Florence Owens Thompson, born Florence Leona Christie, was the subject of Dorothea Lange's
photo Migrant Mother, an iconic image of the Great Depression.
The Library of Congress entitled the image, "Destitute pea pickers in California.
Mother of seven children.
Age thirty-two.
Nipomo, California."
Biography Florence Owens Thompson was born Florence
Leona Christie on September 1, 1903, in Indian Territory, Oklahoma.
Her father, Jackson Christie, had abandoned her mother, Mary Jane Cobb, before Florence
was born, and her mother remarried Charles Akman in spring, 1905.
The family lived on a small farm in Indian Territory outside of Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
17-year-old Florence married Cleo Owens (a 23 year-old farmer's son from Stone County,
Missouri on February 14, 1921.
They soon had their first daughter, Violet, followed by a second daughter, Viola, and
a son, Leroy.
The family migrated west with other Owens' relatives to Oroville, California where they
worked in the saw mills and on the farms of the Sacramento Valley.
By 1931, Florence was pregnant with her sixth child when her husband Cleo died of tuberculosis.
Florence subsequently worked in the fields and in restaurants to support her six children.
In 1933 Florence had another child, returned to Oklahoma for a time, and then was joined
by her parents as they migrated to Shafter, California north of Bakersfield.
There Florence met Jim Hill, with whom she had three more children.
During the 1930s the family worked as migrant farm workers following the crops in California,
and sometimes into Arizona.
Florence would later recall times in which she would pick 400-500 pounds of cotton from
first daylight until after it was too dark to work.
She added, “I worked in hospitals.
I tended bar.
I cooked.
I worked in the fields.
I done a little bit of everything to make a living for my kids.”
The family settled in Modesto, California in 1945.
Well after World War II, Florence met and married hospital administrator George Thompson,
which, compared to the previous years of toil, brought more security.
Iconic photo In March 1936, after picking beets in the
Imperial Valley, Thompson and her family were traveling on U.S. Highway 101 towards Watsonville
"where they had hoped to find work in the lettuce fields of the Pajaro Valley."
On the road, the car timing chain snapped and they coasted to a stop just inside a pea-picker's
camp on Nipomo Mesa.
They were shocked to find so many people camping there – as many as 2,500 to 3,500.
A notice had been sent out for pickers, but the crops had been destroyed by freezing rain,
leaving them without work or pay.
Florence would relate in an interview years later, that when she cooked food for her children
that day, little children appeared from the pea picker's camp asking, "Can I have a bite?"
While Jim Hill, her husband, and two of Thompson's sons took the radiator, which had also been
damaged, to town for repair, Thompson and some of the children set up a temporary camp.
As Thompson waited, Dorothea Lange, working for the Resettlement Administration, drove
up and started taking photos of Florence and her family.
Over 10 minutes she took 6 images.
Lange's field notes of the images read: "Seven hungry children.
Father is native Californian.
Destitute in pea pickers’ camp … because of failure of the early pea crop.
These people had just sold their tires to buy food."
Lange later wrote of the meeting: "I did not ask her name or her history.
She told me her age, that she was 32.
She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields and
birds that the children killed.
She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food."
However, Thompson claimed that Lange never asked her any questions and got many of the
details incorrect.
Troy Owens recounted: "There's no way we sold our tires, because
we didn't have any to sell.
The only ones we had were on the Hudson and we drove off in them.
I don't believe Dorothea Lange was lying, I just think she had one story mixed up with
another.
Or she was borrowing to fill in what she didn't have."
Thompson also claimed that Lange promised the photos would never be published, but Lange
sent them to the San Francisco News as well as to the Resettlement Administration in Washington,
D.C.
The News ran the pictures almost immediately, with an assertion that 2,500 to 3,500 migrant
workers were starving in Nipomo, California.
Within days, the pea-picker camp received 20,000 pounds of food from the federal government.
However, Thompson and her family had moved on by the time the food arrived and were working
near Watsonville, California.
While Thompson's identity was not known for over forty years after the photos were taken,
the images became famous.
The sixth image especially, which later became known as Migrant Mother, "has achieved near
mythical status, symbolizing, if not defining, an entire era in [United States] history."
Roy Stryker called Migrant Mother the "ultimate" photo of the Depression Era.
"[Lange] never surpassed it.
To me, it was the picture … The others were marvelous, but that was special ... . She
is immortal."
As a whole, the photographs taken for the Resettlement Administration "have been widely
heralded as the epitome of documentary photography."
Edward Steichen described them as "the most remarkable human documents ever rendered in
pictures."
