The Story Behind This World-Famous Photo Is Even Sadder Than You Can Imagine

Despite all of the publicity surrounding the Migrant Mother photograph, her identity remained a secret until 1978, when a reporter from the Modesto Bee tracked her down.

Thompson was open to sharing her story. She was born in present-day Oklahoma and married at the age of 17. By the time she was 28 years old, she had six children and her husband had died of tuberculosis. At the time of the picture, she had another child with Jim Hill, and the two were making their way north through California looking for field labor jobs. Their car broke down near pea fields, but the crops were ruined by frost – the workers had nothing to do and no food.

When the picture was taken, Thompson and her children were waiting for her Hill to return with the car parts they needed so they could look for another place to work. She told the reporter, "We just existed. We survived. Let's put it that way."

Lange said that while she was taking pictures, she approached a makeshift tent and found a woman sitting there with a few of her children. Thompson was with her daughters, waiting for her partner to return with car parts.

Lange wrote down in her notes: "I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was 32. She said that [she and her children] had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed."

Lange was working on behalf of the Resettlement Administration (now called the Farm Security Administration) when she took the now-famous photographs. The administration's mission was to showcase the plight of migrant workers to officials in Washington. While the Great Depression was difficult for almost everyone in America, those on the East coast could hardly conceptualize the state of life in the Dust Bowl. 

Lange was attempting to capture a snapshot of the unavoidably vagrant lifestyle of those who had lost everything.

Lange never even asked for Thompson's name when she took the famous photograph. Thompson would later tell the reporter who found her that she had learned to pick any kind of crop necessary. At one time she was picking cotton and making 50 cents for each 100 pounds of cotton she picked. She said she could pick 450-500 pounds each day – she didn't even weigh 100 pounds herself.

She would put her young children in burlap sacks so that they couldn't get away while she worked, dragging them alongside her as she worked from row to row. The children who were old enough to walk would work alongside their parents. 

Lange sent the pictures off to the San Francisco News, who published two of them, along with a story about the migrant workers. The story that accompanied the photos, called "Ragged, Hungry, Broke, Harvest Workers Live in Squalor," reportedly inspired John Steinbeck to write his great American depression-era novel, The Grapes of Wrath. 

Once the U.S. government saw the pictures and learned in what dire straits the West was, they sent help. The pea pickers camp received a rushed shipment of 20,000 pounds of food. However, Thompson and her family were no longer there – they had repaired their vehicle and moved on to find new work. 

In 1983, Thompson's children were desperate to raise funds to pay for their mother's medical bills after she had a stroke. Only then did they decide to try to capitalize off the fame of their mother's picture. They raised money by putting out a call for donations for the "Migrant Mother." Although Thompson died shortly afterwards, the fundraiser did cover most of the costs.

She is buried in Lakewood Memorial Park in Hughson, California. Her headstone reads “Migrant Mother – A Legend of the Strength of American Motherhood."