"This scene is not taking place in the Congo. It has nothing to do with Johannesburg or Cape Town. It is not Nyasaland or Nigeria. This is Florida. These are citizens of the United States, 1960. This is a shape-up for migrant workers. The hawkers are chanting the going piece rate at the various fields. This is the way the humans who harvest the food for the best-fed people in the world get hired. One farmer looked at this and said, "We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them."
Murrow closed with these words
"The migrants have no lobby. Only an enlightened, aroused and perhaps angered public opinion can do anything about the migrants. The people you have seen have the strength to harvest your fruit and vegetables. They do not have the strength to influence legislation. Maybe we do. Good night, and good luck."
The decade of the Sixties was about to explode from the placid waters of the Eisenhower Fifties. The uncivil racial activities and "whites only" lunch counter politics of the deep south unleashed a non-violent movement to obtain equal status and to guarantee the basic civil rights of African-Americans. The ivory towers of academia were mobilizing on the campus to protest the War in Vietnam. The Cold War was still hot, but, on the bright side the red scare persecutions that were an aberration of democracy known historically as McCarthyism, had been crushed in the Fifties, thanks in large part to journalist Edward R. Murrow who stood up to the bully "junior senator from Wisconsin" on national television backed him against the public wall and ended the persecution and prosecution of suspected "reds" in the military, Hollywood and Washington, DC. (Interesting to note that the "liberal" senator Bobby Kennedy was part of that right wing prosecutorial team so when you watch the films of the hearings, he is seated prominently on the left of your screen! In fact he wanted to be second chair and actually got into a fist fight with Roy Cohn over that position...Bobby wasn't drafted...he volunteered and helped ruin many careers. He was a wolf in sheeps clothing that had every liberal fooled in the Sixtiesl His dream ended in L.A. in 1968.)
. One of the first journalistic forays into the conditions of farm workers during the Sixties was by a Miami News journalist who did an expose' of a place called Shacktown, a migrant camp in Immokalee, Florida where out of work migrant families were actually starving to death. Mothers with no milk or adequate diets for nursing newborns, children without education because they too had to work all day to help keep the family alive, children literally starving to death and dying in the camps. This modern day "grapes of wrath" series won the Pulitzer Prize, but, better yet, public awareness was awakened and money came flooding in from an angered American public to help alleviate the death, and to help feed the families. Local government had now been taken to task as citizens were ready to storm the Bastille in outrage. In response, government had the growers install plumbing and make other improvements. Minimal concessions to mask the problem, taht did not alleviate the conditions altogether. Malnutrition, death and illiteracy were still an everday way of life, creating a cycle that would only repeat itself for generations of migrants to come.
Another event raised eyebrows as well that same year during the apple harvest of 1960. Information came to the Murrow television news team from a colleague at their sister organization at CBS radio and it's commentator Edward P. Morgan. He was bringing up the issue of migrant workers and their lack of rights, poor health conditions and non-existent education, all as a sympton of the cause which was the squalor they were forced to live under in the shadow of the flag of the United States. One of Morgans assistants had made a trip during the apple harvest that was underway at the farm of Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia. That was yet more incindiary fuel that helped open the Pandora's Box of outrage regarding the working and living conditions of American migrant workers. Fred Friendly, co-producer of Murrow's "See It Now" show felt it was a natural for Murrow to tackle on nationwide television. Friendly dispatched a research crew to Florida to the investigate the camps first hand.
The conditions were appalling and what made it worse, was that it was taking place and exposed on the farm of one of the United States senators, who put profits over people, greed over safety. It turned out to be the tip of the agricultural iceberg of the working class here in the land of the Red, White and Screwed! That was all Murrow needed...plans to produce Harvest moved at a fast pace, and timing was everything.He wanted it done and ready to go by Thanksgiving to show the discrepancy of the lives of the migrants as only television could do while Americans enjoyed feasting on the bounty set on their family tables. Food provided by the labor and suffering of the very migrants that were starving to death. Remember, there was no web or internet and during the Kennedy-Nixon election campaign, it was television that won the debate and the presidency for JFK over Richard Nixon. Nixon won in a public poll for his radio performance...but on TV? He was a disaster! Murrow was hoping that the same influential electronic media power would awaken Americans to this very real dichotomy in our midst where children in America, the land of plenty were starving to death thanks to policies enacted by Congress at the behest of lobbiest from large ag-business interests...in America, that was business as usual.
The film "Harvest of Shame" exposed the truth and after it's release was denounced by the government of the people, for the people and by the people as ...Un-American! It was also lambasted by the American Farm Federation Bureau. William Paley, head of CBS and Ed Murrows boss, denounced the film as well. It was landmark journalism that set the bar to it's highest level and would foster a whole generation of investigative journalist who would report the news from Vietnam to Watergate. The medium is the message... and while video may have killed the radio star...televising the war in Vietnam helped to end the bloodshed due in large part to scenes of Americans coming home dead in bodybags, villages with women and children burned by napalm, and demonstrations in the streets back home. Blame it all on Harvest of Shame, or rather, be grateful to Harvest of Shame and Edward R. Murrow.
The show aired in November of 1960, right after Thanksgiving. It delved deeply into the plight of American migrant workers, black and white, focusing on the farm workers of rural Florida. They included whole families, mothers, fathers, and their children working for as little as a dollar a day in an environment of extreme poverty, third world health care, all the while highlighting the greed of the growers. These were American workers and Middle Class America was appalled at the conditions their fellow citizens were forced to live with under the heel of the ag kings.
The program was strategically aired just after Thanksgiving, and in an interview in "Time" magazine one of the producers explained that by scheduling it on the heels of Thanksgiving, and America's celebration of our bounty, we were showing that the food picked by migrant workers was the food American's were enjoying, while many migrants could barely afford a decent meal. It was a caluculated plan that worked..it shocked America at this look at the darkside of American life in a land of plenty, with the pursuit of happiness eluding this segment of the population.
Harvest was also produced in an era in America where any question about the status quo of the government could lead to red scare prosecutorial action if not in fact a jail sentence. In a democracy we supposedly have the right of free speech and the right to protest, however during this era of the new Spanish Inquisition, that was verboten! Harvest however challenged both the government and the mecha-structure of big agri-business. Today it's Monsanto...the beat goes on, except today the atmosphere of protest against Monsanto won't get you tossed in the can.
The film had added impact as it was filmed in black and white for sheer dramatic effect and lighting that gave it an almost noir look where at any moment, Bogarts's Sam Spade character might step from the shadows of a dark alley. The film makers also overlaid an audio track of goverment officials and wealthy farm owners denying all allegations, while they film segment shown clearly showed differently. The lies exposed in word and action. One of the most brilliant scenes, and most frightening was the footage of hungry workers waiting in line for handouts during freezing weather that hit Florida depriving the workers of any chance to earn any money. Things haven't changed much. In 2003, a Palm Beach newspaper reported that migrant workers from Mexico and Central America were living as virtual slaves with the farm owners taking their money, forcing them to sleep in crowded unsanitary conditions in trailers and in many cases, the victims of sexual assualt.
"Harvest of Shame" exposed the plight of the American migrant worker to a national audience and later international audience. It made temporary in-roads into reform. Today, migrant workers still deal with age old problems, and while we have the internet now, and Youtube to help expose the inequities...there is still one important element missing...there are no more Edward R. Morrows to speak for them...or for us as Americans. Hopefully one will come along someday..but until then...Good Night ...and Good Luck!