Title: Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998021539/PP/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: February or March, 1936 Title: Eighteen year-old mother from Oklahoma, now a California migrant URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/fsa2000000925/PP/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: February or March, 1937 Title: To harvest the crops of California thousands of families live literally on wheels, San Joaquin Valley URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004670049/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: February 1935 Title: Breadline at McCauley Water Street Mission under Brooklyn Bridge, New York URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998018760/PP/ Author/Creator: not available Date: between 1930 and 1934

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PROCEDURE 10. Description of Procedure

1. Students will be assigned a homework reading before this lesson that introduces the Great Depression, Dust Bowl, and migrations of the 1930s.

2. Background notes building-on or reviewing textbook homework reading. As appropriate, this may include topics and terms such as the stock market crash of 1929, Dust Bowl, Agricultural Adjustment Act, “tractored” off land, cold reception of “Okies” in California to highlight main features of the Dust Bowl and migrations. (14 minutes)

3. If appropriate for the group of students, hold a think-pair-share to brainstorm about the question: What kind of sources do historians use to gather information about the past? (Answers may include letters, government documents, interviews, historical periodicals and newspapers, speeches, and photographs.) (5 minutes)

4. Introduce the essential questions for the lesson. (1 minute)

5. Notes to introduce Dorothea Lange and the Farm Security Administration photography project. The following notes are intended to give a teacher options of how much detail to include in introducing this topic to the class. The information that most relates to the objectives of this lesson are underlined. The LOC sources are noted parenthetically. (14 minutes)

i. Dorothea Lange was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1895 and studied photography in New York City before the First World War. In 1919, she moved to San Francisco, where she earned her living as a portrait photographer for more than a decade. During the Depression's early years Lange's interest in social issues grew and she began to photograph the city's dispossessed. A 1934 exhibition of these photographs introduced her to Paul Taylor, an associate professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley, and in February 1935 the couple together documented migrant farm workers in Nipomo and the Imperial Valley for the California State Emergency Relief Administration. (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/docchap3.html)

ii. Copies of the reports Lange and Taylor produced reached Roy Stryker, who offered Lange a job with the [Federal] Resettlement Administration in August 1935. Unlike the agency's other photographers, Lange did not move to Washington but used her Berkeley home as a base of operations. She and Taylor were married that winter. (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/docchap3.html)

iii. Lange returned to the Imperial Valley in early 1937 for the Resettlement Administration. The valley was in a state of crisis, and on February 16 Lange reported on the situation to Stryker: “I was forced to switch from Nipomo to the Imperial Valley because of the conditions there. They have always been notoriously bad as you know and what goes on in the Imperial is beyond belief. The Imperial Valley has a social structure all its own and partly because of its

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isolation in the state those in control get away with it. But this year's freeze practically wiped out the crop and what it didn't kill is delayed--in the meanwhile, because of the warm, no rain climate and possibilities for work the region is swamped with homeless moving families. The relief association offices are open day and night 24 hours. The people continue to pour in and there is no way to stop them and no work when they get there.” (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/docchap3.html)

iv. As many as six thousand migrants arrived in California from the Midwest every month, driven by unemployment, drought, and the loss of farm tenancy. In An American Exodus, which he co-authored with Lange, Taylor wrote that the Okies and Arkies had "been scattered like the shavings from a clean-cutting plane." Many drifted to the Imperial Valley after the completion of Boulder (Hoover) Dam in 1936, which guaranteed the valley a supply of water for irrigation. But the migrants, who competed with Mexicans and other immigrants for work, were offered "not land, but jobs on the land." The land was held by relatively few owners. In 1935 one-third of the farm acreage in the six hundred square miles of the Imperial Valley consisted of operations in excess of five hundred acres; seventy-four individuals and companies controlled much of the cropland. (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/docchap3.html)

v. In his biography of Lange, Milton Meltzer includes a marvelous account of Lange's trip. He reports that shortages of funds had led Stryker to lay off the photographer in October 1936. After two months of anxiety for them both, Stryker was able to rehire Lange in late January 1937; the photographer and her friend Ron Partridge set out for the valley the day after Stryker approved the trip. Long, exhausting days of photography were followed by overnight stays in rickety tourist courts paid for by Lange's four-dollar-per-diem maintenance allowance. Partridge has described how Lange worked: “She would walk through the field and talk to people, asking simple questions--what are you picking? . . . How long have you been here? When do you eat lunch? . . . I'd like to photograph you, she'd say, and by now it would be "Sure, why not," and they would pose a little, but she would sort of ignore it, walk around until they forgot us and were back at work.” (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/docchap3.html)

