Dust Bowl migration altered California's politics, religion, culture

In the early 1940s, soldiers and sailors in San Francisco could get their shoes shined by a kid who had seen his share of dust and dirt.

Jim Stevens, whose family fled the Dust Bowl for the San Joaquin Valley when he was 3, did that job while his father worked at a Richmond shipyard.

He was still a boy when he set up his stand in Union Square, but work was nothing new to him. He already had helped his family harvest crops around the Central Valley.

"I always had a good work ethic, and I had to," said Stevens, who went on to own Latif's Restaurant in Turlock for many years. "I bought my school clothes every year and always had a few quarters in my pocket."

The work ethic is something that Dust Bowl survivors and their descendants mention often when talking about the legacy of this American social upheaval.

They have left their mark on the valley in other ways: Their politics tend to be moderate to conservative; their religion evangelical Protestant. They helped create country music and have spread their love of chicken-fried steak and chili.

"I think we brought a fairly strong sense of family," said Al Menshew of Turlock, who came from Oklahoma and eventually became purchasing manager at Gallo Glass Co. in Modesto.

"In my bunch, people were basically honest," he added. "You could have them hold a $100 bill for you, and they would sit there and starve before they spent it."

The Dust Bowlers are not the largest migrant force that has shaped the valley. People from Mexico are greater in number, and they have left their own legacy in work and faith, music and food.

But the Dust Bowl migration stands out. It happened fairly quickly and dramatically, in the second half of the 1930s. Many of the migrants were destitute, and they came to a region also suffering from the Depression.

The newcomers had to be willing to work hard, live frugally, and rely on friends and relatives for support.

"People were very moral, I think, most everyone," said Margaret Bozarth Mitchell of Modesto, who left South Dakota in 1940. "They helped each other. You had to help each other to survive."

Cornelia Eggink Verver of Ripon, who came from Colorado in 1935, said the ordeal made her family appreciate what little it had.

"My folks never told me we were poor, and we were happy, and I credit them for that," said Verver, who later married into an established farming family. "My folks always instilled in me that we were rich because we had Jesus and we had each other and we had good health."

World War II brought an end to the Depression, and to the worst of the migrants' trials. A labor shortage boosted farm wages, while others headed off for military service or defense work.

In the late 1940s, the Dust Bowlers were moving up in valley society, according to census figures gathered by James Gregory for his 1989 book, "American Exodus."

In 1940, farm labor was the occupation for 42 percent of the valley workers from the main Dust Bowl states. The figure dropped to 25 percent in 1950 as the jobs shifted back to the largely Mexican work force that had held them before the Depression.

The people from the Plains moved into skilled trades, business ownership and other higher-paying work. Their annual median income went from $550 in 1939 to $2,420 in 1949. The rate of growth was twice that of other white valley residents, who stood at $2,970 in 1949.

The war years and the rise of the defense industry helped put the migrants on the path to stability, said former Oakdale resident Toni Alexander. She wrote her doctoral dissertation on the "Okie" identity and now teaches geography at Auburn University in Alabama. continue>>>

Read More