By examining primary sources, including songs, newspapers, interviews, and photographs of migrant farm workers in California during the Great Depression, students create a scrapbook from the point of view of a migrant worker, providing evidence of the colloquial speech used by the migrants and the issues affecting their lives. Using Voices from the Dust Bowl, 1940-1941 and Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives, students select photographs and use the sound recordings of voices of the migrant workers to create captions, letters, and/or songs based on these primary sources. This lesson can be used in connection with a unit on the Great Depression, and specifically on The Grapes of Wrath.

Using the Library of Congress online collection American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 documents, personal interviews, and (Congress.gov), students will be able to gain a better understanding of the Depression-era beginnings of many of the government programs that continue to the present day.

Is there a novel in every person? Are there stories that have never been told because they seemed unimportant? What is the value of the lives of people who will never be famous or have their biographies written?

Students address these questions through activities using oral history methods and investigating life in the 1930s. They compare the immigration/migration experiences of their families to those of people living through the Great Depression using interviews with parents, and photographs, films, and documents from the Library of Congress and other sources