vi. Lange's photographs were intended to bolster support for the establishment of migrant camps in the area by the Resettlement Administration. On 12 March, five days after she returned home, Lange wrote Stryker that her "negatives are loaded with ammunition." She added that the situation was "no longer a publicity campaign for migratory agricultural labor camps" but rather "a major migration of people and a rotten mess." (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/docchap3.html)

vii. The photographs in the Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection form an extensive pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. This U.S. government photography project was headed for most of its existence by Roy E. Stryker, who guided the effort in a succession of government agencies: the Resettlement Administration (1935-1937), the Farm Security Administration (1937-1942), and the Office of War Information (1942-1944). The collection also includes photographs acquired from other governmental and non-governmental sources, including the News Bureau at the Offices of Emergency Management (OEM), various branches of the military, and industrial corporations. In total, the black-and-white portion of the collection consists of about 175,000 black-and-white film negatives, encompassing both negatives that were printed for FSA-OWI use and those that were not printed at the time. (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/)

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6. Guided practice examining and thinking-aloud about a photo of a dust

storm. (Worksheet 1.1) The teacher will guide students through discussing the questions and model how historians observe, reflect, and question as they examine sources. Additionally, the teacher will guide students in analyzing how the photographer tried to make persuasive claims in their work. Alternatively, the teacher could have everyone attempt it individually and then discuss or do partner work before a whole-class debriefing. (10 minutes)

7. Students will work individually or with partners to examine an image of a family migrating west and answer the accompanying guiding questions. (Worksheet 1.2) They will also compare two portraits Dorothea Lange made of migrant mothers. (Worksheets 1.3a and 1.3b) This is intended to be a chance for students to think about how photographs could be used to convey selected messages. Many students will have seen the first image from 1.3 before. Their interpretations about why the other portrait remained obscure will probably bring up the issues of race and public sympathy. (25 minutes)

8. While students are working individually or in pairs, the teacher will walk around to check on their progress and answer questions that arise.

9. Once students have finished worksheets 1.2 and 1.3b the class will reconvene to debrief about their interpretations. (15 minutes)

10. To introduce the homework/concluding assignment, the teacher will project/distribute/read the following quotation from Linda Gordon, a biographer of Dorothea Lange (1 minute):

i. “Historians and photographers choose what to include and exclude in the pictures they shape, frame their subjects so as to reveal, emphasize, relate, or separate different elements, and use interpretive techniques to do this. Some will argue, of course, that historians and documentarians have no business promoting their opinions, but that argument rests on the false assumption that it is possible to avoid doing so.”

11. The teacher will introduce the homework/evaluation assignment. An

example of how the tone and message of a photo can be changed with cropping is included on worksheet 1.4, if it is helpful to show students. The teacher can choose (or give students the choice) between worksheets 1.5 and 1.6 to complete for homework to demonstrate understanding of the key concepts of historical interpretation from the lesson. (5 minutes)

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11. Extension Ideas A selection of excellent photographs from the Farm Security Administration projects during the Great Depression is curated within seven essays at http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/documentingamerica.html . These could be a resource for substituting or adding to the suggested photos above. EVALUATION 12. Evaluation [add a rubric for evaluating HW – formal, informal] Details about how the teacher will evaluate student learning CREDITS 13. Designer(s) Aaron Weiss

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Worksheet 1.1

Title: Dust Storm. Amarillo, Texas URL: http://loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998018986/PP/ Author/Creator: Arthur Rothstein Date: April, 1936

1. What are the first things you notice about this photo? 2. How did the photographer add emotion to the image while documenting a dust storm? 3. Beyond simply trying to show what was happening, why do you think Arthur Rothstein took

this picture?

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Worksheet 1.2

Title: Oklahoma dust bowl refugees. San Fernando, California URL: http://loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998018535/PP/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: June, 1935

1. What are the first things you notice about this photo? 2. What do you think is happening in this photo? 3. How did the photographer add emotion to the image with her choice of how to take a family

portrait? 4. Beyond simply trying to show what was happening, why do you think Dorothea Lange took

this picture?

