July 6, 1936, Route 66, New Mexico. This is Martha Evans, 32. She had been walking for three days. Her husband died of tuberculosis in Oklahoma in May. The farm was foreclosed. She took the six kids and a Radio Flyer wagon and started west for California. The twins in the wagon were 11 months old. The boys walking were 6, 5, 4, and 3. Her dress was torn on barbed wire. Her leg was cut and infected. She wrapped it with a feed sack. She had $1.60 in her pocket. A photographer from the Resettlement Administration saw them and pulled over. He offered her a ride. She said no. She said if she took a ride now, the kids would expect one every time they were tired. She gave him her name and kept walking. The photo ran in newspapers across the country. Donations came to a PO box in Barstow. She got $200 and a bus ticket. She made it to Bakersfield and picked grapes. All six kids lived. Three went to college. Martha died in 1978. The wagon is in the Smithsonian.
This reminds me of the phrase that we are nostalgic for a place that doesn't exist anymore. Not the real hardship, nor the indefatigable will to move forward against all odds. Our definition of will and effort is GLP1.
ReplyDeleteThat right there is Exactly what white privilege looks like. What a great woman. I'll bet those kids all grew up with good sense and the habits of successful people.
ReplyDeleteA tougher breed I suspect than we've bred up lately.
ReplyDeleteOne of the success stories of that era. Many just suffered malnutrition and exposure, often dying as graveyards of that era showed.
Most of the "history" of the Great Depression is edited and polished up. This one shows how hard it was.
Matches up with some of the stories my Grandmother told me.
My Dad grew up in San Francisco during the depression, the son of Irish immigrants. He supported his mother, brother and sister after his drunk old man left them by setting sprinklers beginning before dawn at Harding Park golf course and then caddying all day for the rich folks. He did this from the time he was in his early teens.
DeleteOne day after caddying for a rich bastard for 36 holes of golf the guy flipped my dad a quarter, whereupon my dad tossed it back to him and told him "Keep it. You may need it for cab fare". When his boss found out he suspended Dad for two weeks.
During World War II he was an oiler on gasoline tankers in the Pacific and eventually got his Chief Engineers license for both Steam and Diesel freighters to support his family.
He was a tough old hard-headed Irishman who took crap off of no one. And he couldn't have been a better Father.
Happy Dad's Day, Dad. I love you.
She shoulda played her victim card and got reparations...
ReplyDeleteAnother Example of White Privilege
ReplyDeletePeople were tough back then, they didn't have their hand out, worked hard
ReplyDeleteWOODY: Something to share:
ReplyDeletehttps://x.com/Outkick/status/2065601203606884544
If you want, you can copy this and then post it here ... and delete this comment.
Oh yeah! THERE'S the "white privilege" that wee keep hearing about....
ReplyDeleteA You ask how we won WWII, Korea, and built the greatest economy the world's ever known, here's your answer.
ReplyDeleteB Women like her did the same crossing the Hudson to Saratoga, crossing the Alleghenies to Akron, crossing the Mississippi to Des Moines, crossing the Rockies to Eugene (OR, not Barkley).
C Men like Mr (the Lefties never bothered to learn his first name) Evans gave all holding the cabin until Ma and the kids got away from Cherry Valley to Fort Mims to Linnville to Walla Walla. They scouted the trails, cleared the land, built the farms and ranches (often working themselves to death in the process), established law and order, and feared God.
D Good to remember the ladies, but, on Dad's Day, we should be thinking of all the real Ben Cartwrights and Beauregard Mavericks that built this country from sea to shining sea and still guide us today.
Everyday, ordinary, heroics, carrying on, pushing forward. We stand upon these heros. We better be worth it. J
ReplyDeleteWow! I can only add that I am happy for the good outcome from here determination.
ReplyDeleteWow!
ReplyDeleteThat's a powerful story in the photograph.
ReplyDeleteWhite privilege.
ReplyDeleteIt would have been our privilege to have known her.
DeleteFunny. That the pic has another photographer in the background.
ReplyDeleteThe woman in this story is Martha Evans — though the famous photograph taken by Resettlement Administration photographer Dorothea Lange is often misidentified. The photo is actually of Florence Owens Thompson and her children, taken by Lange in Nipomo, California (not New Mexico) in March 1936, and it became known as "Migrant Mother. What's Verifiable
ReplyDeleteDorothea Lange was a Resettlement Administration (later Farm Security Administration) photographer
She took the Migrant Mother photos in Nipomo, California in March 1936, not July 1936 in New Mexico
The woman was Florence Owens Thompson, a Cherokee woman born in Indian Territory (Oklahoma)
Her husband Cleo Owens died of tuberculosis, though not in May 1936 — he died in 1931
The family had been following the pea harvest when their car broke down
Thompson and her children received nothing from the photo during her lifetime
When Thompson was identified in 1978, she was living in a trailer in Modesto, California; she died of cancer that same year
A funeral fund raised over $15,000 in donations after her identity became public
Skip, thank you for saving this old man, my good friend.
DeleteWOODY: I love the comments almost as much as the story. Thank you, bro!!!
ReplyDelete