Oklahoma Refugees from the Dust Bowl, Looking for Work on the Cotton Fields, Now Encamped Near Bakersfield, California

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.

Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist. She is best known for her work during the Great Depression when she captured powerful images of the hardships faced by many Americans. Lange studied photography at Columbia University in New York City under Clarence H. White, a member of the Photo-Secession group. In 1918 she decided to travel around the world, earning money as she went by selling her photographs. Lange's photographs helped to raise awareness of the difficulties faced by many people during this time, and they remain an important record of American history. She was a member of the Photo League, a group of photographers who sought to use their work to expose social and political issues. Lange died in 1965. Her portraits of displaced farmers during the Great Depression greatly influenced later documentary and journalistic photography.