You know the photo. You’ve seen it before – we all have. The woman’s strong, hardened face, worn and worried. Her children leaning into her – their mother – the one that is supposed to protect them from harm. Dorothea Lange, the woman behind the camera, called her photo “Migrant Mother.” She took it at a pea-pickers camp in California in 1936.
Source: Newspapers.com/Reddit
And the woman in front of the camera? Her name is Florence Owens Thompson, and she was an impoverished mother of ten during the worst decade of her lifetime. But she wasn’t identified until the 1970s. In fact, she despised the photo and felt exploited by it. Thanks to an Associated Press story, the truth finally came out about who she really was.
This is her story…