Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin migrant workers collection
By: collected by Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin
Contributors: Lomax, Alan, 1915-2002, correspondent; Archive of Folk Culture (Library of Congress); American Folklife Center; Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program; Archive of Folk Song (U.S.)
Published: 1939
Language: eng
Number of pages: 119
Subjects: Radio programs; English Ballads; Songs and music; Tales; Folk dance music; Recitations; Gospel music; United States. Farm Security Administration; Labor camps; Blues (Music); Folk music; Square dance music; Correspondence; Social life and customs; English Hymns; Popular music; Storytelling; Dust Bowl Era, 1931-1939; Anecdotes; Texts; English Folk songs; Fiddle tunes; Social conditions; Personal narratives; Migrant agricultural laborers; United States
Other titles: Songs of the Okies.; Voices from the dust bowl.
Description: The collection includes field recordings made in July and August, 1940 and 1941 in Farm Security Administration migrant worker camps in California. These included the Arvin, Shafter, Visalia, Firebaugh, Westley, Thornton, and Yuba FSA camps. Recordings were made of dance music, popular songs, ballads and folk songs, original songs, conversations, camp council meetings, poems, and stories describing life in the camps, whose residents were Dust Bowl refugees from Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Other sound recordings are 1941 radio programs, "Songs of the Okies," narrated by Robert Sonkin and broadcast on WNYC. Manuscripts include correspondence, camp newsletters, newspaper clippings, a Federal Writers' Project WPA Folk Song Questionnaire, and a scrapbook compiled by Charles L. Todd, as well as 1940 field notes written by Robert Sonkin which, in addition to this trip, document his field recording trip to Gee's Bend, Alabama in June 1940. Also included are song texts, recording logs, a radio script, related publications, photographs by Robert Hemmig and others, and materials generated from 1997 to 2000 when much of the collection was digitized for the online American Memory presentation, "Voices from the Dust Bowl."
Notes: Recordings were made with equipment loaned by the Archive of American Folk Song, Library of Congress.

Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Workers Collection (AFC 1985/001), Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

A portion of the collection, with essays and a bibliography, is available as "Voices from the Dust Bowl: the Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941," an American Memory online presentation compiled by the National Digital Library Program of the Library of Congress and the American Folklife Center.

American Memory online resource, "Voices from the Dust Bowl," is also on CD-ROM discs and digital audio tapes in the collection.

Duplication of the collection materials may be governed by copyright and other restrictions.

Charles L. Todd, Robert Sonkin; Donation; 1941, 1986.

Charles Lafayette "Lafe" Todd, born December 9, 1911 in New York State, met Robert Sonkin, born in 1911 in New York City, while both were working in the Department of Public Speaking at the City College of New York.  Alan Lomax encouraged them to undertake their field recording trips to California in the summers of 1940 and 1941 and facilitated equipment loan support from the Archive of American Folk Song, Library of Congress.

Finding aid available in the Folklife Reading Room, Library of Congress.

Bibliographic information for music and spoken word titles in this collection is found in the online resource link:  Search for audio titles in the Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Workers Collection.