female narrator: October 1936, the seventh year of the Great Depression in America.

That month, a 34 year old novelist in Northern California writes a series of articles for a San Francisco newspaper published under the heading "The Harvest Gypsies."

Its subject, the terrible working and living conditions for migrant farm workers in California.

Many of them had recently fled poverty, the Dust Bowl, and the loss of their farms in the Midwest and Texas, and now faced police violence and arrests.

♪ But the rustler-- ♪♪ narrator: A few months later, one of those struggling to survive in the heartland of America, a 25 year old part-time musician, headed west for the first time.

♪♪♪ narrator: Soon these two very different men would meet and become fierce allies in the campaign to ease the suffering of the migrants.

♪ Tom Joad got out of the old McAlester Pen-- ♪♪ narrator: John Steinbeck would pen one of the great American novels, "The Grapes of Wrath," soon to be a classic movie.

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, known to everyone as Woody, would write and record countless songs that express our highest ideals and continue to inspire Americans today.

♪♪♪ ♪ I'm sitting down here in the campfire light, ♪ ♪ searching for the ghost of Tom Joad.

♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ narrator: Woody Guthrie was born in 1912 in Okema, Oklahoma to a prosperous family haunted by tragedy.

His sister died in a fire.

Later, his father was badly burned in a fire likely set by Woody's mother, who was soon committed to an insane asylum, a victim of Huntington's disease, which would later claim her son.

Woody's father, Charles Guthrie, a businessman, supported the Ku Klux Klan and may have witnessed the lynching of a local black mother and her son.

Falling deeply in debt, Charles moved to Pampa, Texas and sent for Woody to join him.

Woody started playing in what were known as hillbilly bands, often adding jokes like his idol Will Rogers.

♪ Here's what all of the people there say.

♪ ♪ Well, it's so long.

♪ ♪ It's been good to know you.

♪ ♪ So long.

♪ ♪ It's been good to know you.

♪♪ narrator: Economic conditions in the Depression worsened.

An apocalyptic dust storm hit Pampa and other towns on April 14, 1935, which came to be known as Black Sunday.

Woody was not yet writing songs, but he would immortalize that day a few years later.

Dust Bowl refugees by the tens of thousands had already hit the road from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, and other states after hearing that jobs were plentiful on rich farmland in California.

Woody would soon join them hitching west, guitar in hand.

Woody Guthrie: These people just got up and they bundled up their little belongings.

They throwed in one or two little things they thought they'd need.

They couldn't take it all because they didn't have room and they didn't have car, didn't have gasoline, didn't have the money, but anyway, they had heard about the land of California, where you sleep outdoors at night, where you work all day in the big fruit orchards.

You make enough to live on and get by on and live decent on, and you work hard, work honest.

♪♪♪ narrator: John Steinbeck was born in 1902 in the farming community of Salinas south of San Francisco.

After attending Stanford for a spell he moved to nearby Pacific Grove.

Often living in poverty, he began writing fiction with little success.

Then in 1935 his novel "Tortilla Flat" drew wide attention.

He moved with his wife to Los Gatos and wrote a novel "In Dubious Battle," which focused on a violent strike by fruit workers in California's Central Valley, and another titled "Of Mice and Men."

Knowing of his sympathy for farm workers, the editor of the San Francisco news asked Steinbeck to investigate their plight for a series on the newly arrived migrants.

♪♪♪ narrator: A photographer working for the Federal Farm Security Administration named Dorothea Lange would provide photos from up and down the Central Valley.

♪ Traveled a hot, dusty road.

♪ ♪ Out of your dust bowl and westward we rolled, ♪ ♪ and your desert was hot and your mountains was cold.

♪♪ ♪♪♪ narrator: Steinbeck, touring the region in an old bakery truck, stopped at one of the state's federally funded camps for refugees near Bakersfield outside the town of Arvin, known as the Weedpatch Camp, and there he met its savvy and dedicated manager Tom Collins, and they formed a crucial friendship.

