Labor Day and the Forgotten Camps -- and Hazel & Olaf, a Perfect Labor Day Read!
When we think of Labor Day, we often picture barbecues, parades, and a long weekend. But the holiday was born from struggle — from the fight for dignity in work. And few places remind us of that struggle more starkly than the migrant labor camps of Depression-era California. In the 1930s, thousands of families fled the Dust Bowl, chasing rumors of steady work in California’s fields. What they found instead were overcrowded camps, makeshift tents, and endless rows of crops that promised survival but rarely delivered security. These were the “Okies” and “Arkies” — men, women, and children who bent their backs under the sun for pennies a day. They were not lazy or broken; they were displaced, resilient, and determined to live. The government eventually built federal camps — places like Arvin, Shafter, and Weedpatch — where sanitation, education, and community began to take root. Dorothea Lange’s photographs and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath captured their faces and their end...