Interior of wood shack built upon Ford truck chassis housing father, mother and seven children. This view shows the mother and two of her children. They were found on U.S. Route 70, between Bruceton and Camden, Tennessee, near Tennessee River. Carl Mydans (photographer) March 1936

I’ve published 4 other posts using Mydans’ photos of this family:

• One-room hut housing family of nine, January 5, 2006
• Twelve-year old girl of family of nine, cooking meal in rude, open lean-to near hut, Tennessee, February 1, 2006
• Eyes of the Great Depression 036, August 31, 2009
• Eyes of the Great Depression 047, September 25, 2010 (Same girl as previous post; different photo)

The only information about this family I have been able find online is in the captions for the images at the Library of Congress:

Resettlement official investigating case of nine living in field on U.S. Route 70 between Camden and Bruceton, Tennessee, near Tennessee River.

Three of the family of nine living in field in rough board covering built on old Ford truck chassis on U.S. Route 70, between Camden and Bruceton, Tennessee. Their water supply was an open creek running near state highway.

Twelve-year old girl of family of nine living in one-room hut built over the chassis of abandoned Ford truck in open field on U.S. Route 70 between Camden and Bruceton, Tennessee. Near backward Tennessee section. View also shows one of the small boys in family; the girl is dressed in a meal sack.

One-room hut housing family of nine built over chassis of abandoned Ford in open field between Camden and Bruceton, Tennessee, near Tennessee River.

Mother and baby of family of nine living in field on U.S. Route 70 in Tennessee, near Tennessee River

After adding the images from the Library of Congress, I continued searching online for additional information.  While I didn’t find any new facts about the family or their situation, I did discover two additional images in The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.

Illiterate father of seven children living with his family (9 of them) in open field in rough board covering built on old Ford truck chassis on U.S. Route 70, between Bruceton and Camden, Tennessee. Their water supply was an open creek running near highway.

Mother and father and several children of a family of nine living in open field in rough board covering built on old Ford chassis on U.S. Route 70, between Bruceton and Camden, Tennessee. Their water supply was an open creek running near highway.

The Bitter Years, in 1962, was Edward Steichen’s last exhibition as Director of the Department of Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The images in the exhibition were personally selected by Steichen from 270,000 photos taken for the Farm Security Administration by a team of photographers employed between 1935 and 1941 to document (primarily) rural America during the Great Depression.

random topic 001 (continued)

In Twelve Years a Slave, after the severe flogging of the slave Patsey and how it affected her afterward, Solomon Northup writes of the slaves’ perception of “freedom” and the effects brutality imparted on slaves had the households of the slave-holders.

It is a mistaken opinion that prevails in some quarters, that the slave does not understand the term — does not comprehend the idea of freedom. Even on Bayou Bœuf, where I conceive slavery exists in its most abject and cruel form —where it exhibits features altogether unknown in more northern States — the most ignorant of them generally know full well its meaning. They understand the privileges and exemptions that belong to it —that it would bestow upon them the fruits of their own labors, and that it would secure to them the enjoyment of domestic happiness. They do not fail to observe the difference between their own condition and the meanest white man’s, and to realize the injustice of the laws which place it in his power not only to appropriate the profits of their industry, but to subject them to unmerited and unprovoked punishment, without remedy, or the right to resist, or to remonstrate.

Patsey’s life, especially after her whipping, was one long dream of liberty. Far away, to her fancy an immeasurable distance, she knew there was a land of freedom. A thousand times she had heard that somewhere in the distant North there were no slaves —no masters. In her imagination it was an enchanted region, the Paradise of the earth. To dwell where the black man may work for himself—live in his own cabin —till his own soil, was a blissful dream of Patsey’s —a dream, alas! the fulfillment of which she can never realize.

The effect of these exhibitions of brutality on the household of the slave-holder, is apparent. Epps’ oldest son is an intelligent lad of ten or twelve years of age. It is pitiable, sometimes, to see him chastising, for instance, the venerable Uncle Abram. He will call the old man to account, and if in his childish judgment it is necessary, sentence him to a certain number of lashes, which he proceeds to inflict with much gravity and deliberation. Mounted on his pony, he often rides into the field with his whip, playing the overseer, greatly to his father’s delight. Without discrimination, at such times, he applies the rawhide, urging the slaves forward with shouts, and occasional expressions of profanity, while the old man laughs, and commends him as a thorough-going boy.