The Arvin camp, unlike sites managed by farm owners, local officials, and police, provided relatively safe and sanitary conditions with decent food, Saturday night dances, and a camp council elected by the residents.

male announcer: Here, the migrant and his family, fortunate enough to find shelter on US property, can maintain their self-respect while seeking market for their labor.

narrator: But there were only two federal camps in the state, the exceptions to the grim conditions Steinbeck found elsewhere, which he would describe over six days in the newspaper in October with Dorothea Lange's photographs.

Woody Guthrie on his first trip west experienced the full tragedy of the refugees for the first time, their cars breaking down on Route 66, sleeping in the dirt along the side of the road, or riding filthy box cars.

Woody: They called us Dust Bowl refugees, but then there's more than one kind of a refugee.

There's refugees that take refuge under railroad bridges, and there's refugees that take refuge in public office.

narrator: His first visit to California did not go well.

He loved the lush landscape, but felt sickened by the local citizens' hatred of outsiders.

Local police had set up what were known as bum blockades at border crossings, aiming to keep out as many migrants as possible unless they carried a fair amount of cash.

Woody had just started writing original songs, and one of the first warned refugees about the bum blockade.

Woody: Yeah, that's the manner of having the money.

That's it.

They don't ask you where you got it, how you got it, who you got it off of, or nothing else.

Just so you got the do re mi boy, that's the main thing.

You can gamble for it, lie for it, steal for it, bum for it, beg for it.

Do anything else in the world for it.

You can even chase people out of their house and home for it.

I made up a little song about that.

Call it the "Do Re Mi," and this is--.

male: How does it--.

Woody: Show you how it goes here.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ Lots of folks back east, they say, is leaving home ♪ ♪ every day and beating the hot old dusty way ♪ ♪ to the California line.

♪ ♪ Cross the desert sands they roll, trying to get ♪ ♪ out of the old dust bowl.

♪ ♪ They think they're going to a sugar bowl, ♪ ♪ but here's what they find.

♪ ♪ The police at the port of entry say, ♪ ♪ "You're number 15,000 for today."

♪ ♪ Oh, if you ain't got the do re mi, friend, ♪ ♪ if you ain't got the do re mi, ♪ ♪ you better go back to beautiful Texas, ♪ ♪ Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee.

♪ ♪ California is a Garden of Eden, ♪ ♪ a paradise to live in or see, ♪ ♪ but believe it or not, you won't find it so hot ♪ ♪ if you ain't got the do re mi.

♪♪ ♪♪♪ narrator: After a visit back home Woody left his wife Mary and daughter Gwyn in Texas and returned to Los Angeles.

male announcer: We behold the great modern city of Los Angeles, one of the fastest growing cities in the world.

In less than half a century the population of this young metropolis and its associated communities comprising Los Angeles County has increased from 50,000 to about 2 1/4 million inhabitants, so that today the formerly obscure little Mexican pueblo has become the fifth largest city in the United States.

narrator: Woody washed dishes and played for pennies in skid row bars while living in flophouses.

Soon he was hired by the liberal owner of radio station KFVD to sing traditional songs with his cousin Jack Guthrie.

The Guthrie's promoted their concert with a popular local group known as the Beverly Hillbillies.

When another regular spot opened at the radio station, Woody invited a young singer named Maxine Chrissman to share the bill, calling the show "Woody and Lefty Lou."

It was an immediate hit, and fan mail from homesick Dust Bowl refugees poured in.

By then John Steinbeck's fame had grown, and movie rights for his new novel "Of Mice and Men" were quickly sold.

"Of Mice and Men" explored the lives of two migrant ranch hands in California, based on Steinbeck's own experience as a teenager.

Steinbeck also adapted it for the theater with an opening on Broadway set for the end of the year.

Still, he grew obsessed with the notion of writing what he called a big book, a novel deepening his focus on California migrants.

So he again turned to the manager of the federal Weedpatch camp, Tom Collins.

