The History of California’s Okie Migrants
Geographer Kenneth E. Foote’s (2003) research on sites of tragedy and remembrance associated with the struggles of American labor reveals how the events of the past are often not commemorated in the cultural landscape until contemporary society is prepared to address the elements of past conflict that have yet to be resolved and absorbed into a general national consciousness. According to Foote, commemorations of the economic history of the United States have most often been influenced by those with the power (and wealth) to dictate their material form – thus resulting in tributes to industrialization from the standpoint of those who controlled the means of production – the industrialists themselves. Left out of these commemorations were the contributions of labor. Only when labor gains social authority and power are its contributions to the economic well-being of the country incorporated into the collective memory and commemorated in the cultural landscape.
Changes in collective memory then reflect changing power relations in society (Gillis 1994). Foote’s work focuses on the historic invisibility of labor struggle in sites commemorating traditional industrialization; his ideas resonate with those of Don Mitchell (1996) in his study of California migrant farm labor in the early twentieth century. Low-paid migrant farm labor allowed for the growth of ‘industrial’ agriculture in California and sculpted the landscape into an image of economic success and prosperity. Like the workers of the ‘Gilded Age,’ the struggles of and sacrifices made by migrant farm workers in California had yet to be formally immortalized in the landscape. Only when the voices of labor gain regional or national strength would their contributions to contemporary society be inserted into what Kansteiner (2002) terms the “media of memory” such as images, text and the cultural landscape – elements that “help us construct and transmit our feelings about the past” (p. 190). The work of Foote and Mitchell suggests that change that redistributes power in society ultimately allows for new tales of past struggles to rise to the forefront and take on new meaning and importance. With greater economic self-sufficiency, once politically and socially marginalized groups come to fulfill American ideals of ‘bootstrapping’ citizens whose experiences contribute to the perceived larger cultural mosaic (Deverell 1996; Ong 1996; Roediger 2000). Okie migrants have been long characterized as having arrived in California after being pushed out of their home states due to economic and ecological hardship only to face marginalization and discrimination in the agricultural fields of California.
With the rise of the defense industry during World War II, many of California’s Okie migrants of the past scaled the economic and social ladder. The result was that during the second-half of the twentieth century Okies were able to position themselves higher within the social hierarchy with respect to the newly arriving foreign immigrant groups (Gregory 1989). Having gained social authority, Okies today have often been idealized today as the archetypal California migrant. Okies have earned the right to include their remembrances of in-migrant success despite adversity within the collective memory of contemporary Californians facing an increasingly diverse population.
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