The Wayfarers: 1937 - Check out this haunting photograph by Dorothea Lange now at Shorpy's

[eleny]

"May 1937. "Mother and child of Arkansas flood refugee family near Memphis, Texas. These people, with all their earthly belongings, are bound for the lower Rio Grande Valley, where they hope to pick cotton." Medium-format nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange for the Resettlement Administration."

http://www.shorpy.com/node/7217

[niyad]

1. k and r--thank you

[dysfunctional press]

2. it looks like a black woman holding a white child...

how common were inter-racial births in 1930's arkansas...?

i may be mistaken about the races- i'm just commenting on what it appears to be to me- judging by the hands/calves of the mother, and the hair of the child.

[eleny]

3. Your observation never occurred to me

I took another look and wonder if it isn't just a deep tan. But your question makes me see how there's more in this photo to consider. Thanks!

[Warpy]

7. She might have had a strong Native American heritage

and mixed blood kids start out blonde a lot of the time. It also looks like she might have turned her head aside in that poke bonnet so she wouldn't be recognized.

Also, she'd be working in the sun while the child would have been put into a shady spot to play. The dirt and clothing of both are pretty typical for migrants of the day. The child isn't wearing anything on the bottom because no one on the road could afford cloth for diapers. Every scrap was needed to mend their clothing. The child's clothing is clean, though, in stark contrast to the mother's. This is one thing that makes the photo heartbreaking.

She's not a black nanny, in other words, because people gave their servants better castoffs. Having a nanny look like this would have reflected poorly on a family wealthy enough to hire one, and they generally didn't hire anyone but blacks in the south.

As for a mixed race child of a black mother, the hair is wrong, although having a child of rape certainly wasn't uncommon then.

My money is on a Mom of mixed Native American and European heritage, possibly married to a white guy.

[shraby]

4. Looks like a deep tan from working in the fields..the face

is darker because it's shaded by the bonnet.

[enigmatic]

5. Shorpy's is one of my daily website stops

Thanks for this.

[eleny]

6. It's a treasure of a site

[johnnie]

8. Thanks for posting

I know times are hard for some people today, but compared to then... Today roughing it is going from 850 minutes on your cell phone to the 400 plan or needing to drop HBO.

[sojourner]

11. please don't make that assumption. there are people, many more than you'd guess, living in cars

and they are as invisible as the people who were 'roughing it' have ever been. problem is that too many people are so comfortable that they believe much as you stated above.

[eleny]

12. I suppose we ought to consider the lack of medical care back then

I realize that medical care is scarce for many these days, too. But the lack of care plus the fact that care has seen so many advances since then is a factor.

So much that would kill or render a person disabled is now curable. Think of how cataract surgery alone has lifted the stress on a family or how the polio vaccine virtually eliminated a terrible disease. We take antibiotics for granted and how they can check a case of deadly bacterial pneumonia.

So, yes, of course this doesn't change the terrible circumstances many in this country suffer now. But compared to the 1930s, even our least fortunate can be helped in ways that didn't exist seventy years ago.

[Turbineguy]

9. A picture of

a republican paradise.

[eleny]

10. Spot on...

I couldn't think of a way to express that. Thanks a million.

[Turbineguy]

13. Actually Bush may have been a blessing

a more competent republican government would have given us another great depression.

[eleny]

14. I'm sure the shrub took years off my life