Remembering with Dorothea Lange

The photographer Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) gifted us with photographs that document times and people that the standard histories of the United States don't deal with in and substantive way. I don't post the Lange photographs on this blog out of nostalgia or sentimentality but because these people lived and their lives mattered. These were your grandparents or great-grandparents. This is what was done to them, these are the things that happened to them that they barely spoke of when you knew them. This is our true history. Knowing that might help you find your place in the world and carry on the good that these people did or hoped to do.

The photographs were taken from the Dorothea Lange, Photographer Facebook page. That page is a great source for photographs and helps greatly in recollecting

Title: Manzanar Relocation Center, Manzanar, California. The first grave at the Manzanar Center's cemetery. It is that of Matsunosuke Murakami, 62, who died of heart disease on May 16. He had been ill ever since he arrived here with the first contingent and had been confined to the hospital since March 23.
Creator: Lange, Dorothea
June 30, 1942
Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority, between 1942–1945.

Title: San Francisco, California. Young musician of Japanese ancestry plays his guitar at the Wartime Civil Control Administration station. He is a member of the first contingent of over 600 persons of Japanese ancestry to be evacuated from San Francisco.
Creator: Lange, Dorothea
April 6, 1942
Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority, between 1942–1945.
Access: Unrestricted
Use: Unrestricted

Title: San Bruno, California. Old Mr. Konda in barrack apartment, after supper. He lives here with his two sons, his married daughter and her husband. They share two small rooms together. His daughter is seen behind him, knitting. He has been a truck farmer and raised his family who are also farmers, in Centerville, Alameda County where his children were born.
Creator: Lange, Dorothea
June 16, 1942.
Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority, between 1942–1945.
Access: Unrestricted
Use: Unrestricted

Title: Children of evicted sharecropper, now living on Sherwood Eddy cooperative plantation.
Creator(s): Lange, Dorothea, photographer
Date Created/Published: 1936 July.

Title: Daughter of migrant Tennessee coal miner. Living in the American River Camp near Sacramento, California
Contributor Names: Lange, Dorothea, photographer
Created / Published : November 1936