Finding Their Place

Migrant Mother, Library of Congress Collection

Today's CBS Sunday Morning runs a piece on how the Library of Congress is adapting to the digital age. Among the millions of documents it could have selected, CBS included the 1936 photo Migrant Mother, described by the Library as "Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California."

42 years later, Florence Thompson was identified as the woman in the photo. Her difficult existence was captured in this Depression-era photo that depicted the face of "a 32-year-old parent who looks 50."

She and her family survived the Depression and the War and eventually settled in the farming community of Modesto. I was happy to hear how her story turned out. The Oklahoma migrants that John Steinbeck wrote about had very bleak prospects at the end of his Pulitzer-prize winning novel, but I like to think that they, too, managed to find their place in the golden land that was 20th-century California.

Florence Thompson (1903-1983) in 1979.