Pea-pickers
Encyclopedia
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. These people were unskilled, poorly educated workers, suitable only for menial tasks, such as harvesting crops and, as such, received poor wages for working long hours under dreadful conditions. Many of these people were photographed by Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange was an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration...
.
The term "pea picker" is used to distinguish a group as a lower social class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
from some other similar group, such as the "pea-picking" Smiths, as opposed to the "respectable" Smiths.
Temporary communities of pea-pickers are called pea picker camps and farms that employed them were pea-picker farms.
See also
- OkieOkieOkie is a term dating from as early as 1907, originally denoting a resident or native of Oklahoma. It is derived from the name of the state, similar to Texan or Tex for someone from Texas, or Arkie or Arkansawyer for a native of Arkansas....
- Tennessee Ernie FordTennessee Ernie FordErnest Jennings Ford , better known as Tennessee Ernie Ford, was an American recording artist and television host who enjoyed success in the country and Western, pop, and gospel musical genres...
, who was nicknamed "The Ol' Pea-Picker Himself" - White trashWhite trashWhite trash is an American English pejorative term referring to poor white people in the United States, suggesting lower social class and degraded living standards...
- The Grapes of WrathThe Grapes of WrathThe Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962....