During the desperate times of the Great Depression ,handbills advertising work began to arrive in towns all along the Red River. California, the sheets said, was a land of milk and honey. Thousands of acres of rich crops awaited thousands of agricultural workers. Pay was decent and land to cultivate was available to buy. With nothing to lose, families loaded up their cars or trucks with their meager belongings and made the long drive west in search of work.
The road didn't always prove a salvation, however. Cars ran on bald tires, with rope doing makeshift duty for broken fan belts. Spare tires had to be sold for gas money. If the car broke down completely - a great possibility given that they were old and driving thousands of miles through the New Mexican and Arizona deserts - families ended up walking.
The refugees made their homes in camps alongside the road, living in tents or under cardboard. They'd eat their rations of salt pork and canned vegetables, but more often than not, women would make fried dough balls out of flour, grease, and water. Unencumbered by formal schooling, kids were free to help out by bringing in food such as frogs, squirrels, and birds. The plight of the migrants was vividly portrayed by WPA photographers like Dorothea Lange, who captured the mass migration as research for Roosevelt's relief programs.
Once in California, the refugees found limited work opportunities. They competed against thousands of others for picking jobs, at depressed wages. They also faced discrimination. With disdain, they were called "Okies," and their ways were mocked as "white trash." Migrants moved into "Okievilles" or "Little Oklahomas," shanty towns built at the edges of fields where they could live among their own kind. Black families fared even worse, as they had to wait until whites found work before they could be hired. Latino migrant workers found themselves repatriated to Mexico, although many were actually Americans!
chapters 8&9
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