Florida's Fate

Exacerbating the state's mounting economic problems, Florida's citrus industry was devastated with the invasion of the Mediterranean fruit fly in 1929, reducing citrus production in the state by sixty percent.

At the beginning of the 1930s, twenty-six percent of Florida's population was dependent on some form of public relief.

The Great Depression brought with it skyrocketing unemployment and the dislocation of millions of workers from all walks of life. Migrant workers—often entire families—went in search of jobs wherever they could be found, adding their numbers to the thousands of seasonal workers recruited by large agricultural companies in South Florida each year during harvest time.

Families on the Move

Most of the diverse people who comprised the influx of workers into Florida in the later years of the Great Depression came from other southern states.

These migrant laborers made their way south from Georgia and from throughout the Upper and Mid South (from Eastern North Carolina and Kentucky to Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma) after the loss of tenant positions on leased farm land, foreclosure, falling farm yields, or the closure of textile factories and other industries forced them away from their homes.

Some Sense of Security

Migrants took whatever little possessions they could carry and traveled, often with their entire families, to the warmth and agricultural abundance of Florida in search of sustenance, shelter, and some measure of economic security.