Migratory Worker/Protest Songs collected during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s

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Introduction

Protest songs were sung by farm workers in California who had migrated from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona during the Dust Bowl in the late 1930s. The songs were collected by Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin, who were hired by the Farm Security Administration to document conditions within the FSA camps. Many of the protest songs they recorded were performed by Ruby and Bert Rains, union organizers in Bakersfield, who learned them at a field workers school in Pomona, CA, in 1939.

Protests songs such as “Fight for Union Recognition” often take the form of setting new texts to familiar tunes so that the songs can be easily learned. According to field notes for the Library of Congress’s Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd & Robert Sonkin Migratory Worker Collection, the Rains “picketed during the cotton strike last year—every day for two months.” This song was created by Jack Latham during the Arvin cotton strike of 1939.

Activity

Listen to recording of “Fight for Union Recognition” (without projecting the score)  https://kodalycollection.org/song.cfm?id=1102

Show Dorothea Lange photo of cotton pickers  https://www.loc.gov/item/2017770991/

Project the score of song, listen again, then sing through together with recording.

Question/Reflect:

Extension

If time allows, listen to another protest song to hear the concerns of migrant workers from Voices from the Dust Bowl:

ASSOCIATED FARMERS HAVE A FARM. https://www.loc.gov/item/toddbib000171/

ROLL OUT THE PICKETS. https://www.loc.gov/item/toddbib000170/

LET'S JINE UP. This song was composed rather late in the strike, but “was about the most popular song after it was composed.”

Note: The Associated Farmers of California was an influential anti-labor organization formed by agricultural and business leaders in 1934, which countered labor activism with armed vigilantes, anti-Communist propaganda, sweeping anti-labor ordinances and jailing of labor leaders.  The power of Associated Farmers was brought to an end when the organization was implicated by a federal commission in acts of violence, collusion with local officials and violation of workers’ civil rights in labor disputes throughout the 1930s.

Connecting with literature (from Todd-Sonkin field notes)

https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/afc/afc1985001/afc1985001_fn001/afc1985001_fn001.pdf

The Arvin Migratory Labor Camp was established by the Farm Security Administration in 1937 at Weedpatch California, near Arvin, in the cotton-growing region of the San Joaquin Valley. It was the first of its kind in California, and is notable as the scene of John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. At the time of these recordings it contained 145 families (650 persons). The camp consists of 106 metal shelters (steel, painted with an aluminum paint said to cut off the sun's rays perceptibly), 98 tents, and 20 adobes. At the peak of the cotton picking the camp population rises to 250 families, or 1200 persons.

For further investigation

Article about the migratory camps built in California and songs collected there

https://kodalycollection.org/dust-bowl.cfm

Exploration of LOC materials for teachers, including the Dust Bowl primary source set

https://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/primarysourcesets/

Article and photos documenting migratory labor camps

https://www.loc.gov/collections/fsa-owi-black-and-white-negatives/articles-and-essays/documenting-america/fsa-migratory-labor-camp/

Protest Songs Roundtable: Civil Rights, Unions, Immigrants and Stonewall

https://blogs.loc.gov/music/2013/11/protest-songs-roundtable-civil-rights-unions-immigrants-and-stonewall/