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Worksheet 1.3a

Title: Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998021539/PP/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: February or March, 1936

Title: Mexican mother in California URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998017774/PP/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: June, 1935

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Worksheet 1.3b

Summary of photograph 1: Summary of photograph 2:

What do the photographs have in common?

What is distinct about photograph 2?What is distinct about photograph 1?

Do you think Lange had similar motives in producing these two photos? Why do you think one of these photographs became famous, while the other remained obscure?

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Worksheet 1.4 (Homework Example) Title: Eighteen year-old mother from Oklahoma, now a California migrant URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/fsa2000000925/PP/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: February or March, 1937

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Worksheet 1.5

Title: To harvest the crops of California thousands of families live literally on wheels, San Joaquin Valley URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004670049/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: February 1935

Homework Instructions: Your task is to demonstrate how photographers make intentional choices about what to include and exclude, rather than just documenting unbiased facts. To do this, complete a sketch that imagines what may have been outside the frame the photographer chose. Your additions should try to alter the message or argument you think the photographer intended.

What message or claim does the photo convey after you’ve altered it?

What message or claim do you think the photographer wanted to convey with this photo?

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Worksheet 1.6

Title: Breadline at McCauley Water Street Mission under Brooklyn Bridge, New York URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998018760/PP/ Author/Creator: not available Date: between 1930 and 1934

Homework Instructions: Your task is to demonstrate how photographers make intentional choices about what to include and exclude, rather than just documenting unbiased facts. To do this, complete a sketch that imagines what may have been outside the frame the photographer chose. Your additions should try to alter the message or argument you think the photographer intended.

What message or claim do you think the photographer wanted to convey with this photo?

What message or claim does the photo convey after you’ve altered it?

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Lesson Two Plan 1. Title Mexican Migrants in the Great Depression 2. Overview Students will participate in a gallery walk [moving around the room to examine documents that are hanging on the walls] of photographs to investigate how the Great Depression specifically affected Mexican Americans and their place in American society. 3. Objectives

• Students will be able to analyze photos to collect evidence that helps them create and support an interpretation about the effect of the Great Depression on Mexican-Americans.

• Students will be able to address the essential question: How did the Great Depression affect Mexican-Americans and influence their inclusion or exclusion in what it meant to be American?

4. Standards (State and Common Core)

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, attending to such features as the date and origin of the information.

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.9 Compare and contrast treatments of the same topic in several primary and secondary sources.

5. Time Required One 90 minute block period 6. Recommended Grade Range 9-12 7. Subject/Topic Social Studies: American History PREPARATION 8. Materials Used Worksheet 2.1 is a graphic organizer chart for students to use during the gallery walk. The teacher may need to print two copies of the chart for each student to have enough space for all of the images, depending on how many images the teacher chooses to use.

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9. Resources Used Title: Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern American Pages: 129-138 Author/Creator: Mae Ngai Date: 2004 Title: Digital History Page: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3448 Author/Creator: Mintz, S., & McNeil, S. Date: 2013 Title: Agricultural. Mexican cotton pickers. Trailing oversize sacks behind them URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/oem2002005790/PP/ Author/Creator: Howard Hollem Date: Nov. 1942 Title: Agricultural. Mexican cotton pickers. Surrounded by the soft white cotton blossoms whose harvesting is essential to America's war effort URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/oem2002005792/PP/ Author/Creator: Howard Hollem Date: Nov. 1942 Title: Mexican mother in California URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998017774/PP/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: June, 1935 Title: Migrant camp, Weslaco, Texas. URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa2000013291/PP/ Author/Creator: Russell Lee Date: Feb. 1939 Title: Some of the carrot pickers in the Coachella Valley. There are one hundred people in this field coming from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Mexico. California URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8b31710/ Author/Creator: Doroetha Lange Date: Feb. 1937 Title: Employment signs in Spanish and English. These ranches (1938) increasingly use Negro pickers. Near Fresno, California URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/fsa1998018911/PP/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: Oct. 1933


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1. Ideally students will read and annotate an excerpt from Mae Ngai’s Impossible

Subjects (pages 129-138) about immigration policy and labor demands in the 1920s and 1930s will be assigned for homework before this lesson. Alternatively, if Ngai’s book is not available or not a feasible choice for students’ reading levels, most textbooks are at now including at least a brief section on the experiences of diverse groups of Americans during the depression. Such a section could be assigned as pre-reading homework. Also, the online textbook Digital History includes a short section that could be used to introduce the experience of Mexican Americans during the Great Depression (see citation above).

