1. My definition of subculture follows Milton M. Gordon, Assimilation in American Life (New York, 1964), 39. For a rich discussion of the uses and possible definitions, see Edward Merten, "Up Here and Down Home: Appalachian Migrants in Northtown" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1974), 180-99; J. Milton Yinger, "Contraculture and Subculture," American Sociological Review 25 (1960), 625-35. [BACK]

2. Walter Goldschmidt, As You Sow (Glencoe, 1947; reprint ed., Montclair, N.J., 1978), 60-61, 70. Few other scholars even raised the question of Okies as a separate cultural group. Most concerned themselves strictly with the parameters of economic adjustment, as in the work of Paul Taylor, his students Lillian Creisler and Walter Hoadley, Carey McWilliams, and the Bureau of Agricultural Economics investigators. James Wilson collected wonderful material on the social attitudes and religious outlooks of the migrants in his two studies, but offered little interpretation of its significance. [BACK]

3. Stuart M. Jamieson, "A Settlement of Rural Migrant Families in the Sacramento Valley, California," Rural Sociology 7 (March 1942), 50-51, 57. Writing in 1947, Paul Faulkner Tjensvold also commented on the Southern cultural characteristics of the migrants and noted that some of these were being maintained in California. "An Inquiry into the Reasons for the Post-Depression Migration from Oklahoma to Kern County in California" (MA thesis, University of Southern California, 1947), 45. [BACK]

4. The ethnic formulation was sharply criticized at the 1947 meeting of the American Sociological Association. In a panel on the state of ethnic research, UCLA sociologist Leonard Bloom suggested that Okies had the characteristics of an ethnic group. Other panelists dismissed the idea, one suggesting that Bloom might as well include "Townsendites [or] the Aimee McPhersonites" under the ethnic heading. "Concerning Ethnic Research," American Sociological Review 13 (April 1948), 171-82. The standard understanding of ethnicity in that period is found in W. Lloyd Warner and Leo Srole, The Social Systems of American Ethnicity (New Haven, 1945), 28.

In contrast, recent ethnic studies tend to employ a more elastic definition that accepts the possibility of new or "emergent" ethnic groups. See, for instance, William L. Yancy, Eugene E Ericksen, and Richard N. Juliani, "Emergent Ethnicity: A Review and Reformulation," American Sociological Review 41 (June 1976), 391-403; Abner Cohen in Urban Ethnicity (New York, 1974), ix-xxiv; Donald L. Horowitz, "Ethnic Identity," in Nathan Glazer and Daniel E Moynihan, eds., Ethnicity: Theory and Experience (Cambridge, 1975), 111-40; Jonathan D. Sarna, ''From Immigrants to Ethnic: Toward a New Theory of 'Ethnicization,'" Ethnicity 5 (Dec. 1978), 370-77; Kathleen Neils Conzen, ''Immigrants, Immigrant Neighborhoods, and Ethnic Identity: Historical Issues," Journal of American History 66 (Dec. 1979), 603-15. [BACK]

5. Works by John Shelton Reed include The Enduring South: Subcultural Persistence in Mass Society (Chapel Hill, 1972); Southerners: The Social Psychology of Sectionalism (Chapel Hill, 1983); Southern Folk, Plain and Fancy: Native White Social Types (Athens, Ga., 1986), Lewis M. Killian, White Southerners (New York, 1970), 143-44; also Merten, "Up Here and Down Home," 311-13. Their ideas have been seconded by George Brown Tindall, The Ethnic Southerners (Baton Rouge, 1976), 1-21; and, most important, by the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups , Stephan Thernstrom, Ann Orlov, and Oscar Handlin, eds. (Cambridge, 1980), 944-48. [BACK]

6. This definition follows the one proposed by R. A. Schermerhorn, Comparative Ethnic Relations: A Framework for Theory and Research (Chicago, 1970), 12, and employed by Werner Sollars in his review of "Theory of American Ethnicity . . . ," American Quarterly 33 (1981 Bibliography issue), 257-83. Other uses of the term are surveyed in Wsevolod W. Isajiw, "Definitions of Ethnicity," Ethnicity 1 (July 1974), 111-24. [BACK]

