Promotional Information
A vivid, firsthand account of the migrations, immigrant camps, and
labor organizing of displaced Midwestern farmers during the Dust
Bowl of the 1930s, illustrated with striking photographs.
Table of Contents
- "Migrant Farmer," by Dorothy Babb
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Babb Sisters
- 1. The Dirty Plate Trail
- 2. Field Notes
- Oklahoma Panhandle, 1934
- "Triple A, Dusted Out"
- Note on the government's AAA program to reduce hog production
and corn acreage
- The Dispossessed
- Labor Conditions
- Farmer-Industrialist
- Labor Protest
- Government Camps
- Fascist characteristics of the campaign against the migratory
workers in California
- Visalia 2/24/38
- Labor Contractor
- Kinds of camps in California
- Birthrate
- In answer to the frequent threat...
- In the fields, 1938
- Large Landowners
- Refugee Needs
- A day in the camps
- San Joaquin Valley, California, 1938
- Thirty-seven varieties of religon...
- Striking Workers, Angry Growers
- March, 1938
- October 29, 1938
- Two stories of labor spies
- Notes for a Novel
- 3. Reportage
- Migratory Farm Workers in California (1938)
- There Ain't No Food (1938)
- Farmers without Farms (New Masses, 21 June 1938)
- We Sure Struck It Tuff: The Storm
- Dealing in Major Catastrophes (New Masses, 23 May 1939)
- Letter to Dorothy Babb (May 1938)
- 4. Dust Bowl Tales
- The Dark Earth (The Magazine, Nov.-Dec. 1934)
- Morning in Imperial Valley (Kansas Magazine, 1941)
- Whose Names Are Unknown
- 5. The Dust Bowl as Site of Memory
- 6. Epilogue: Letters from the Fields
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
About the Author
Sanora Babb (1907-2005) became an acclaimed short story writer,
poet, and author of three novels. Dorothy Babb (1909-1995)
frequently collaborated with Sanora in her work.
Douglas Wixson, Professor Emeritus at the University of
Missouri-Rolla, is the author of Worker-Writer in America: Jack
Conroy and the Tradition of Midwestern Literary Radicalism,
1898-1990. He currently lives in Austin, Texas.