2. Introduce essential question for the lesson (1 minute)

3. Discuss Ngai excerpts together (or alternatively assigned homework reading) to clarify and ensure they can correctly identify the claims she makes (or the main ideas from the homework reading). (15 minutes)

4. Assign partners or groups of three in which students will work with to analyze documents. If necessary, students rearrange to meet with their partner or group. (3 minutes)

5. Students will confer in small groups to finish labeling columns of a graphic organizer (Worksheet 2.1), based on the concepts they want to focus on from Ngai’s work (or other homework reading). Student selections may include wages, jobs, migration, interactions with authorities, etc. The teacher walks around to check in with all of the groups and confirm they are choosing themes that come out of the homework reading and can guide their investigation of documents. Alternatively, teachers could pre-select the themes they want the class to focus on during the gallery walk. (6 minutes)

6. Students will conduct a gallery walk (moving around the room to examine documents that are hanging on the walls), using the graphic organizer to collect evidence and practice interpreting primary sources. In addition to examining the photographs, students should be directed to read and interpret the descriptions the photographers originally included with the images they captured. (50 minutes)

7. Introduce, and students begin working on, lesson assessment/homework – a letter to President Roosevelt from the perspective of a Mexican migrant. (15 minutes)

11. Extension Ideas The homework writing assignment could be extended to require more pieces of specific evidence.

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EVALUATION 12. Evaluation Write a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt from the perspective of a Mexican migrant. What would they feel is important for the president to know? Why is this happening? What specific problems would they want him to address (that could be within his control)? Why? Students should use at least three specific pieces of evidence from documents we examined and demonstrate their interpretation of the sources beyond just collecting facts. CREDITS 13. Designer(s) Aaron Weiss

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Worksheet 2.1 Source Title What type

of source is this?

From whose perspective? Purpose?

Notes on Theme 1: Notes on Theme 2:

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Gallery Walk Image 1 Title: Migrant camp, Weslaco, Texas. Local employment men say that there was no need for migrant labor to handle the citrus and vegetable crops in the valley, the local supply of labor being ample for this purpose. Most of the local labor is Mexican and the labor contractors favor Mexican labor over white labor, partly because the Mexican will work much cheaper than whites. One white woman who was a permanent resident (her husband was on WPA (Works Progress Administration/Work Projects Administration) said that the white people who lived in the valley, had no trouble with the Mexicans. The Mexicans were good neighbors, she said, always willing to share what they had. She said the white migrants who came into the valley and resented and misunderstood the Mexicans caused the trouble between the two races. Some towns in this section permit camping only in trailers. The charge for camping in tents is about fifty cents per week, including water, which in some cases must be carried four city blocks. Privies are tin, very bad condition. Garbage is collected only once a week, with large dumps of decaying fruits and vegetables scattered among the camps. Some of the white migrants in this camp were very suspicious of governmental activity, due to the use by south Texas newspapers of the term "concentration camps" referring to FSA (Farm Security Administration) camps. URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa2000013291/PP/ Author/Creator: Russell Lee Date: Feb. 1939

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Gallery Walk Image 2 Title: Some of the carrot pickers in the Coachella Valley. There are one hundred people in this field coming from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Mexico. California URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8b31710/ Author/Creator: Doroetha Lange Date: Feb. 1937

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Gallery Walk Image 3 Title: Mexican mother in California. "Sometimes I tell my children that I would like to go to Mexico, but they tell me 'We don't want to go, we belong here.'" (Note on Mexican labor situation in repatriation.) URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998017774/PP/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: June, 1935

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Gallery Walk Image 4 Title: Agricultural. Mexican cotton pickers. Trailing oversize sacks behind them, these Mexican workers are doing a good turn for their American neighbors. With serious shortages threatening ruin to Texas harvests. Mexican workers stepped into the breach and saved the crops, vital to the war effort URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/oem2002005790/PP/ Author/Creator: Howard Hollem Date: Nov. 1942

