Explore Pledge of Allegiance, Raphael Weill Elementary School, San Francisco

K–12 Resource: Close Looking

(Grade 3–5 version) Read to learn more about Dorothea Lange’s photograph of children in San Francisco, California taken in 1942

Title

Pledge of Allegiance, Raphael Weill Elementary School, San Francisco

Artist/Maker

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895 - 1965)

Date

negative April 20, 1942; print about 1960s

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Dimensions

Image: 34 × 25.6 cm (13 3/8 × 10 1/16 in.) Sheet: 35.2 × 27.9 cm (13 7/8 × 11 in.) Mat: 71 × 55.9 cm (27 15/16 × 22 in.)

Place

San Francisco, California, United States

Object Type

Print Photograph

Credit Line

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2000.50.16

Assignment

Read About This Photograph by Dorothea Lange

In this photograph called Pledge of Allegiance, Raphael Weill Elementary School, San Francisco, you can see a group of schoolchildren standing close together. They have their hands over their hearts and are looking up, probably at an American flag.

The photographer, Dorothea Lange, made sure the camera focused on a Japanese American girl wearing a plaid dress in the front and center. The girl’s face looks serious and shows strong feelings.

Dorothea Lange took this picture at a public school in San Francisco, California in April, 1942. Just a few days later, this girl and her family, along with many other Japanese American citizens, were rounded up and forced to move to incarceration camps. They had to stay there until World War II ended.

The US government’s War Relocation Authority (WRA) gave Lange a job. They asked her to take photographs of Japanese American families being forced to leave their homes in northern California. But Lange wanted to do more than just photograph them leaving. She thought it was important to show pictures of their normal lives in the San Francisco area before they were sent away, and also after.

Other photographers who worked for the WRA tried to make the incarceration camps look like good places. But Dorothea Lange was different. She wanted to show that what was happening to these families was wrong and unfair.

Questions

Write or discuss your responses.

  • What is happening in this photograph?
  • How would you describe the girl’s expression? What do you think she might be feeling?
  • Why do you suppose Lange framed the picture so that the Japanese American girl is in the center?
  • Does this photograph have a message besides the children reciting the “Pledge of Allegiance”? What message do you get from it?
  • Do you recite or have you recited the “Pledge of Allegiance”? What does it mean to you? What do you think it might have meant to the girl in this photo?

Glossary

(Japanese) incarceration

The forced relocation of Japanese Americans to camps during World War II.

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Related Standards

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