| By 1935, the Great Plains region of Oklahoma, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, eastern Colorado, the Texas panhandle, Nebraska, and portions of Arkansas had experienced devastating dust storms for about four years. Drought and environmental abuse since the 1890s were the major contributors to the disaster. Noting the ravaged region, an Associated Press reporter dubbed the area "the Dust Bowl" in 1935. While many heartland residents remained out on the Plains during the natural disaster, some, especially tenant farmers, left their homesteads in search of work in the vast fruit and vegetable fields of California.; Lured by letters from family members, labor handbills, and desperation, approximately 300,000 Great Plains residents migrated to the Golden State searching for a better life between 1935 and 1940. Instead of finding prosperity and unlimited work, many of the "Okies," a generic term often used for all the migrants, experienced horrid labor conditions and suffered from the effects of living in unsanitary slums resulting in social and health problems.; The sudden and massive Okie influx overwhelmed state and local resources. By early 1935, the federal Resettlement Administration built, in Marysville, the first in its string of fifteen demonstration migrant labor camps. In 1937, the newly created Farm Security Administration replaced the RA and continued with the migrant camp program in California. The oncoming of the Second World War halted the success of the migrant camp program. Nonetheless, the FSA was the only agency, public or private, to make significant inroads into the migrant labor problem in California.; This study will examine the history of the FSA migrant labor camps in California during the Great Depression years of 1935--1941 by focusing on three camps in Marysville, Arvin and Yuba City. As this study will show, these camps, although they did not solve California's agricultural migrant labor problem entirely, improved the lives of the program's participants by offering a viable solution to the agricultural migratory labor dilemma. |