7. We cannot pretend to any unanimity on the issue of social structure in either the Southwest or the greater South. The lumpers and the splitters have been going at it continuously since the days of Frederick Law Olmstead. Here I am following John Reed's sensible suggestion of a two-race, two-class model in Southern Folk, Plain and Fancy , 23. [BACK]

8. Dewey Grantham, Southern Progressivism: The Reconciliation of Progress and Tradition (Knoxville, 1983), 87-107; Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America (New York, 1976); Raymond Arsenault, The Wild Ass of the Ozarks: Jeff Davis and the Social Bases of Southern Politics (Philadelphia, 1984); Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (New York, 1982), esp. 47-53; V. O. Key, Southern Politics in State and Nation (New York, 1950), 261-68; James R. Green, Grass-roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest, 1895-1943 (Baton Rouge, 1978), 396-437; Worth Robert Miller, "Oklahoma Populism: A History of the People's Party of Oklahoma Territory" (Ph.D. diss., University of Oklahoma, 1984); John Thompson, Closing the Frontier: Radical Response in Oklahoma, I889-1923 (Norman, 1986). [BACK]

9. Charles Todd, "The Pea-Patch Press," typescript in Charles Todd Collection. The best collection of the FSA newspapers resides in the Documents Library, University of California, Berkeley, but the Farm Security Administration Collections at San Bruno (National Archives, Pacific Sierra Division) and at the Bancroft Library contain additional issues. Sheldon S. Kagan, "Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad: John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Migrant Folklore" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1971), makes some interesting comments on the literary quality, the humor, and the political values revealed in the camp newspapers. [BACK]

10. Westley Worldbeater (May 22, 1942). For other versions of this poem, see Covered Wagon News (Shafter) (July 13, 1940); Thornton's Camp Paper (Fall 1940). [BACK]

11. Camp Echo (Brawley) (Jan. 13, 1939). Also recorded by Margaret Valiant in her Migrant Camp Recordings, Archive of Folk Culture, Library of Congress. "Root Hog or Die" by Bill Jackson in Todd-Sonkin Recordings is another example of the same theme. (Todd-Sonkin Recordings and field notes, Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin, Migrant Recordings, 1940 and 1941, Archive of Folk Culture, Library of Congress.) [BACK]

12. Two recent works explore the toughness theme in American culture: Elliot J. Gorn, The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America (Ithaca, 1986); Rupert Wilkinson, American Tough: The Tough-Guy Tradition and American Character (New York, 1986). Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream (Berkeley, 1985), 285-333, shows that many of these images were appearing in the advertising of the 1030s. [BACK]

13. "A Grumbler," Weed Patch Cultivator (Arvin) (Nov. 11, 1938). [BACK]

14. Thornton's Camp Paper (Fall 1940). [BACK]

15. Migratory Clipper (Indio) (March 9, 1940). See also "The Optimist" in Voice of the Migrant (Marysville) (Dec. 15, 1939); "Depression" in Covered Wagon News (Shafter) (July 27, 1940); "Old Mrs. So and So,'' Tow-Sack Tattler (Arvin) (Sept. 8, 1939). [BACK]

16. Tow-Sack Tattler (Arvin) (Nov. 11, 1939). [BACK]

17. Covered Wagon News (Shafter) (Aug. 24, 1940). [BACK]

18. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (New York, 1982). I would also strongly recommend Merten's chapter on honor in "Up Here and Down Home," 142-79. [BACK]

19. Agri-News (Shafter) (Aug. 11, 1939). Also Tow-Sack Tattler (Arvin) (Oct. 25, 1940). [BACK]

20. Voice of the Agricultural Worker (Yuba City) (May 28, 1940). [BACK]

21. Tow-Sack Tattler (Arvin) (Oct. 28, 1939). See also Oct. 20 and Nov. 11, 1939, issues. For an example of the stoic attitude expected of children, see Todd-Sonkin field notes, 6. [BACK]

