Turning Okies Into New Dealers: How 1930s Technocrats Pushed Progressivism on Dust Bowl Refugees in Federal Farm Camps

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2024

⏱️ 39 minutes

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Summary

In the midst of the Great Depression, punished by crippling drought and deepening poverty, hundreds of thousands of families left the Great Plains and the Southwest to look for work in California’s rich agricultural valleys. In response to the scene of destitute white families living in filthy shelters built of cardboard, twigs, and refuse, reform-minded New Deal officials built a series of camps to provide them with shelter and community.

Today’s guest is Jonathan Ebel, author of “From Dust They Came: Government Camps and the Religion of Reform in New Deal California.” We look at the religious dynamics in and around migratory farm labor camps in agricultural California established and operated by the Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration. Ebel makes the case that the camps served as mission sites for the conversion of migrants to more modern ways of living and believing. Though the ideas of virtuous citizenship put forward by the camp administrators were framed as secular, they rested on a foundation of Protestantism. At the same time, many of the migrants were themselves conservative or charismatic Protestants who had other ideas for how their religion intended them to be.

By looking at the camps as missionary spaces, Ebel shows that this New Deal program was animated both by humanitarian concern and by the belief that these poor, white migrants and their religious practices were unfit for life in a modernized, secular world.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Scott here with another episode of the History Unplugged Podcast.
0:08.0	For the last 200 years in the modern age, one of the biggest flash points between
0:11.3	modern states and those they governed was states trained
0:14.1	to homogenize their subjects with one standard education system, a standard language, a standard
0:18.9	set of beliefs and behaviors, sort of like replaceable parts a machine, while the subjects and citizens they governed
0:24.4	try to maintain their local differences and practices that were part of their heritage.
0:28.4	This conflict played out in many different places, and one very interesting one that's been overlooked is the New Deal government
0:34.1	camps in California where Midwestern and Southern farmers whose properties were wiped out in the
0:38.4	Dust Bowl in the 1930s came to live in farm labor camps in agricultural California established by the government.
0:44.3	The foreign-minded New Deal officials built a series of camps to provide them with shelter and community,
0:48.3	but in one sense they were also mission sites for the conversion of migrants to more modern ways of living and believing,
0:53.6	giving them a new set of beliefs and education, and ideas about social responsibility
0:58.1	that would fit a technocratic age. Today's guest is Jonathan Eble,
1:01.5	author of from Dust They Kane, government camps in a religion of reform in New Deal, California.
1:06.2	Although the ideas of virtuous citizenship, put forward by the camp administrators, were framed as secular,
1:11.0	they rested on a foundation of Protestantism.
1:13.5	At the same time, many of the migrants were themselves conservative or charismatic Protestants
1:17.6	who had other ideas for how their religion intended them to be.
1:21.2	This tension between the government and the
1:22.8	government is an ongoing one and by looking at this particular case study
1:25.9	that helps explore the fundamental mechanics that are present in
1:28.8	many other interactions like this. Hope you enjoy this discussion with
	...

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