What can the harvest of shame tell us about the challenges migrant workers FaceTime postwar America? Why do you think the film encouraged Americans in their leaders to take action to address property?

Americans are accustomed to thinking about the 1950s as an age of universal prosperity with televisions, two-car garages, and white picket fences. The U.S. economy did grow by leaps and bounds in the 1950s. Many middle- and working- class Americans enjoyed an overall improvement in their standard of living. By 1960, however, many in the U.S. began to “rediscover” poverty as a social problem in America. The economic boom of the 1950s was real, but many Americans, migrant farmworkers among them, were left out. In 1960, journalists Edward R. Murrow and David Lowe drove that point home in their CBS documentary Harvest of Shame. Their film aired the day after Thanksgiving, and they hoped to shock the American people into action. Harvest of Shame provided insight into the life and hardships of the men, women, and children that harvested the food on their dinner plates. Though many of the issues Murrow and Lowe described in 1960 remain with us in 2018, the film helped renew public interest in and debate over the problem of poverty in America. It helped launch John F. Kennedy’ “New Frontier” and Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” programs in the 1960s. What can Harvest of Shame tell us about the challenges migrant farmworkers faced in postwar America? Why do you think the film encouraged Americans and their leaders to take action to address poverty? The feature-length documentary film is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJTVF_dya7E You may also usethe textbook “The American Yawp”