22. Sept. 8, 1939. The popularity of the matches and the social pressure to fight are recalled by Oscar "Scotty" Kludt in his interview by Michael Neely, Fresno, May 1, 1981, Odyssey Program, 22. See also Lawrence I. Hewes, Jr., Report Before the Special Committee Investigating the Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens, San Francisco, Sept. 25, 1940, mimeographed copy in FSA Collection, Box 10, Bancroft. If the coverage in the Bakersfield Californian (Kern County's major daily) is any indication, professional wrestling was also extremely popular. And it was hardly accidental that some of the featured wrestlers sported names like "Bob Montgomery, the Arkansas blond caveman" and "Otis Clingman, the popular Texas cowboy." [BACK]

23. Agri-News (July 21, 1939). [BACK]

24. In his discussion of honor and fighting among Chicago's Southern whites, Merten, "Up Here and Down Home," 289, also observes that these values became exaggerated in the new setting. There is a rich literature on the Southern use of violence as an expression of masculine honor. In addition to the studies already cited, see John Shelton Reed, One South: An Ethnic Approach to Regional Culture (Baton Rouge, 1982), 139-53; Sheldon Hackney, "Southern Violence," American Historical Review 74 (Feb. 1969), 906-25; Raymond D. Gastil, Culture Regions of the United States (Seattle, 1975), 97-116; H. C. Brearley, "The Pattern of Violence," in William T. Couch, ed., Culture in the South (Chapel Hill), 678-92; Evon Z. Vogt, Modern Homesteaders: The Life of a Twentieth Century Frontier Community (Cambridge, Mass., 1955), 158-59; Elliot J. Gorn, ''Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch': The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry," American Historical Review 90 (Feb. 1985), 18-43. [BACK]

25. Gerald Haslam, Okies: Selected Stories (Santa Barbara, 1975), 60. [BACK]

26. Interview by Stacey Jagels, Oakhurst, May 2, 1981, Odyssey Program, 23. [BACK]

27. Interview by Michael Neely, Visalia, March 23, May 12, 1981, Odyssey Program, 38. [BACK]

28. Interview by Stacey Jagels, Bakersfield, March 31, April 2, 1981, Odyssey Program, 43. [BACK]

29. Interview by Stacey Jagels, Hanford, June 2, 1981, Odyssey Program, 24. [BACK]

30. My thoughts on group myths have been informed by Michaela di Leonardo's recent exploration of Italian-American ethnic identity in The Varieties of Ethnic Experience: Kinship, Class, and Gender Among California Italian Americans (Ithaca, 1984). She notes that Italians hold a number of assumptions about group characterological and behavioral traits, some of which are clearly not unique to the group. Regardless, the assumptions themselves have significance. It is the belief in distinctiveness that constitutes one of the essentials of the group relationship. Related points about the content of ethnic identity are made by Talcott Parsons, "Some Theoretical Considerations on the Nature and Trends of Change of Ethnicity," in Glazer and Moynihan, Ethnicity: Theory and Experience , 64-66; Fredrik Barth, introduction to Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Oslo, 1969), 11-16). [BACK]

31. Gerald Haslam, "The Okies: Forty Years Later," The Nation 220 (March 15, 1975), 302. See also her Jan. 1975 letter to Haslam in Charles Todd Collection. [BACK]

32. Mark Jones, "Dust Bowl Clan Marks 44 Years in West," Los Angeles Times (Aug. 2, 1981). [BACK]

33. Interview, 38. [BACK]

34. Interview by author, Reedley, April 31, 1985. [BACK]

35. George Baker, "66, The Road Back in Time," Sacramento Bee (Jan. 1, 1978) (emphasis added). [BACK]

36. Redneck Populism might be another term for what I am describing. Several recent studies have guided my thinking about plain folks' political values, most important among them Robert Emil Botsch's excellent We Shall Not Overcome: Populism and Southern Blue-Collar Workers (Chapel Hill, 1980); Arsenault, The Wild Ass of the Ozarks ; J. Wayne Flynt, Dixie's Forgotten People: The South's Poor Whites (Bloomington, 1979). Useful but marred by its condescending tone is Julian B. Roebuck and Mark Hickson III, The Southern Redneck: A Phenomenological Class Study (New York, 1982). [BACK]

