Excerpt from "The Assignment I'll Never Forget: Migrant Mother"

Published in Popular Photography, February 1960

"I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions."

Dorothea Lange

By the mid-1930s, thousands of small farmers had lost their farms. Sharecroppers and tenant farmers, who did not own their land but rented from large landowners, continued living in poverty. Living in perhaps the most desperate condition were the migrant farm families. Migrant farmers, many of whom had abandoned their Dust Bowl farms, followed the seasonal crop harvest in the West, laboring in the fields for meager wages. Their families lived in destitute conditions, always on the brink of starvation.