Florence Owens Thompson
Migrant Mother, taken by Dorothea Lange in 1936.
Born	Florence Leona Christie September 1, 1903(1903-09-01) Oklahoma, United States
Died	September 16, 1983 (aged 80) Scotts Valley, California, United States
Resting place	Lakewood Memorial Park
Nationality	American
Occupation	Agricultural laborer
Known for	Dorothea Lange's photograph
Spouse(s)	Cleo Owens (c.1898-c.1931) m. 1921 George B. Thompson (1902-1974) m.?
Children	7

Florence Owens Thompson (September 1, 1903 - September 16, 1983), born Florence Leona Christie, was the subject of Dorothea Lange's photo Migrant Mother (1936), an iconic image of the Great Depression. The Library of Congress entitled the Migrant Mother image, Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California.^[1] Thompson's daughter Katherine (to the left of the frame) said in a December 2008 interview that the photo's fame made the family feel shame at their poverty.^[2]

Contents 1 Iconic photo 2 Reflecting the victims of the Great Depression 2.1 Women: Mothers and wives as the backbone to the family unit 2.2 Children 3 Rediscovering Migrant Mother 4 Death and aftermath 5 The other five photographs 6 References 7 External links

Iconic photo

In March 1936, after picking beets in the Imperial Valley, Thompson and her family were traveling on US Highway 101 towards Watsonville in hopes of finding more work. On the road, the car timing chain snapped and they coasted to a stop just inside a pea-picker's camp on Nipomo Mesa. While Jim Hill^[who?] and two of Thompson's sons took the radiator, which had also been damaged, to town for repair,^[3][4] Thompson and some of the children set up a temporary camp. As Thompson waited, Dorothea Lange, working for the Resettlement Administration, drove up and started taking photos of Florence and her family. Over 10 minutes she took 6 images.

Lange's field notes of the images read:

"Seven hungry children. Father is native Californian. Destitute in pea pickers' camp ! because of failure of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tires to buy food."^[3]

Lange later wrote of the meeting:

"I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was 32. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food."^[5]

However, Thompson claimed that Lange never asked her any questions and got many of the details incorrect. Troy Owens recounted:

"There's no way we sold our tires, because we didn't have any to sell. The only ones we had were on the Hudson and we drove off in them. I don't believe Dorothea Lange was lying, I just think she had one story mixed up with another. Or she was borrowing to fill in what she didn't have."^[3]

Thompson also claimed that Lange promised the photos would never be published, but Lange sent them to the San Francisco News as well as to the Resettlement Administration in Washington, D.C. The News ran the pictures almost immediately, with an assertion that 2,500 to 3,500 migrant workers were starving in Nipomo, California.^[6] Within days, the pea-picker camp received 20,000 pounds of food from the federal government.^[6] However, Thompson and her family had moved on by the time the food arrived^[6] and were working near Watsonville, California.^[3]

While Thompson's identity was not known for over forty years after the photos were taken, the images became famous. The sixth image especially, which later became known as Migrant Mother, "has achieved near mythical status, symbolizing, if not defining, an entire era in [United States] history." Roy Stryker called Migrant Mother the "ultimate" photo of the Depression Era. "[Lange] never surpassed it. To me, it was the picture ! The others were marvelous, but that was special ... . She is immortal." As a whole, the photographs taken for the Resettlement Administration "have been widely heralded as the epitome of documentary photography." Edward Steichen described them as "the most remarkable human documents ever rendered in pictures." Later, however, the photographers came under sharp criticism for presenting the conditions of their subjects as harsher than they actually were.^[3]

It was only in the late 1970s that Thompson's identity was discovered. In 1978, acting on a tip, Modesto Bee reporter Emmett Corrigan located Thompson at her mobile home in Space 24 of the Modesto Mobile Village and recognized her from the 40-year-old photograph.^[7] A letter Thompson wrote was published in The Modesto Bee and the Associated Press sent a story around entitled "Woman Fighting Mad Over Famous Depression Photo." Florence was quoted as saying "I wish she [Lange] hadn't taken my picture. I can't get a penny out of it. She didn't ask my name. She said she wouldn't sell the pictures. She said she'd send me a copy. She never did."^[3]

Lange was funded by the federal government when she took the picture, so the image was in the public domain and Lange never directly received any royalties. However, the picture did ultimately make Lange a celebrity and earned her "respect from her colleagues".^[8]

Reflecting the victims of the Great Depression

As one of the most powerful images of the Depression era, Migrant Mother reflects the victims who suffered the most in the United States during the 1930s.

Women: Mothers and wives as the backbone to the family unit

Many women were left no other option but to play mothers, wives, workers, and teachers simultaneously.^{[citation needed]} As if a character from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Thompson represents the backbone to the family unit as she supports (literally) her three children in the photo. Emily Hahn, a writer for The New Republic, covered the issues and difficulties of women during the Great Depression in her 1933 article "Women Without Work". Upon interviewing several women at unemployment agencies, she discovered that they were not afraid or ashamed to do anything for the sake of their families' well being. Hahn wrote that they would try everything else first and "to admit failure [was]...the greatest shame of all."^[9] Many women who had families to support did anything to survive and were not afraid to take any type of challenge. Thompson worked in a 'penny-a-dish kitchen' for fifty cents a day and leftovers so that she could feed her children.^[10] In an interview with CNN, Thompson's daughter, Katherine McIntosh, recalls how her mother was a "very strong lady".^[2]

