The personal story of the lady in the Iconic Great Depression Photo

The Migrant Mother is an iconic photo taken by American photographer Dorothea Lange. While many of us have seen the  photo, Florence Owens Thompson’s identity was not known for over forty years after it was taken.

Lange  wrote of the encounter with Thompson:

I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was 32. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food.

Thompson claimed that Lange never asked her any questions and got many of the details incorrect. The haunting image has become symbolic of the misery of the Depression Era.

Read Thompson's story here