Clash of Cultures & the Discovery of Gold      123456

California is not the Promised Land

Life for the Dust Bowl migrants in California was vastly different from the paradise they had dreamed of and seen advertised.

The weather was mild and the fields were lush with produce, but California’s basic infrastructures had not escaped the ravages of the Depression. The flood of hundreds of thousands of poor migrants to the state was not welcome. After the long and difficult journey to California, many were turned away at the border.

Those who made it through found that jobs were scarce. Those who did find work were paid extremely low wages. With whole families working, including the elderly and children, these farmworkers could not make enough to pay for basic food and housing. Although some government camps did exist for migrant workers, most were forced to set up camp along irrigation ditches. These crowded ditchbank camps had no running water or sanitary systems. Disease and illness quickly spread among the exhausted and malnourished workers. Workers were forced to move from camp to camp in search of work, following the growing seasons of various crops.

Prejudice and Discrimination

California had been hit hard by the Depression, and work was hard to come by even before the new migrants arrived. Californians did not look favorably on the impoverished Dust Bowl migrants who lined the landscape in makeshift camps. Often called “Okies” or “Arkies” due to their roots in Oklahoma and Arkansas, the migrants were ridiculed for their tattered and dirty appearance, coarse accents, and general lack of education. Although the Dust Bowl migrants were predominantly white, their ties to the Southern Great Plains marked them as outsiders.

Highway signs welcomed tourists to California but warned the unemployed to seek work elsewhere. Dust Bowl migrants were considered uneducated, impoverished, and dirty, and were deemed a danger to public health.