37. The Hub (Visalia) (Sept. 13, 1940); Covered Wagon News (Shafter) (March 12, 1940); Tow-Sack Tattler (Arvin) (Sept. 8, 1939). See also Eric H. Thomsen, "Maverick Universities or How the Migrant Gets an Education" (speech before the San Francisco Public School Forum, Jan. 29, 1937), in FSA Collection, carton 2, Bancroft; James West (Carl Withers), Plainville U.S.A . (New York, 1945), 135-36, 212-13; Vogt, Modern Homesteaders , 143-45. These occupational valuations were basically similar to those described by Bruce Palmer, Man Over Money: The Southern Populist Critique of American Capitalism (Chapel Hill, 1980), 9-19. [BACK]

38. Agri-News (Aug. 25, 1939). [BACK]

39. Covered Wagon News , quoted in Todd, "Pea-Patch Press," page numbers omitted. [BACK]

40. An asterisk indicates that a pseudonym is used for the individual who was interviewed. James Bright Wilson, "Social Attitudes of Migratory Agricultural Workers in Kern County, California" (MA thesis, University of Southern California, 1942), 178-79. Walter Stein discusses the problem of relations between the migrants and camp managers in "A New Deal Experiment with Guided Democracy: The FSA Migrant Camps in California," Canadian Historical Association, Historical Papers 1970, 132-46. [BACK]

41. Camp Echo (Brawley) (Dec. 9, 1939). [BACK]

42. Voice of the Agricultural Worker (Yuba City) (May 28, 1940). [BACK]

43. Weed Patch Cultivator (Arvin) (Nov. 11, 1938); Voice of the Migrant (Marysville) (Feb. 23, 1940). "The Future" in Tow-Sack Tattler (Arvin) (Nov. 17, 1939) is a little less cautious, counseling neither ambition nor passivity, but suggesting the importance of "choosing the right tools for life's work." [BACK]

44. Brinkley, Voices of Protest , 165-68; Keith L. Bryant, Jr., Alfalfa Bill Murray (Norman, 1968), 177-213, and "Oklahoma and the New Deal" in John Brae-man, Robert H. Bremner, and David Brody, eds., The New Deal: The State and Local Levels (Columbus, 1975), 172-73, 183; Harry S. Ashmore, Arkansas: A Bicentennial History (New York, 1978), 137-46; David Ellery Rison, "Arkansas During the Great Depression" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1974), 57-62; Key, Southern Politics in State and Nation , 261-68; Green, Grassroots Socialism , 396-437; Norman D. Brown, Hood, Bonnet, and Little Brown Jug: Texas Politics , 1921-1928 (College Station, Texas, 1984); Lionel V. Patenaude, Texans, Politics, and the New Deal (New York, 1983), 86-120; Donald W. Whisenhunt, The Depression in Texas: The Hoover Years (New York, 1983), 197-229; George Norris Green, The Establishment in Texas Politics: The Primitive Years, 1938-1957 (Westport, 1979), 13-14. For Missouri's different political habits, see John H. Fenton, Politics in the Border States (New Orleans, 1957), 126-70. [BACK]

46. Tow-Sack Tattler (Arvin) (Oct. 28, 1939). Also Tent City News (Gridley) (Sept. 23, 1939); Bakersfield Californian (Oct. 9, 1939); Lloyd Stalcup and Mr. Becker interviews, Todd-Sonkin Recordings. [BACK]

47. California State Relief Administration, M. H. Lewis, Migratory Labor in California (San Francisco, 1936), 140. Hammett is given the pseudonym Clay Bennett in this source. [BACK]

