Indeed, the real migrant mother was a native of Oklahoma, but she was also a full-blooded Native American whose family was displaced from tribal lands. She and her first husband, Cleo Leroy Owens, were living in California for most of the 1920s and ‘30s.
She was born Florence Leona Christie in the Indian Territory of the Cherokee Nation on September 1, 1903. Both of her parents claimed blood rights. Her father, Jackson Christie, served time in prison and abandoned her mother, Mary Jane Cobb before Florence was even born.