On that note, professors and historians Mark C. Carnes and John A. Garraty argue that women suffered less psychologically from the Depression.^[11] This is understandable^{[citation needed]} since they had no time to worry about themselves and their sorrows as they were too busy holding the family unit together. On average, 69 percent of single mothers were dependent on their own earnings for their children's survival.^[12] Desperate for any type of work, they would often take in boarders, wash clothes, and baby-sit for other families. In many cases, single mothers lost their children to institutions because they could not afford to support them. "She was the backbone of our family" said McIntosh. "We never had a lot, but she always made sure we had something. She didn't eat sometimes, but she made sure us children ate. That's one thing she did do."^[2]

Children

As shown in Migrant Mother, the Great Depression was a harsh experience for children. McIntosh told CNN that her memories of her youth are filled with about 50 percent good times and 50 percent hard times. Malnutrition was a large factor for rural girls and boys of the Depression. On top of that over 20% of America's children went without clothing. Investigators found that some were so hungry, they began to chew at their own hands.^[13] Because food was sparse and unaffordable they suffered from bloated stomachs and diseases such as pneumonia, hookworm, typhoid, etc. According to the 1937 Children's Bureau report, many found themselves "going for days at a time without taking off their clothes to sleep at night, becoming dirty, unkempt and a host to vermin."^[13] From 1930 to 1938, the infant mortality rate increased more than 20 percent.

Children's education became another factor as many could not go to school because they did not have any clothes to wear. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt received thousands of letters from girls and boys all over the U.S. explaining their stories and requests for clothes, work, money, and food. In one case, a thirteen year old girl from Gravette, Arkansas wrote to Mrs. Roosevelt saying, " I have to stay out of school because I have no books or clothes to wear."^[14] Like the children in the photograph, many labored in the California vegetable and fruit fields to help feed the family unit. McIntosh recollects that "It was nearly impossible to get an education. Children worked the fields with their parents. As soon as they'd get settled at a school, it was time to pick up and move again."^[2]

Rediscovering Migrant Mother

While the image was being prepared for exhibit in 1941,^[15] the negative of the famous photo was retouched to remove Florence's thumb in the lower-right corner of the image.^[16] In the late 1960s, Bill Hendrie found the original Migrant Mother photograph and 31 other vintage, untouched photos by Dorothea Lange in a dumpster at the San Jose Chamber of Commerce.^[17] After the death of Hendrie and his wife, their daughter, Marian Tankersley, rediscovered the photos while emptying her parents' San Jose home.^[17] In 1998, the retouched photo of Migrant Mother became a 32-cent U.S. Postal Service stamp in the 1930s Celebrate the Century series.^[18] The stamp printing was unusual since daughters Katherine McIntosh (on the left in the stamp) and Norma Rydlewski (in Thompson's arms in the stamp) were alive at the time of the printing and "It is very uncommon for the Postal Service to print stamps of individuals who have not been dead for at least 10 years."^[19]

In the same month the U.S. stamp was issued, a print of the photograph with Lange's handwritten notes and signature sold in 1998 for $244,500 at Sotheby's New York.^[20] In November 2002, Dorothea Lange's personal print of Migrant Mother sold at Christie's New York for $141,500.^[6] In October 2005, an anonymous buyer paid $296,000 at Sotheby's New York for the rediscovered 32 vintage, untouched Lange photos-nearly six times the pre-bid estimate.^[17]

Death and aftermath

Thompson was hospitalized and her family appealed for financial help in late August 1983.^[21] By September, the family had collected $25,000 in donations to pay for her medical care. Florence died of "cancer and heart problems" at Scotts Valley, California on September 16, 1983.^[22][23] She was buried next to her husband George, in Lakewood Memorial Park, in Hughson, California, and her gravestone reads: "FLORENCE LEONA THOMPSON Migrant Mother - A Legend of the Strength of American Motherhood."

Daughter Katherine McIntosh told CNN that the photo's fame had left the family feeling both ashamed and determined never to be as poor again.^[2]

The other five photographs

Lange actually took six photos that day, the last being the famous Migrant Mother. These are the other five photos.

1. Persons in picture (left to right) are: Viola (Pete) in rocker, age 14, standing inside tent; Ruby, age 5; Katherine, age 4, seated on box; Florence, age 32, and infant Norma, age 1 year, being held by Florence.
2. Ruby has moved inside the tent, and away from Lange, in hopes her photo can not be taken. Katherine stands next to her mother. Florence is talking to Ruby, who is hiding behind her mother, as Lange took the picture.
3. Florence is nursing Norma. Katherine has moved back from her mother as Lange approached to take this shot. Ruby is still hiding behind her mother.
4. Left to right are Florence, Ruby and baby Norma.
5. Florence stopped nursing Norma and Ruby has come out from behind her. This photograph was the one used by the newspapers the following day to report the story of the starving migrants.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Migrant Mother

• Audio of Florence Owens Thompson telling her story.
• The story told by her grandson, Roger Sprague Sr.
• The pictures at the LOC, including the original without the retouch.
• "Migrant Mother" as an iconic image - excerpt from a book
• Discussion of "Migrant Mother" and the ethical questions raised
• Article on the photo shoot and reinterpretation of an image
• 08/08/09 Prairie Home Companion in Oklahoma, Monica Taylor singing her song "Young Mother" about the migrant mother in this photo (Segment 2, 00:38:24)
• "Florence Owens Thompson". at Find a Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=21325119. 

Persondata
NAME	Thompson, Florence Owens
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION
DATE OF BIRTH	September 1, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH	Oklahoma, United States
DATE OF DEATH	September 16, 1983
PLACE OF DEATH	Scotts Valley, California, United States