Word: migrant
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Americans a stark picture of the field hands who rove about the country, living in makeshift squalor, and selling their labor for an average of $900 a year. Moving in shirtsleeves among the film's subjects, Narrator Murrow reached heights of personal indignation, as when he quoted one migrant-hiring Southern farmer: "We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them...
Exaggerated Portrait. The plight of the migrant workers is bad; but because of its overstatement, Harvest drew howls, especially from Florida's U.S. Senator Spessard L. Holland, whose state was the one visited by Murrow. Harvest of Shame, said Holland, contained at least seven distortions and errors of fact. Holland cited, among others, the example of the 29-year-old Negro woman who told Murrow that she was the mother of 14 and had earned $1 for a full day's work in the fields. The facts were, said Holland, that seven of her children were dead...
...there is "nothing more vital in government than the freest possible flow of information." Two days later it was revealed that the newly-sworn director of the United States Information Agency had attempted (unsuccessfully) to suppress the showing in Britain of a controversial television documentary on the plight of migrant laborers in this country...
...significant as well as ironic that it was produced by Murrow himself while on the staff of CBS news. In defending his suppression, Murrow contended that he had produced the film "solely for domestic presentation." This is a feeble excuse. If Murrow means that the grim portrayal of the migrant worker was exaggerated, he should say so. However, in view of the unquestioned integrity of Murrow's previous documentaries, this hypothesis seems highly untenable...
Face the Nation (CBS, 10-10:30 p.m.). "The Migrant Farm Worker-Is Federal Legislation Necessary?" New Jersey's Senator Harrison Williams says yes. Charles P. Shuman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, disagrees...