48. Wilson, "Social Attitudes of Migratory Agricultural Workers," 343. [BACK]

49. Stuart M. Jamieson, "The Origins and Present Structure of Labor Unions in Agriculture and Allied Industries in California," Exhibit 9576, La Follette Hearings , Part 62, p. 22540; Jamieson, "A Settlement of Rural Migrant Families in the Sacramento Valley," 57-59; Jamieson, Labor Unionism in American Agriculture (Washington, D.C., 1945), 119; Fred Snyder, "Jobless Hordes in California Offer an Opportunity for Adroit Campaign of Skillful Radical Propaganda,'' San Francisco Examiner (Feb. 28, 1939, also March 1, 2, 5, 1939); Norman Lowenstein, "Strikes and Strike Tactics in California Agriculture: A History" (MA thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1940), 113; Tow-Sack Tattler (Arvin) (Oct. 16, 1939); Farmer-Labor News (Feb. 19, 1937); The Rural Worker (Nov. 1936). [BACK]

50. On the formation of UCAPAWA and the beginnings of its California campaign, see 1936 and 1937 issues of The Rural Worker and the CIO News—Cannery Workers Edition . Accounts of the campaign can be found in Walter J. Stein, California and the Dust Bowl Migration (Westport, 1973), 220-82; Devra Anne Weber, "The Struggle for Stability and Control in the Cotton Fields of California: Class Relations in Agriculture, 1929-1942" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1986), 322-402; Cletus E. Daniel, Bitter Harvest: A History of California Farmworkers, 1870-1941 (Ithaca, 1981), 276-85; Linda C. Majka and Theo J. Majka, Farm Workers, Agribusiness, and the State (Philadelphia, 1982), 113-35. And for an insider's view, see the Dorothy Healey interview by Margo McBane, March 7, 1978, Women Farmworkers Project. [BACK]

51. CIO News—Cannery Workers Edition (Oct. 22, Dec. 5, 1938); Weber, "The Struggle for Stability and Control in the Cotton Fields of California," 354-58; Clarke A. Chambers, Farm Organizations: A Historical Study of the Grange, the Farm Bureau, and the Associated Farmers, 1929-1941 (Berkeley, 1952), 72-73. [BACK]

52. La Follette Committee, Report , 78th Congress, Part 8, pp. 1476-80; Lowenstein, "Strikes and Strike Tactics," 107-9. [BACK]

53. The strike can be followed in the Bakersfield Californian (Sept. 22-Oct. 28, 1939). Weber, "The Struggle for Stability and Control in the Cotton Fields of California," 368-402, provides the newest and richest account. Others include Bryan Theodore Johns, "Field Workers in California Cotton" (MA thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1948), 117-46; La Follette Committee, Report , 78th Congress, Part 8, pp. 1492-1527; and Hearings , Part 51, pp. 18633-773; Chambers, Farm Organizations , 72-81. [BACK]

54. Todd-Sonkin Recordings, Visalia, Aug. 13, 1941. See the union's report of the difficulty of recruiting "half starved workers" in UCAPAWA News (April 1940). [BACK]

55. Charles L. Todd, "California, Here We Stay!" typescript (New York, 1946?) in Charles Todd Collection; Ben Hibbs, "Footloose Army," Country Gentleman (Feb. 1940), 5, reprint in Migrant Labor Collection, Bakersfield Public Library; New York Times (March 6, 1940); Wilson, "Social Attitudes of Migratory Agricultural Workers," 358; California Governor's Committee to Survey the Agricultural Labor Resources of the San Joaquin Valley, Agricultural Labor in the San Joaquin Valley: Final Report and Recommendations (Sacramento, 1951), 289. It is interesting to follow organized labor's evaluation of Okies as potential unionists in Farmer-Labor News and UCAPAWA News . Through 1939 the journals were blindly optimistic, bending over backward to deny stories that "you can't organize the Oklahomans into the union'' ( Farmer-Labor News [April 23, 1937]). The tune changed after the cotton strike. In early 1941, Clyde Champion, chief UCAPAWA organizer, told Goldschmidt that the Okies were hopeless: "These people from Oklahoma aren't very class-conscious. It isn't in their background'' ( As You Sow , 71). See also UCAPAWA News (April 1940). [BACK]

