Migrant Mother as she was known for over forty years from this photograph taken by Dorothea Lange in 1936.
An image seared into the minds of many as emblematic of the Great Depression and the particular struggles of women in caring for and feeding their children. Not that such times were in the past and forgotten thirty years later at the beginning of the War on Poverty and don’t continue to exist in destitute Native American communities.
In Migrant Mother, we could see The Grapes of Wrath and what could so easily become the plight of most of us.
Over those decades of her public anonymity, Florence Owens Thompson worked and raised her children. Those children grew up, worked, married, had children of their own, and they in turn grew up. All of them would have heard family stories. Maybe not that their mother and grandmother was the model in “Migrant Mother,” but that Florence was full blooded Cherokee.
Look at her! Can you not see that she’s Native American? Yes or No?
Florence was born before Oklahoma was a state but after the deadline for registering as a Native American had passed. So, technically and legally she wasn’t a member of the Cherokee Nation Records to establish her ethnic ancestry don’t exist. Only the words that were spoken to her and she in turn spoke to her children who believed them and spoke them to their children.
“Tom,” one of Florence’s great-great-grandsons, heard and believes those words. Who’s to say that the white man’s record keeping is right and his relatives are wrong?
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing that. I’ve seen this photo so many times as an image of the Great Depression and it never occurred to me that she might be Native American but I can see it now. Of course the name of the photo makes it particularly ironic. The keeping of vital records was really poor for a long time in this country. You really see it when non-white people try to track down their ancestry. And nowadays I worry that we collect too much data about people…
Can’t say that I see it even now. Too many decades of seeing the photo as part of the documentation of the Great Depression for white Americans.
Have long known that “Tom’s” family claims to have Native American ancestry, although highly diluted at this point. Didn’t learn of his relation to Florence until last year. When Tom added that she was his Native American great-great-grandmother, I wasn’t merely surprised but thought he must be mistaken and had confused Florence with another ancestor. It was quick and easy to determine that he had his family story right and it’s my frames (to use Lakoff’s terminology) that are the interference. And one of those frames is the expected physical appearance of a Native American when no such thing exists in the real world.
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