“The child is father to the man,” and with such training, whatever may be his natural disposition, it cannot well be otherwise than that, on arriving at maturity, the sufferings and miseries of the slave will be looked upon with entire indifference. The influence of the iniquitous system necessarily fosters an unfeeling and cruel spirit, even in the bosoms of those who, among their equals, are regarded as humane and generous.

Young Master Epps possessed some noble qualities, yet no process of reasoning could lead him to comprehend, that in the eye of the Almighty there is no distinction of color. He looked upon the black man simply as an animal, differing in no respect from any other animal, save in the gift of speech and the possession of somewhat higher instincts, and, therefore, the more valuable. To work like his father’s mules — to be whipped and kicked and scourged through life — to address the white man with hat in hand, and eyes bent servilely on the earth, in his mind, was the natural and proper destiny of the slave. Brought up with such ideas —in the notion that we stand without the pale of humanity — no wonder the oppressors of my people are a pitiless and unrelenting race.

Dust, Drought, and Depression #4

Dorothea Lange’s photo, below, an Oklahoma family struggling in California in 1939 was #009 of the images in my Eyes of the Great Depression series. In updating that post, I found more information taken from caption cards filed with other images.

Brawley, Imperial Valley. In Farm Security Administration (FSA) migratory labor camp. Family of mother, father and eleven children, originally from near Mangrum, Oklahoma, where he had been tenant farmer. Came to California in 1936 after the drought. Since then has been traveling from crop to crop in California, following the harvest. Six of the children attend school wherever the family stops long enough. Five older children work along with the father and mother. February 23, two of the family have been lucky and “got a place” (a day’s work) in the peas on the Sinclair ranch. Father had earned about one dollar and seventy-three cents for ten-hour day. Oldest daughter had earned one dollar and twenty-five cents. From these earnings had to provide their transportation to the fields twenty miles away. Mother wants to return to Oklahoma, father unwilling.She says, “I want to go back to where we can live happy, live decent, and grow what we eat.” He says, “We can’t go the way I am now. We’ve got nothing in the world to farm with. I made my mistake when I came out here.”

Migrant Family During Pea Harvest  products from Exit78 at zazzle.com

Dust, Drought, and Depression #3

Woman of the High Plains, “If You Die, You’re Dead –That’s All.”¹

It was June 1938. Nettie Featherson was 40 and the mother of three sons when Dorothea Lange, a documentary photographer for the Farm Security Administration, ambled up to “Murray’s Place” near Carey in western Childress county. Inconspicuously, Lange snapped a series of black-and-white shots and handed two nickels to Nettie’s son, Ken. At 45, he still recalls the silver bonanza the photographer brought to the dusty North Texas farm more than 40 years ago. But Lange took back something of her own from the encounter with the Featherstons – a poignant series of photographs depicting a melancholy determined woman wearing a coarse cotton dress… The photographs remain a stark evidence of the poverty Nettie Featherston and thousands of other Americans endured between 1929 and 1948. They tell a story of resolve and perseverance, of survival. Until this year (1979), Nettie Featherston had no knowledge of her fame as the unidentified subject in Lange’s photograph, “Woman of the Plains.” ²

Dorothea Lange’s photos of Elmore City, Oklahoma, native Nettie Featherston were part of the Farm Security Administration’s (FSA) extensive documentation of depression-era, rural America. Lange liked one photo so much that it was included in a series of 15 women in a book called The American Country Woman (1967). The portrait of each woman was paired with an image from their environment. The photograph’s title comes from a larger caption that recorded a conversation between Lange and Featherston, “We made good money pullin’ bolls [cotton], when we could pull. But we’ve had no work since March. When we miss, we set and eat just the same. The worst thing we did was when we sold the car, but we had to sell it to eat, and now we can’t get away from here. We’d like to starve if it hadn’t been for what my sister in Enid sent me. When it snowed last April we had to burn beans to keep warm. You can’t get no relief here until you’ve lived here a year. This county’s a hard county. They won’t help bury you here. If you die, you’re dead, that’s all.”³