56. Stein, California and the Dust Bowl Migration , 264-65. He elaborated on this theme in his paper "Cultural Gap: Organizing California's Okies in the 1930's," presented at the Southwest Labor History Conference, Stockton, Calif., April 25, 1975. Cautioning that some Okies were strong unionists, Sheila Goldring Manes, on the basis of interviews with former organizers, essentially agrees with Stein's assessment; see "Depression Pioneers: The Conclusion of an American Odyssey, Oklahoma to California, 1930-1950, A Reinterpretation" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1982), 388-94. The most thorough study to date of the UCAPAWA cotton campaign is Devra Weber's "The Struggle for Stability and Control in the Cotton Fields of California." She prefers not to engage directly the question of Okie sympathy, correctly emphasizing the systemic obstacles to union success and stressing in particular the strategic importance of an integrated cotton industry response. UCAPAWA's more successful campaign among Hispanic cannery workers is the subject of Vicki L. Ruiz, Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950 (Albuquerque, 1987). [BACK]

57. Goodwyn, Democratic Promise . On the Socialist campaigns, see Oscar Ameringer, If You Don't Weaken: The Autobiography of Oscar Ameringer (New York, 1940); Green, Grass-roots Socialism ; Garin Burbank, When Farmers Voted Red: The Gospel of Socialism in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1910-24 (Westport, 1976); Manes, "Depression Pioneers," 186-222; Thompson, Closing the Frontier . [BACK]

58. Wilson, "Social Attitudes of Migratory Agricultural Workers," 314-59; Creisler, "Little Oklahoma,'" 40; Hoadley, "A Study of One Hundred Seventy Self-Resettled Agricultural Families," 112. [BACK]

59. Wilson, "Social Attitudes of Migratory Agricultural Workers," 347; UCAPAWA News (Feb. 1940); Mr. P. N., Wasco field notes of Walter Goldschmidt, 1941 (in Goldschmidt's possession, Dept. of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles); Creisler, "Little Oklahoma,'" 40. [BACK]

60. Dellar Ballard interview by Margo McBane, Mary Winegarden, and Rick Topkins, Lindsay, July 19, 1978, Women Farmworkers Project; Hub spring 1940 issues. See also the anonymous interview with a former UCAPAWA organizer in the Women Farmworkers Project series; Mr. C. C., Wasco field notes. [BACK]

61. Charles C. Alexander, The Ku Klux Klan in the Southwest (Lexington, 1965); Green, Grass-roots Socialism , 345-408; Burbank, When Farmers Voted Red , 160-89. [BACK]

62. Green, Grass-roots Socialism , 397, calls the 1930s the "Indian Summer" of Southwestern radicalism. The only significant rural stirrings occurred in the Arkansas Delta, where the Southern Tenant Farmers Union built a short-lived biracial organization. See Donald Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmer's Union and the New Deal (Chapel Hill, 1971); Jamieson, Labor Unionism in American Agriculture , 264-71; Manes, "Depression Pioneers," 139-44; James R. Scales and Danney Goble, Oklahoma Politics: A History (Norman, 1982), 214-17; Jacqueline Gordon Sherman, "The Oklahomans in California During the Depression Decade, 1931-1941" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1970), 45-47. [BACK]

63. Wilson, "Social Attitudes of Migratory Agricultural Workers," 333. [BACK]

64. Robert Girvin, "Migrant Workers Thinkers," San Francisco Chronicle (March 10, 1937). [BACK]

65. Wilson, "Social Attitudes of Migratory Agricultural Workers," 339 (Freeman ^* ). For examples of anti-Communism in the FSA camps, see Covered Wagon (Indio) (March 4, 1939); letter from J. H. Ward to Earl R. Becker in FSA Collection, Box 22, San Bruno; Stein, California and the Dust Bowl Migration , 268-69. [BACK]

