Grades:	Middle School (6–8), High School (9–12)
Subjects: 	History-Social Science
Time Required: 	2 class periods 
Author: 	Linda Harris, A.P. U.S. History Teacher, Fairfax Senior High School Magnet Center for Visual Arts, Los Angeles, with J. Paul Getty Museum Staff

Lesson Overview 
Students examine primary resources, photographs by Dorothea Lange, and a U.S. map to understand the migrant experience during the Great Depression.

Featured Getty Artwork
Highway to the West/U.S. 54 in Southern New Mexico by Dorothea Lange
Dust Bowl Refugees Arrive in California by Dorothea Lange

Learning Objectives
- Students will analyze primary resources and a map in order to draw conclusions regarding the migrant-worker experience during the Great Depression.
- Students will understand and explain the impact of economic and ecological events on individuals during the Great Depression. 
- Students will be able to locate and label areas on a map affected by the Dust Bowl.
- Students will understand the importance and impact of an image during an historical period.
- Students will be able to understand different points of view regarding one event.
- Students will compare expression in different media.

Note: Students should have covered 1930s American History in class before this lesson.

Materials Required
- Dust Bowl map with questions (see attached)
- transcript of San Francisco Chronicle article from July 11, 1937 (see attached)

Steps
1.	Review Dust Bowl terms and history.

2.	Show the image Highway to the West on overhead and ask students to think about what it brings to mind.

3. 	Read the following excerpt from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) aloud and discuss in relation to the image Highway to the West:

“And then the dispossessed were drawn West—from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless—restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do—to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut—anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, and most of all for land.” 
(See Bibliography for publication information: http://www.getty.edu/education/teachers/classroom_resources/curricula/dorothea_lange/bibliography.html)

- Does the photograph Highway to the West express any of the ideas in this passage from Steinbeck’s book? Why or why not?
- Why do you think Dorothea Lange titled the image Highway to the West?
- Does Steinbeck’s writing help you understand Lange’s photograph? Please explain.

4.	Provide handout of U.S. map with questions. Have students locate and label the items on their maps, explaining the significance of these locations to the Dust Bowl. Point out the states Steinbeck mentions in the excerpt.

5.	Show students image of Dust Bowl Refugees and give them time to look and answer the following questions. Do this as oral discussion, or have students answer questions independently in writing. 

a.	What objects are tied to the car? Why do you think these particular items were packed?
b.	How many people are in the car? What are they doing?
c.	Can you tell they are moving, and not just taking a trip somewhere? Please explain.
d.	Why do you think they are traveling? What do you think their destination is?
e.	What problems might arise during their journey?
f.	What date would you give this photograph?
g.	Why are there crop marks on the photograph? Block out the parts of the photograph as indicated by these lines. Does it look any different to you? Does it change the mood or message of the picture?
h.	Do you think this photograph was made to be a work of art?
i. 	How is this image different from Highway to the West?
 
6.	Hand out copies of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper article and read aloud. Have students write out answers to the following questions independently. 

a.	What was the population of Los Angeles in July of 1937?
b.	What percentage of the population of Los Angeles was on relief?
c.	How many people entered California by automobile during the twelve-month period ending April 30, 1937?
d. 	What percentage of new arrivals indicated that Southern California was their destination? What kind of work did most need to find?
e.	Name two problems that would result from the “horde of newcomers.”
f.	How much had the cost of relief in Los Angeles County increased between 1925 and 1936?
g.	What did the Los Angeles County Supervisors demand that the state and federal governments do for these “indigent persons”?
h.	Why do you think this article was written? Is it sympathetic towards migrants? Explain your answer.
i.	Do you think Lange’s photographs helped or hindered the cause of the migrant workers? Explain.

7. 	Discuss the article and compare it with the images of Highway to the West and Dust Bowl Refugees. From whose point of view is this article written? Whose point of view do you think Lange was trying to express in her photographs? And from whose point of view was Steinbeck writing? How is a photograph similar to or different from text? What can a photograph tell you that a written text cannot, and vice versa?

Assessment
- Teacher observation of class discussion, or evaluation of written work. Students should be able to critically analyze and show an understanding of photographs and/or newspaper article.
- Students should be able to point out at least one visual element in a photograph or fact in written text, and explain its connection to the Dust Bowl.

Comparison Rubric:
- Students should be able to answer questions provided about individual sources.
- Students should be able to make connections between different sources of the same medium.
- Students should be able to make connections between different sources in different media, e.g., compare photographs to written text, and connect locations on the map to written text or photographs.
- Students should be able to interpret primary source material using their knowledge of American history.

Extensions
- Students might write a diary entry or letter from one of the following points of view:
 A farmer who has taken his family west
 A mother with an ill child in a migrant farm camp
 A taxpayer living in Los Angeles
- Students could read and report on The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck.
- Students can further investigate the work of Lange and other photographers and writers who documented American conditions in the 1930s while working for the U.S. government and evaluate their impact on the New Deal.