Nettie Featherston, with her firm, lined face, slender body, and wind-blown hair, is known to thousands as the subject of “Woman of the Plains,” a series of photographs taken by Dorothea Lange in 1938 as part of the Farm Security Administration’s study of migrant farm workers. The Nebraska State Historical Society has been searching for the people in those pictures to find out how they fared since the Depression, and when the Childress Index reprinted Lange’s series, three people recognized the woman and directed the researchers to her. The 81-year-old widow, who lives alone in Lubbock, had no trouble recalling the back-breaking days in the thirties when her family picked cotton fourteen hours a day. One thing she can’t remember is Dorothea Lange. “You can tell from those pictures how played out I was,” she said, a bit sadly. “But my son – he’s 45 now – he remembers, ‘cause the lady gave him two nickels to keep, and his daddy gave him little tobacco sack to put ‘em in. He was so proud.” ⁴

Nettie Featherston in the four-room house she shares with her son. Lubbock, Texas. August 1979. ⁵

“We were on the road, just trying to find some thing [for a job]. We stopped at a filling station in Carey [Texas], and this cotton grower come by and seen our bedding on top of the car. He asked if weʼd like to go out and pull some bolls [harvest the cotton] for him. We did that all that winter. After that we had to wait for chopping time [in the summer]. My brother went back to Childress and played dominoes. Thatʼs the way we lived, from what he made playing dominoes. “We lived in a little two-room house. Had a wood stove that we cooked blackeye peas on. We ate so many blackeye peas that I never wanted to see another blackeye pea. We even slept on ʼem, laid out pallets on the pods of blackeye peas and hay. Your kids would cry for something to eat and you couldnʼt get it. I just prayed and prayed and prayed all the time that God would take care of us and not let my children starve. All our people left here. They live in California. But we were so poor that we couldnʼt have went to California or nowhere else. “I never much thought about ever living this long [81 years]. I just didnʼt think weʼd survive. If you want to know something, weʼre not living much better now than we did then – as high as everything is. “I remember those times and it seems like Iʼm not satisfied. I have too much on my mind. It seems like I have more temptations put on me than anyone, to see if youʼre able to bear them or not. And every time I ask God to remove this awful burden off my heart, He does.” ⁶

__________

Nettie Featherston is #005 in the Eyes of the Great Depression series.

__________

1. Photographs from the American country woman series, NYPL Digital Gallery
2. Nettie remembers Great Depression, Burlington Hawk Eye, October 29, 1979 retrieved from http://newspaperarchive.com/burlington-hawk-eye/1979-10-29/page-6 on 4/1/2013
3. Woman of the High Plains “If You Die, You’re Dead–That’s All.” Inspiring Visions, Artists’ Views of the American West, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas (Accessed 8/24/2016)
4. Texas Monthly, September 1979, page 102
5. Photo by Bill Ganzel (Accessed 8/24/2016)
6. Dorothea Lange’s photo of Nettie Featherston, Wessells Living History Farm, York, Nebraska. (Accessed 8/24/2016)

__________

(Blast from the Past – Iconic images of Woman of the High Plains have already appeared twice on Exit78, one of which was in this post, originally from April 2013.   She also appeared in The Bitter Years, Edward Steichen’s last exhibition as Director of the Department of Photography at New York’s  Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). I am working my way through the images from that exhibition and have brought this post forward to be reposted at the same time as Wife of a Migratory Laborer with 3 Children – The Bitter Years 004.)

Woman of the High Plains products from Exit78 at zazzle.com

Art on Sunday #14

Woodcut color print by Albert Abramovitz, a Federal Arts Project Work Projects Administration work.