66. Peter Friedlander, The Emergence of a UAW Local, 1936-1939: A Study in Class and Culture (Pittsburgh, 1975), 97-110, found differences in the response of Catholic and Protestant workers (some Southerners) in a Detroit auto parts plant. More generally on the response to Communists, see Bert Cochran, Labor and Communism: The Conflict That Shaped American Unions (Princeton, 1977), 82-102; Harvey Klehr, The Heyday of American Communism: The Depression Decade (New York, 1984), 223-51. [BACK]

67. Wilson, "Social Attitudes of Migratory Agricultural Workers," 331-32. [BACK]

68. James Bright Wilson, "Religious Leaders, Institutions, and Organizations Among Certain Agricultural Workers in the Central Valley of California" (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1944), 316. [BACK]

69. Burbank, When Farmers Voted Red . Also on the relationship between Protestantism and radicalism, see Herbert Gutman, "Protestantism and the American Labor Movement: The Christian Spirit in the Gilded Age," in Gutman, Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America (New York, 1976), 79-117. [BACK]

70. Jamieson, "A Settlement of Rural Migrant Families in the Sacramento Valley," 57; medical case history No. 33, FSA Collection, carton 2, Bancroft; interview with Lillie Ruth Ann Counts Dunn by Judith Gannon, Feb. 14, 16, 1981, Bakersfield, Odyssey Program. [BACK]

71. See Wilson, "Social Attitudes of Migratory Agricultural Workers." Of the eight informants involved with the union, only one was a church member. Nevertheless, all believed in God and considered themselves Christians. [BACK]

72. Wasco field notes; Stein, California and the Dust Bowl Migration , 270. Cletus Daniel, Bitter Harvest , 185, discusses racial tensions between Okies, blacks, and Mexicans in the 1933 CAWIU campaign. [BACK]

73. New York Times (March 6, 1940); Paul S. Taylor, "Again the Covered Wagon," Survey Graphic 24 (July 1935), 349; Katherine Douglas, "Uncle Sam's Co-op for Individualists," Coast Magazine (June 1939). [BACK]

74. The argument that rural Southwesterners were committed individualists who operated best within minimal community structures gains some support from anthropologist Evon Vogt's Modern Homesteaders , a study of an Okie community in New Mexico. [BACK]

75. See the discussion of manhood in Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (Urbana, 1982), 25-26. [BACK]

76. Mr. D. H., Wasco field notes. [BACK]

77. Edgar Crane interview by Judith Gannon, Shafter, April 7, 1981, Odyssey Program, 10-11. [BACK]

78. Wilson, "Social Attitudes of Migratory Agricultural Workers," 319. [BACK]

79. Ibid., 320. Also, Tom Higgenbothan interview, Aug. 18, 1940, Todd-Sonkin Recordings; Goldschmidt, As You Sow , 167. [BACK]

80. Interview by Stacey Jagels, March 31, April 2, 1981, Bakersfield, Odyssey Program, 33. A revealing interview with a grower who realized the importance of treating his workers with respect can be found in Goldschmidt Records, Box 66, San Bruno. Several former migrants interviewed by the Odyssey Program tell of remaining loyal to employers in the face of union pressure. See interviews with Grover C. Holliday, 48-49; Velma May Cooper Davis, 14-15; James Harrison Ward, 35; Alvin Laird, 21-22; and Clara Davis interview by author, Bakersfield, Sept. 17, 1979. [BACK]

81. California's system of racial relations is surveyed in Roger Daniels and Harry H. L. Kitano, American Racism: Exploration of the Nature of Prejudice (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1970), esp. 35-72. Useful too are Roger Daniels and Spencer C. Olin, Jr., eds., Racism in California (New York, 1972); Charles M. Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed (Berkeley, 1976); Lawrence de Graaf, Negro Migration to Los Angeles, 1930-1950 (San Francisco, 1974). [BACK]