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Gallery Walk Image 5 Title: Agricultural. Mexican cotton pickers. Surrounded by the soft white cotton blossoms whose harvesting is essential to America's war effort, this Mexican girl takes a moment's rest from her strenuous picking job. She's one of hundreds of Good Neighbors who gave a helping hand to the farmers near Corpus Christi, Texas, by harvesting the summer cotton crop Other Title: Corpus Christi, Texas. Mexican girl helping to save the cotton crop which was threatened with ruin because of wartime manpower shortage URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/oem2002005792/PP/ Author/Creator: Howard Hollem Date: Nov. 1942

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Gallery Walk Image 6 Title: Employment signs in Spanish and English. These ranches (1938) increasingly use Negro pickers. Near Fresno, California URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/fsa1998018911/PP/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: Oct. 1933

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Lesson Three Plan 1. Title The role of government relief and assistance during the Great Depression 2. Overview In this gallery walk students move around the classroom to examine photographs, listen to folk song recordings, and read interview transcripts to collect evidence that will help them answer the question of whether government intervention during the Great Depression was necessary or not. 3. Objectives

• Students will be able to take a stand, supported by evidence, about whether the New Deal “relief” programs were necessary and justified.

• Students will be able to use specific evidence to answer the essential question: To what degree should government intervene in people’s lives?

4. Standards (State and Common Core)

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, attending to such features as the date and origin of the information.

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.6 Compare the point of view of two or more authors for how they treat the same or similar topics, including which details they include and emphasize in their respective accounts.

5. Time Required 90-minute block period (See notes below in “Extension Ideas” for ideas on alternative timing.) 6. Recommended Grade Range 9-12 7. Subject/Topic Social Studies: American History PREPARATION 8. Materials Used Analysis tools, handouts, rubrics, PowerPoint slides, etc. needed to conduct the lesson

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9. Resources Used For Listening Station:

Title: “Charmin’ Betsy” lyrics URL: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/todd:@field(DOCID+@lit(st013)) Author/Creator: Mr. and Mrs. Stankewitz Date: 1941 Title: “Charmin’ Betsy” recording URL: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/toddbib:@field(DOCID+@lit(5124b2)) Author/Creator: Mr. and Mrs. Stankewitz Date: 1941 Title: “Arizona” lyrics URL: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/todd:@field(DOCID+@lit(st002) Author/Creator: Jack Bryant Firebaugh Date: 1940 Title: “Arizona” recording URL: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/toddbib:@field(DOCID+@lit(4148a1)) Author/Creator: Jack Bryant Firebaugh Date: 1940

For Reading Station: Title: Industrial Lore URL: http://www.loc.gov/collections/federal-writers-project/articles-and-essays/industrial-lore/ Author/Creator: Chris Thornsten, interviewed by Arnold Manoff Date: January 31, 1938 Title: Colonial Park URL: http://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001380/ Author/Creator: Ralph Ellison, interviewer Date: 1939 Title: Bernice URL: http://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001366/ Author/Creator: Frank Byrd, interviewer Date: 1938 Title: Afternoon in a Pushcart Peddlers Colony URL: http://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001373 Author/Creator: Frank Byrd Date: Dec. 1938

For Viewing Station: Title: Well baby clinic. Tulare migrant camp. Visalia, California URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/fsa2000005896/PP/ Author/Creator: Arthur Rothstein Date: March 1940 Title: Gardens at labor homes add to incomes. Tulare migrant camp. Visalia, California

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URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/fsa2000005837/PP/ Author/Creator: Arthur Rothstein Date: March 1940 Title: Sanitary steel cabins are provided for each family. Tulare migrant camp. Visalia, California URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/fsa2000005976/PP/ Author/Creator: Arthur Rothstein Date: March 1940 Title: Refugee families encamped near Holtville, California URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/fsa2000000907/PP/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: March 1937 Title: Water supply: an open settling basin from the irrigation ditch in a California squatter camp near Calipatria URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/fsa2000000938/PP/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: March 1937 Title: Ditch bank housing for Mexican field workers. Imperial Valley, California URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/fsa2000000940/PP/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: March 1937


1. Students will complete a textbook reading for homework before this lesson about the beginning of the New Deal after President Roosevelt’s inauguration.

