![]() The camera cuts to the kitchen counter where flies swarm around a pot of beans. In one of the most dramatic moments in the documentary, producer David Lowe interviews Allean King's nine-year-old son, Jerome. When CBS interviewed her she said one dollar, because she'd only worked two hours. Take Allean King, who was interviewed while she was picking beans.īLAIR: Years later, Allean King told The Sun-Sentinel in Florida she actually made 10 to 15 dollars a day. But there was also criticism of the documentary, even from some of the migrants themselves. And it was hard to save and put away monies and stuff, you know, so you always were looking for work.īLAIR: Osborn credits "Harvest Of Shame" with making the rest of America look at how people who didn't have a voice were living. ![]() OSBORN: It's almost like you were working for that day, and then the next day had to take care of itself. Some of her relatives were interviewed for "Harvest Of Shame." You go from sun-up to sun-down and you look at the amount of money that you bring in and a lot of times it just didn't make ends meet.īLAIR: Teresa Osborn is a middle school teacher in Belle Glade. Many of them were from Belle Glade, Florida, a town whose motto is her soil is her fortune. They filmed in run-down labor camps and talked to workers in the fields. RATHER: The tone was somber, serious, direct.īLAIR: The CBS crew spent nine months filming "Harvest Of Shame" from Florida to New Jersey across to California. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Well, we don't - we don't have milk except maybe when we draw our paycheck, we have milk about once a week.īLAIR: The day after "Harvest Of Shame" aired, The New York Times said it was uncompromising in its exposure of filth, despair and grinding poverty that are the lot of the migratory workers.ĭAN RATHER: Nobody but nobody on American television had taken an hour to do this kind of expose.īLAIR: Former CBS news anchor and correspondent Dan Rather. ![]() LOWE: How many quarts of milk do you buy for the children? UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Well, I cook a pot of beans and fry some potatoes or some corn or something like that. Now we just rent them.īLAIR: African-Americans and whites, weary mothers and fathers and their children told their stories to CBS producer David Lowe.ĭAVID LOWE: What is an average dinner for the family? MURROW: (As narrator) One farmer looked at this and said, we used to own our slaves. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Eight, seven bucks and you got to you and if you pull today, and we pull what we got to pull today, you'll have eleven dollars in your pocket.īLAIR: It's called a shape-up for migrant workers - men and women packed onto the backs of large trucks that drove them off to the fields. Crew leaders yell out the going rate for that day's pay. We think this is a story worth hearing again about what a difference a documentary can make.ĮLIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: It begins in an open lot crowded with men and women looking for jobs. She tackled that question earlier this year as part of our series marking the 50th anniversary of the war on poverty. NPR's Elizabeth Blair wondered whether it changed anything. It offered millions of Americans a hard look at what it means to live in poverty. That broadcast is considered groundbreaking. SHAPIRO: Murrow was introducing a documentary called "Harvest Of Shame" about migrant farm workers. MURROW: We present this report on Thanksgiving because were it not for the labor of the people you're going to meet, you might not starve, but your table would not be laden with the luxuries that we have all come to regard as essentials. (SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "HARVEST OF SHAME")ĮDWARD R. I'm Ari Shapiro, and this is CBS newsman Edward R. It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
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