82. Martha Lee Martin Jackson interview by Stacey Jagels, Clovis, March 10, 1981, Odyssey Program, 22. [BACK]

83. Fresno Bee (March 22, 1938). Also printed in Modesto Bee (March 23, 1938). [BACK]

84. Modesto Bee (March 9, 1938). [BACK]

85. Wilson, "Social Attitudes of Migratory Agricultural Workers," 149-50, 310. [BACK]

86. Ibid., 150, 316. See also The Hub (Visalia) (May 24, 31, June 12, 1940); Tom Collins, Reports of the Marysville Migrant Camp, 1935, in Paul S. Taylor Collection, Bancroft Library. [BACK]

87. Wilson, "Social Attitudes of Migratory Agricultural Workers," 143. [BACK]

88. On the FSA camps' unofficial policy of racial exclusion, see Tom Collins letter to Eric Thompson, Oct. 12, 1936, in FSA Records, Box 20, San Bruno. Examples of racist humor in the camp newspapers include Covered Wagon (Indio) (Dec. 10, 1938); Tow-Sack Tattler (Arvin) (Sept. 28, 1939, Nov. 22, 1940); Tent City News (Nov. 25, 1939). Todd-Sonkin Recordings provide other examples. [BACK]

89. Interview by Stacey Jagels, Oildale, Feb. 24, 26, 1981, Odyssey Program, 12. [BACK]

90. Mrs. L. R., Wasco field notes. [BACK]

91. Interview by Judith Gannon, Porterville, Jan. 24, 1981, Odyssey Program, 11, 18. [BACK]

92. Interview by Michael Neely, Visalia, March 23, May 12, 1981, Odyssey Program, 35-36. [BACK]

93. Evelyn Rudd, "Reading List—Design for Living," typescript in Goldschmidt's Wasco field notes. [BACK]

94. Interview by Stacey Jagels, Bakersfield, Jan. 26, 29, 1981, pp. 25-27. [BACK]

95. Wilson, "Social Attitudes of Migratory Agricultural Workers," 143. Goldschmidt, As You Sow , 68, records a similar vignette about a popular black labor contractor. Evidence of amicable relations between Okies and Hispanics is more readily found. Margaret Valiant's Migrant Camp Recordings, Library of Congress, contain examples of these two groups interacting at FSA camps in the Imperial Valley. See also Bill Jackson's interview in Todd-Sonkin Recordings. [BACK]

96. Gerald Haslam writes sensitively about the continuing pattern of racial hostility in "Oildale" and "Workin' Man's Blues" in Voices of a Place (Walnut Creek, Calif., 1987), 56-64, 78-97. [BACK]

97. Katherine Archibald, Wartime Shipyard: A Study of Social Disunity (Berkeley, 1947), 70-71. [BACK]

98. Ibid., 75. [BACK]

99. James Richard Wilburn, "Social and Economic Aspects of the Aircraft Industry in Metropolitan Los Angeles During World War II" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1971), 185; Lawrence Hewes, Boxcar in the Sand (New York, 1957), 213. [BACK]

100. Newsome interview, 36. [BACK]

101. The Covered Wagon (Indio) (April 22, 1939). Other examples: the poem "Sooner's Luck" in Todd-Sonkin Recordings; Marysville Camp News (July 16, 1938). Alvin Laird and Charles Newsome tell "prune-picker" stories in their Odyssey Program interviews. [BACK]

102. Todd-Sonkin field notes. See also Voice of the Agricultural Worker (Yuba City) (Dec. 3, 1940). [BACK]

103. Archibald, Wartime Shipyard , 55. [BACK]

104. Modesto Bee (March 29, 1938). Also Camp Echo (Brawley) (Dec. 2, 1939). [BACK]

105. Interview by Judith Gannon, South Pasadena, April 5, 1981, Odyssey Program, 34. [BACK]