“I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing” by Walt Whitman, ca. 1855–59
Bulletin no. 1 accompanying John Steinbeck's essay, ca. 1935
John Steinbeck (1902–1968)
Brief essay on the “Attention! Migratory Farm Workers” educational bulletin
Los Gatos, CA, February 25, 1939
Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
John Steinbeck brief essay
In this text, the novelist John Steinbeck reflects on the historical significance of the educational bulletins for migrant farm workers that he saved in his collection. Steinbeck’s work covering the plight of migrant farm workers and agitating for federal resettlement agencies inspired his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath. In this brief essay, which Steinbeck sent to an unknown Mr. Muni, he considers migrant workers’ efforts to share information about their rights and the ways that landowners and local law enforcement terrorized them and labeled their pamphlets “subversive literature.” Steinbeck declared that to him, “these are wonderful documents” because they show that “America will not always be in the hands of…men and groups who now dominate it with money with publicity and with terror.” Steinbeck’s sympathetic depiction of farmworkers infuriated some agribusiness leaders and landowners, who pushed to ban the book in parts of California.
Teach with this item from Unit 1 of the curriculum guide, Reading Dangerously: Censorship and the Freedom to Read in 20th Century America.
: Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
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