Personal Response: Okies (Kimberly E)

On the website http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_06.html it said that, “ times were very hard for farmers during the great depression in the Great Plains. As the great depression worsened many farmers just gave up and some were forced off their land”. The relentless march of the new tractors meant that only those farmers that had enough money to buy a tractor were able to buy out their neighbors. This meant that there were fewer farmers that could farm land. Some of the farmers that left decided to go to cities. But most of them decided to head west. “During the 30s hundreds of thousands left the plains for the west coast.” Many of the farmers migrated from Oklahoma and got the name of Okies in the popular press. “California had advertised that the state offered a perfect climate and an abundance of work in the agricultural industry and later found themselves overwhelmed by up to 7,000 new migrants a month. More migrants than what they needed.” So the Los Angeles police department decided to send 136 deputies to the state lines to turn back migrants who didn’t have money. “Bordering states were angry that California was trying to dump hoboes back at them” In the course of time the police were returned to Los Angeles, but the migrants kept coming. There was some work on the new fields of cotton that were being planted in California. But there wasn’t enough work for everybody coming into the state. “The situation the Okies were going through caught the sympathy of people across the country. In part it was just because these migrants were white, unlike Mexican and Filipino workers who supplied the factory farms with the seasonal labor needed before and after Okies arrived.” If I was to have been an Okie back in the day I honestly don’t think I would have made it alive after those desperate times. I think that it was really unfair that California did what they did because I bet that if they had been the ones who were going through all that trouble they wouldn’t want people to give their hopes up, and treat them the way they treated the Okies. All the Okies were trying to do was have a better life. Who wouldn’t want that!

edited by: Vanessa Hernandez