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This exhibit explores the food of the Okie migrant workers in California in the 1930s. This topic extends from what a meal looked like for Okies before they journeyed west and what their meals looked like during travel and in migrant camps. Also included are photographs of the utensils and tableware that the Okies used (which served as some of the important materials that were brought on their travels to California). Through photographs, recipes, and migrant camp newsletters, “Food of the Migrant Workers” provides a window into the diet and eating practices of the Okies in California.

As we see with the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath, the amount of money that family members earned directly influenced what kind of food the family ate. Before the Joads leave their home in Oklahoma, they fantasize about the grapes and oranges that they will be able to pick and eat anytime they want in the promised land of California (83). But their dreams of eating fruit in the lush groves of California never come true. Despite being surrounded by fresh fruits and vegetables, migrant workers were forbidden from eating food from the fields they were working, and fresh produce in general is a luxury that few could afford. Migrant families primarily subsisted on starch-based foods like potatoes, biscuits, and fried dough that would fill them up enough to complete a day’s work in the fields.

The estimated annual income of agricultural workers was $450 per family. This was not nearly enough to afford a healthy and balanced diet, and as a result rates of malnutrition and contagious diseases among migrant workers and families was high (Steinbeck Committee). As Steinbeck mentions in his novel pellagra,a disease caused by the deficiency in vitamin B, was common among migrant workers (DeMott 462). In a 1938 survey done by health authorities in the cotton camps of San Joaquin Valley, 17 percent of children suffered from malnutrition. A larger study done in more labor camps in this same area concluded that 28 percent of all children "lacked an adequate diet" (Gregory 64). Severe cases of pellagra and of malnutrition could lead to death.

Despite being faced with many afflictions, many of those centering around lack of money and food, migrant workers tried to persevere in California. Overall, “Food of the Migrant Workers” investigates the seemingly simple topic of food in order to show how the Okies sustained themselves and tried to make do with what they could afford in their new and unfamiliar surroundings.