I watched Grapes of Wrath from Netflix, and by the end, things were looking pretty bleak for the migrant workers. They were living out of their jalopies or squatter camps, getting work for maybe a few weeks at a time. It appeared most of the land was owned by the big boys and it would unrealistic for the workers to save up for their own homes.
What was the end result?
World War II broke out, and they gave up on farming/picking and worked for the war effort in factories?
Increased demand by WWII rose wages for the pickers to be more prosperous?
They went back to Oklahoma (etc) once the drought was over?
For the most part, they put down roots in California and stayed there. Joan Didion touched on this in her book Where I Was From. California’s history is of waves of newcomers despised by the people who got there before, and the Okies were just one in a series.
As happened with Katrina, many of them relocated permanently to other states, others eventually returned. Contrary to popular opinion, Oklahomans don’t live in tepees and the majority of us are not farmers, so many of them took up other trades.
My understanding is those that were not turned away by a draconian anti-Okie law that California passed around 1936* and the police border barricades did end up mostly settling in and became Californians. Woodie Guthrie was one of the “Okies” that headed for California but he ended up finding work in radio instead of the fields.
Some Okies did return to Oklahoma when the droughts ended and the economy improved.
Some Okies moved back to whence they came* when the economy improved. My maternal family was one of those.
A lot of Okies stayed in California and assimilated. They went to work in factories for the war effort, or got other jobs that came available due to the war economy, or made better money as farm labor due to the war economy, or enlisted, or … (IIRC, my maternal grandfather enlisted, which provided money to move his family back home to Oklahoma.)
I think another factor is that WWII produced a new target for Californian obloquy, namely the Japanese. Compared to the evils of the Yellow Peril, Okies were small potatoes, making assimilation much easier.
*“Okies” was a general term for any migrant labor from eastern states, not just Oklahomans.
They settled on virgin sagebrush land, cleared it, farmed it, got sick a lot. Raised 7 kids, 3 sons went on to become: a college professor, a high school principal and a college president. They sold the farm when they retired for enough money to live comfortably for the rest of their lives.