2. Introduce the essential question at the start of class, in relation to the homework reading. (5 minutes)

3. Students will conduct a “gallery walk” examining sets of sources to analyze at a listening station, a viewing station, and a reading station to try to answer the essential question. See notes below in “Extension Ideas” to consider timing adjustments to make the lesson fit the needs and restraints of a specific class. (80 minutes, concurrently with steps 4 and 5)

a. Listening Station (documents pages 3.2-3.3): The folk songs “Arizona” and “Charmin Betsy were recorded in Farm Security Administration camps in California where dust bowl refugees from across the country lived with the assistance of the government. The songs give details about the migrant experience and insight about their perspectives on the drastic shift from the “Roaring Twenties” to their current situation. The teacher will set up computers with speakers or headphones for students to listen to the original recordings.

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b. Viewing Station (documents pages 3.4-3.9): The photographs at this station are a mix of Arthur Rothstein’s pictures of an FSA (government) camp with Dorothea Lange’s pictures of impromptu migrant camps. In addition to providing information about living conditions in two different settings, this will be an opportunity for students to practice examining the messaging and arguments of each photographer. Lange’s photos show desolation, grime, and dignity in the face of despair. In contrast, Rothstein’s photos show the difference government aid can make with secure and clean housing, community institutions, industry, thrift, and optimism.

c. Reading Station (documents pages 3.10-3.13): These four documents are excerpts of interviews that were conducted with ordinary Americans about their lives during the Great Depression. The documents all, directly or indirectly, give people’s perspectives on the levels of need and desire for government aid or relief.

4. While at each station, students will examine and analyze the primary sources,

using the attached primary source note-taking chart (Worksheet 3.1). (80 minutes, concurrently with steps 3 and 5)

5. While students are working at different stations the teacher will continually circulate to informally assess student progress and interpretations. The teacher will prompt students with clarifying and further interpretative questions when necessary to help them analyze the documents to address the essential question. (80 minutes, concurrently with steps 3 and 4)

6. Introduce, and begin working on, homework writing assignment. (5 minutes) 11. Extension Ideas The lesson would fill two 90-minute block periods to include all of the sources. If this is a prohibitive time commitment, it could be shortened by the teacher choosing a partial selection of the primary sources for the gallery walk, or by setting an expectation students will examine a certain number of documents of their choosing from the whole selection, or by examining some sources in class and completing the rest for homework. EVALUATION 12. Evaluation Homework writing assignment: Based on the primary sources you examined in class today, do you think the federal government’s relief programs were justified? Did they go too far, not far enough, or were they just right? Use at least five specific quotations or details from at least three different sources to support your interpretation CREDITS

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13. Designer(s) Aaron Weiss

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Notes-taking chart 3.1 Source Title What type

of source is this?

From whose perspective? Purpose?

What does it say about the necessity or effectiveness of government aid in the Depression?

Key details, quotations, evidence:

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Listening Station, 3.2 This recording was sung by migrant workers, living in a government-built camp in California in 1940. It expresses some of their perceptions of the Dust Bowl and the migrant experience.

Title: “Arizona” lyrics URL: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/todd:@field(DOCID+@lit(st002) Author/Creator: Jack Bryant Firebaugh Date: 1940 Title: “Arizona” recording URL: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/toddbib:@field(DOCID+@lit(4148a1)) Author/Creator: Jack Bryant Firebaugh Date: 1940

We were out in Arizona On the Painted Desert ground We had no place to call our own home And work could not be found. We started to California But our money , h it didn't last long I want to be in Oklahoma Be back in my old home. A way out on the desert Where water is hard to find It's a hundred miles to Tempe And the wind blows all the time. You will burn up in the day time Yet you're cold when the sun goes down I wanna be in Oklahoma Be back in my home town. You people in Oklahoma If you ever come west Have your pockets full of money And you better be well dressed. If you wind up on the desert You're gonna wish that you were dead You'll be longing for Oklahoma And your good old feather bed.

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Listening Station, 3.3 This recording was sung by migrant workers, living in a government-built camp in California in 1941. This song gives insight into how these migrants saw the change from the “Roaring Twenties” when everyone seemed to have it good to now (1941) when they feel left behind.