Standards Addressed

Common Core Standards for English Language Arts 

Grades 6–12

READING
Key Ideas and Details 
1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text. 
2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas. 

WRITING 
Text Types and Purposes
2. Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content. 

Production and Distribution of Writing 
4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. 

Research to Build and Present Knowledge 
7. Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.
8. Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source, and integrate the information while avoiding plagiarism.

SPEAKING AND LISTENING 
Comprehension and Collaboration
1. Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
2. Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.

History–Social Science Content Standards for California Public Schools

Grades 6–8
Historical and Social-Sciences Analysis Skills
Chronological and Spatial Thinking
3. Students use a variety of maps and documents to identify physical and cultural features of neighborhoods, cities, states, and countries and to explain the historical migration of people, expansion and disintegration of empires, and the growth of economic systems.

Research, Evidence, and Point of View
5. Students detect the different historical points of view on historical events and determine the context in which the historical statements were made (the questions asked, sources used, author’s perspectives).

Grades 9–12
Historical and Social-Sciences Analysis Skills
Chronological and Spatial Thinking
3. Students use a variety of maps and documents to interpret human movement, including major patterns of domestic and international migration, changing environmental preferences and settlement patterns, the frictions that develop between population groups, and the diffusion of ideas, technological innovations, and goods.

Grade 11
U.S. History and Geography: Continuity and Change in the Twentieth Century
11.6.3–Discuss the human toll of the Depression, natural disasters, and unwise agricultural practices and their effects on the depopulation of rural regions and on political movements of the left and right, with particular attention to the Dust Bowl refugees and their social and economic impacts in California.

Grade 12
Principles of American Democracy
12.8.3–Explain how public officials use the media to communicate with the citizenry and to shape public opinion.

National Standards for U.S. History 

Grades 5–12
Era 8: The Great Depression and World War II (1929–1945)
1b. The student understands how American life changed during the 1930s.

Worksheet

On the map above, locate and label and/or draw the following: 
1. 	States that experienced major erosion and dust storms, known as “the Dust Bowl”: Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas
2. 	Other states affected by the mass migration of farm workers: California, Arkansas, Nevada, Arizona, Missouri
3. 	The only major highway leading into the breadbasket of California and the road of choice for many migrants:  Route 66
4. 	Cities along Route 66 and cities in California affected by the influx of migrants: Denver, Topeka, Oklahoma City, Austin, Santa Fe, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento
5. 	Highways that carried migrant workers up and down the state of California for seasonal work: State Route 99 and U.S. Route 101
6. 	One of the most important and diversified agricultural regions in the United States, where many migrants traveled in search of work: California’s Central Valley 
7.  	A major agricultural center within California’s Central Valley: The San Joaquin Valley

Newspaper Article

What did the migrants find upon entering California?

The following article from the San Francisco Chronicle, July 11, 1937, reflects the problems faced by the migrants upon entering California. Source for article on Internet: http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist8/ok.html

“Continued influx of thousands of indigents from the Middle West into various California counties, adding to increasing relief burdens, has resulted in the calling of a State wide conference at Los Angeles to be held during the week of July 19. 
 Governor Merriam has been asked to attend the conference. 
A serious relief crisis as well as possibility of epidemics is threatened, according to Supervisor Gordon McDonough of Los Angeles County, one of those instrumental in calling the relief conference. 

L.A. County Hit
Los Angeles county is the most seriously hit of all the counties of the State. According to Supervisor McDonough, 19.36 per cent of Los Angeles county’s estimated population of 2,366,904 is on relief. 
The Los Angeles Supervisors, through County Charities Superintendent Rex Thomson and Supervisor John Anson Ford, both of whom are now in Washington, have reported to the Federal authorities that 2,946,614 persons entered California by automobile during the 12-month period ending April 30 last. Of this total 74 percent   indicated Southern California as their destination, and a great proportion of these persons needed manual employment. 

Dust Bowl Refugees 
     That approximately 70,000 persons, mostly families from the dust bowl areas, are overtaxing relief and health agencies in the San Joaquin valley was [sic] reported by Harold H. Robertson, field secretary of the Gospel Army, a national social and relief body, has reported to the Supervisors. This report has hastened the calling of the relief conference, Supervisor McDonough announced. 

Federal Problem
     The Los Angeles county Supervisors are sponsoring a plan to give county jobs to county residents and demand that the State and Federal governments care for indigent persons coming in from other States. 
     In Los Angeles county, it is asserted, the relief costs have jumped from 92 cents per capita in 1925 to $44.52 in 1936, or $87.51 per taxpayer. The per capita cost for this year will be greatly increased by the horde of newcomers unless it is halted, authorities said.”

© San Francisco Chronicle 
Reprinted by permission.