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In a speech at the 1996 Democratic National Convention, Hillary Rodham Clinton, then first lady, said, “we have learned that to raise a happy, healthy, and hopeful child, it takes a family. It takes teachers. It takes clergy. It takes business people. It takes community leaders. It takes those who protect our health and safety. It takes all of us. Yes, it takes a village.” I remember watching that speech as a twelve-year-old and recognizing even then the truth and accuracy of Clinton’s statement. It wasn’t until I became a mother though that I deeply felt and understood what she meant.

Currently featured in the exhibition From Daughters to Mothers: A Study of Reproductive Labor (on view through March 2^nd), curated by Talia Traskos-Hart '25 with support from curator Cassandra Mesick Braun, the photograph  (1938) by Dorothea Lange (American, 1895–1965) mirrors not only the spirit of Clinton’s speech, but also my personal experience as a new mother. The almost primal need to reach out and find community to help me navigate my new body and my new identity became a lifeline. This image not only evokes the sense that “a woman’s work is never done,” as stated in the exhibition label text, but also that a woman’s work is often never done alone.

Purchased by the museum in 2000, this photograph is an example of Dorothea Lange’s characteristic style while working for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in the 1930s. Hoping to improve the inhumane conditions faced by migrants, the FSA employed from 1935 to 1944 photographers who visited federal migrant labor camps to document the rural poverty being experienced by residents. I grew up in Oakland, and visits to the Oakland Museum of California (where I was first exposed to Lange’s work) were frequent. My grandmother once told me that Lange took pictures of our people. “Our people?” I asked. “Yes. Didn’t know you were an Okie, did you?” she said. Though developed as a derogatory term, it felt like she might have been saying it with pride. Many, though not all, of the migrant families housed in California camps, like Arvin, came from Oklahoma to escape the Dust Bowl and were collectively called “Okies.” Jewel, my great-grandmother, left Oklahoma as a single mother during the Great Depression. Raised by a single mother herself for part of her childhood, Lange likely related to her subjects because of her own experiences and those experiences enabled her to gain intimate access to her subjects–a trait that enhances the drama in her work and elicits meaningful reactions by viewers. 

As we celebrate Valentine’s Day this month, it struck me that community organizing may be the greatest act of love there is: service above self in community with others for the advancement of the greater good of humanity. That’s what the Mother’s Club at Arvin Camp did, and it’s what we all do every time we show up and help a neighbor, donate or volunteer, or hold a mom’s kid for two minutes so she can eat a hot meal. It’s love.

Danyelle Morgado