Title: “Charmin’ Betsy” lyrics URL: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/todd:@field(DOCID+@lit(st013)) Author/Creator: Mr. and Mrs. Stankewitz Date: 1941 Title: “Charmin’ Betsy” recording URL: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/toddbib:@field(DOCID+@lit(5124b2)) Author/Creator: Mr. and Mrs. Stankewitz Date: 1941

Rich gal rides in a big limousine Poor gal she does the same My gal she rides in a T-model ford But she's ridin' just the same.

She'll be coming round the mountain, charmin' Betsy She'll be coming round the mountain, Cora Lee If I never get to see you again Good Lord, remember me.

Rich gal sleeps on a big feather bed Poor gal she does the same My gal she sleeps on a pallet on the floor But she's snoozin just the same.


Rich man lives in a big brick house Poor man he does the same I live way down in the county jail It's a brick house just the same.


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Viewing Station, 3.4 How do Arthur Rothstein’s photographs of a government-funded camp for migrant workers contrast with Dorothea Lange’s presentation of life in camps that developed when people were not assisted by the government?

Title: Ditch bank housing for Mexican field workers. Imperial Valley, California URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/fsa2000000940/PP/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: March 1937

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Title: Water supply: an open settling basin from the irrigation ditch in a California squatter camp near Calipatria URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/fsa2000000938/PP/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: March 1937

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Title: Refugee families encamped near Holtville, California URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/fsa2000000907/PP/ Author/Creator: Dorothea Lange Date: March 1937

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Title: Sanitary steel cabins are provided for each family. Tulare migrant camp. Visalia, California URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/fsa2000005976/PP/ Author/Creator: Arthur Rothstein Date: March 1940

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Title: Gardens at labor homes add to incomes. Tulare migrant camp. Visalia, California URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/fsa2000005837/PP/ Author/Creator: Arthur Rothstein Date: March 1940

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Title: Well baby clinic. Tulare migrant camp. Visalia, California URL: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/item/fsa2000005896/PP/ Author/Creator: Arthur Rothstein Date: March 1940

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Reading Station 3.10 Introduction: The Federal Writers' Project of the 1930s recorded more than 10,000 life stories of men and woman from a variety of occupations and ethnic groups.

Chris Thornsten, Iron Worker

Name: Chris Thorsten

Birth: 51 years ago, on board a fishing boat moored to a dock in New Orleans

Ethnicity: Scandinavian

Education: No formal education

Occupation: Iron Worker

Location: Union Hall, 84th Street, New York City

Date: January 31, 1938, 1 PM to 3 PM

Interviewer: Arnold Manoff

Interview Excerpt: "Is your job dangerous?"

Title: Industrial Lore URL: http://www.loc.gov/collections/federal-writers-project/articles-and-essays/industrial-lore/ Author/Creator: Chris Thornsten, interviewed by Arnold Manoff Date: January 31, 1938

"You ain't an Iron worker unless you get killed...Men hurt on all jobs. Take the Washington Bridge, the Triboro Bridge. Plenty of men hurt on those jobs. Two men killed on the Hotel New Yorker. I drove rivets all the way on that job. When I got hurt I was squeezed between a crane and a collar bone broke and all the ribs in my body and three vertebrae. I was laid up for four years."

Surrogate image: New York, New York. May 1943. A dock stevedore at the Fulton fish market. Gordon Parks. Photograph, 1943. (LC-USW3-28738-D).

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Reading Station, 3.11 Introduction: The Federal Writers' Project of the 1930s recorded more than 10,000 life stories of men and woman from a variety of occupations and ethnic groups.

Cover sheet information about interview:

Interview Excerpt:

Title: Colonial Park URL: http://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001380/ Author/Creator: Ralph Ellison, interviewer Date: 1939

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Reading Station, 3.12 Introduction: The Federal Writers' Project of the 1930s recorded more than 10,000 life stories of men and woman from a variety of occupations and ethnic groups.

Interview Excerpt:

Title: Bernice URL: http://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh001366/ Author/Creator: Frank Byrd, interviewer Date: 1938

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Reading Station, 3.13 Introduction: The WPA-collected story “Afternoon in a Pushcart Peddlers Colony” (1938) is another excellent source for the information it gives about living conditions, survival strategies, and worldview of those scraping by in Great Depression-era New York City, including their opinion about the possibility of receiving government aid.

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Final Unit Assessment Activity

Documents

Great Depression, Dust Bowl, and American Migrations Aaron Weiss