Zoom In: Racial Segregation at FSA Camps

Paul Taylor was deeply concerned with racial discrimination in the FSA camps. Populations in the federally sponsored camps were predominantly white. Historian Linda Gordon, in her 2009 biography Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, further described the issues:

“The segregation was illegal, but tolerating it was Department of Agriculture policy. People of color knew it and did not try to get in to the camps. Threat of deportation made Mexicans fearful of encountering authorities of any kind. The whites-only policy was enforced not only from the top but also from the bottom - by residents. The all-white Arvin camp council voted that ‘Negroes, Mexicans, and Filipinos be placed in a separate unit’ - which did not exist. There is a bitter irony here, because the impetus for the camps came from Mexican and Filipino strikes, but the program they won by their activism was closed to them.”