Later, however, the photographer was criticized for taking inaccurate notes.
It was only in the late 1970s that Thompson's identity was discovered.
In 1978, acting on a tip, Modesto Bee reporter Emmett Corrigan located Thompson at her mobile
home in Space 24 of the Modesto Mobile Village and recognized her from the 40-year-old photograph.
A letter Thompson wrote was published in The Modesto Bee and the Associated Press sent
a story around entitled "Woman Fighting Mad Over Famous Depression Photo."
Florence was quoted as saying "I wish she [Lange] hadn't taken my picture.
I can't get a penny out of it.
She didn't ask my name.
She said she wouldn't sell the pictures.
She said she'd send me a copy.
She never did."
Lange was funded by the federal government when she took the picture, so the image was
in the public domain and Lange never directly received any royalties.
However, the picture did ultimately make Lange a celebrity and earned her "respect from her
colleagues".
In an interview with CNN, Thompson's daughter, Katherine McIntosh, recalled how her mother
was a "very strong lady", and "the backbone of our family".
She said that "We never had a lot, but she always made sure we had something.
She didn't eat sometimes, but she made sure us children ate.
That's one thing she did do."
Rediscovering Migrant Mother While the image was being prepared for exhibit
in 1941, the negative of the famous photo was retouched to remove Florence's thumb in
the lower-right corner of the image.
In the late 1960s, Bill Hendrie found the original Migrant Mother photograph and 31
other vintage, unretouched photos by Dorothea Lange in a dumpster at the San Jose Chamber
of Commerce.
After the death of Hendrie and his wife, their daughter, Marian Tankersley, rediscovered
the photos while emptying her parents' San Jose home.
In 1998, the retouched photo of Migrant Mother became a 32-cent U.S. Postal Service stamp
in the 1930s Celebrate the Century series.
The stamp printing was unusual since daughters Katherine McIntosh and Norma Rydlewski were
alive at the time of the printing and "It is very uncommon for the Postal Service to
print stamps of individuals who have not been dead for at least 10 years."
In the same month the U.S. stamp was issued, a print of the photograph with Lange's handwritten
notes and signature sold in 1998 for $244,500 at Sotheby's New York.
In November 2002, Dorothea Lange's personal print of Migrant Mother sold at Christie's
New York for $141,500.
In October 2005, an anonymous buyer paid $296,000 at Sotheby's for the rediscovered 32 vintage,
unretouched Lange photos—nearly six times the pre-bid estimate.
Death and aftermath
Though Thompson’s 10 children bought her a house in Modesto, California, in the 1970s,
Thompson found she preferred living in a mobile home and moved back into one.
Thompson was hospitalized and her family appealed for financial help in late August 1983.
By September, the family had collected $25,000 in donations to pay for her medical care.
Florence died of "cancer and heart problems" at Scotts Valley, California on September
16, 1983.
She was buried next to her husband George, in Lakewood Memorial Park, in Hughson, California,
and her gravestone reads: "FLORENCE LEONA THOMPSON Migrant Mother – A Legend of the
Strength of American Motherhood."
Daughter Katherine McIntosh told CNN that the photo's fame had made the family feel
both ashamed and determined never to be as poor again.
Son Troy Owens said that more than 2000 letters received along with donations for his mother's
medical fund led to a re-appraisal of the photo: "For Mama and us, the photo had always
been a bit of curse.
After all those letters came in, I think it gave us a sense of pride."
The other five photographs Lange took six photos that day, the last being
the famous Migrant Mother.
These are the other five photos:
Persons in picture are: Viola in rocker, age 14; standing inside tent, Ruby, age 5; Katherine,
age 4, seated on box; Florence, age 32, and infant Norma, age 1 year, being held by Florence.
Ruby has moved inside the tent, and away from Lange, in hopes her photo can not be taken.
Katherine stands next to her mother.
Florence is talking to Ruby, who is hiding behind her mother, as Lange took the picture.
Florence is nursing Norma.
Katherine has moved back from her mother as Lange approached to take this shot.
Ruby is still hiding behind her mother.
Left to right are Florence, Ruby and baby Norma.
Florence stopped nursing Norma and Ruby has come out from behind her.
This photograph was the one used by the newspapers the following day to report the story of the
starving migrants.
References
External links
Audio of Florence Owens Thompson telling her story
Video of interview of Florence Owens Thompson The pictures at the LOC, including the original
without the retouch "Migrant Mother" as an iconic image – excerpt
from a book Article on the photo shoot and reinterpretation
of an image Florence Owens Thompson at Find a Grave