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. “Wuxtry” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. (image at NYPL)

TV Tropes: “Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Cliché stock phrase from the 1890s through the 1940s used to denote breaking news! Sometimes uses “extry” or “wuxtry” to denote a New England accent! Often shouted by overzealous newsies and paperboys! A Dead Horse Trope nowadays owing to television and the internet! Related to Spinning Paper! Extra! Extra! “

random topic 001 (continued)

The severe flogging of the slave Patsey was a traumatic, life-changing event. It was likely what today we would call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Solomon Northup writes of how Patsey was affected in Twelve Years a Slave:

A blessed thing it would have been for her —days and weeks and months of misery it would have saved her —had she never lifted up her head in life again. Indeed, from that time forward she was not what she had been. The burden of a deep melancholy weighed heavily on her spirits. She no longer moved with that buoyant and elastic step — there was not that mirthful sparkle in her eyes that formerly distinguished her. The bounding vigor —the sprightly, laughter-loving spirit of her youth, were gone. She fell into a mournful and desponding mood, and often-times would start up in her sleep, and with raised hands, plead for mercy. She became more silent than she was, toiling all day in our midst, not uttering a word. A care-worn, pitiful expression settled on her face, and it was her humor now to weep, rather than rejoice. If ever there was a broken heart — one crushed and blighted by the rude grasp of suffering and misfortune —it was Patsey’s.

She had been reared no better than her master’s beast —looked upon merely as a valuable and handsome animal —and consequently possessed but a limited amount of knowledge. And yet a faint light cast its rays over her intellect, so that it was not wholly dark. She had a dim perception of God and of eternity, and a still more dim perception of a Saviour who had died even for such as her. She entertained but confused notions of a future life —not comprehending the distinction between the corporeal and spiritual existence. Happiness, in her mind, was exemption from stripes —from labor —from the cruelty of masters and overseers. Her idea of the joy of heaven was simply rest and is fully expressed in these lines of a melancholy bard:

“I ask no paradise on high,
With cares on earth oppressed,
The only heaven for which I sigh,
Is rest, eternal rest.”

The brain child of Frank Redford. There were originally seven Wigwam Motels. The wigwams have a steel frame covered with wood, felt and canvas under a cement stucco exterior.

Highsmith, Carol M, photographer. Wigwam Motel, Route 66, Holbrook, Arizona. October 7, 2006. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010630005/. (Accessed August 21, 2016.)

Medium: 1 photograph : digital, tiff file, color.

Call Number: LC-DIG-highsm- 04005 (ONLINE) [P&P]

Notes:

• Title, date, and subjects provided by the photographer.
• Credit line: Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
• Gift and purchase; Carol M. Highsmith; 2009; (DLC/PP-2010:031).
• Forms part of: Carol M. Highsmith’s America Project in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.

Highsmith, a distinguished and richly published American photographer, has donated her work to the Library of Congress since 1992. Starting in 2002, Highsmith provided scans or photographs she shot digitally with new donations to allow rapid online access throughout the world. Her generosity in dedicating the rights to the American people for copyright free access also makes this Archive a very special visual resource.

Haw Creek photo series: 21st Century Digital (002)

Carol M, Highsmith,  photographer. Watson Drugs and Soda Fountain, a premier drug store and soda fountain shop for over 100 years located in Old Town Orange, California. 2012. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2013633274/. (Accessed August 20, 2016.)

Medium: 1 photograph : digital, tiff file, color.

Call Number: LC-DIG-highsm- 22817 (ONLINE) [P&P]

Notes:
Title, date, and keywords provided by the photographer.
Credit line: The Jon B. Lovelace Collection of California Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America Project, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Gift; The Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation in memory of Jon B. Lovelace; 2012; (DLC/PP-2012:063).
Forms part of: Jon B. Lovelace Collection of California Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America Project in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.

Highsmith, a distinguished and richly published American photographer, has donated her work to the Library of Congress since 1992. Starting in 2002, Highsmith provided scans or photographs she shot digitally with new donations to allow rapid online access throughout the world. Her generosity in dedicating the rights to the American people for copyright free access also makes this Archive a very special visual resource.

Haw Creek photo series: 21st Century Digital (001)

People standing on Sacramento Street watching the fire in the distance.
Arnold Genthe (photographer)

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on April 18 with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.8 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). Severe shaking was felt from Eureka on the North Coast to the Salinas Valley, an agricultural region to the south of the San Francisco Bay Area. Devastating fires soon broke out in the city and lasted for several days. As a result, about 3,000 people died and over 80% of the city of San Francisco was destroyed. The events are remembered as one of the worst and deadliest natural disasters in the history of the United States. The death toll remains the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California’s history and high in the lists of American urban disasters. (Read more at Wikipedia)