Collins started sending Steinbeck some of the official reports that he submitted each week to federal officials in Washington.

They were filled with critical facts along with anecdotes and direct quotes, often humorous, from some of the camp residents.

♪♪♪ narrator: In October Steinbeck set off with Collins in the old bakery truck for a monthlong investigation throughout the Central Valley.

Conditions in the camps were worsening, but he believed, "The new migrants from the Dust Bowl are here to stay.

All they want is a piece of land," he wrote to his agent, mincing no words.

male: "I must go over into the interior valleys.

There are about 5,000 families starving to death over there, and not just hungry, but actually starving.

The government is trying to feed them and get medical attention to them, but the fascist group of utilities and banks and huge growers are sabotaging the thing all along the line.

In one tent there are 20 people quarantined for smallpox, and 2 of the women are to have babies in that tent this week.

I must get down there and see if I can't do something to help knock these murderers on their heads.

They think that if these people are allowed to live in camps with proper sanitary facilities they will organize, and that is the bugbear of the large landowner and the corporation farmer.

The states and counties will give them nothing because they are outsiders, but the crops of any part of the state could not be harvested without these outsiders.

I'm pretty mad about it."

♪♪♪ narrator: Receiving a regular paycheck for once, Woody sent for his wife and family to join him in LA.

It's likely that John Steinbeck learned about Woody and his visits to migrant camps, and may have listened to him on the radio.

By that summer however, Woody's singing partner Lefty Lou was ailing, and she quit the popular show.

Woody took a life altering break as well.

His boss at the radio station, Frank Burke, also owned a liberal newspaper called "The Light."

He asked Woody to travel around the state observing conditions for the migrants and write articles that would aid the Democratic candidate for governor Colbert Olson.

As he bummed around, Woody, a former sign painter back in Texas, also sketched some lively political cartoons.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ narrator: Much of his traveling this time would be on freight trains.

Woody called it hoboing.

He slept on trains with the so-called box car tourist and in tents and under bridges.

Woody: I ain't got no home.

I'm just roaming 'round, just a wandering worker to go from town to town.

The police make it hard wherever I may go, and I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

narrator: Some of his fellow travelers recognized his name or voice from the radio.

Like John Steinbeck, Woody was appalled by what he found.

Soon he would write a song that reflected his anger.

Returning to the radio station, Guthrie launched a new program called "Woody the Lone Wolf."

John Steinbeck, still preparing to write what he called his big book, continued his own research.

In the spring Southern California was hit with record rain, causing the worst flooding in memory.

Steinbeck witnessed deplorable conditions at migrant camps near Visalia, where he found water a foot deep in tents, no food, and no escape.

With Tom Collins he worked day and night for almost two weeks to aid the flood victims, sometimes dropping in the mud from exhaustion.

♪♪♪ narrator: Steinbeck believed that anger was healthy, as it would drive his next novel.

To get it all down while it was fresh he decided to write hundreds of pages in a rush at his home in Los Gatos, starting in June with the goal of completing it by November.

♪♪♪ narrator: Tom Collins continued to send frequent reports from the field and from the Weedpatch camp.

Collins would be portrayed in the novel in the character of Jim Raleigh, the kindly manager of a federal camp.

Steinbeck, as usual, wrote the chapters in longhand in his tiny office, the pages then edited and typed by his wife Carol, who also handled all the domestic and financial chores.

He named the okie family at the center of his story the Joads.

Steinbeck for the first time would also keep a daily journal on his writing of a novel, often accompanied by jazz or classical music playing over his expensive sound system.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ narrator: On September 3 he noted that his wife had suggested a title for the novel, "The Grapes of Wrath," from the lyrics in the famous anthem "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

He called it, "A wonderful and marvelous title because the book is also a kind of march and in our own revolutionary tradition."

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ narrator: Down in Los Angeles Woody Guthrie continued his popular radio show.

One day at the station he met Ed Robin, who hosted a program with a far left slant.

He invited Woody to perform at political meetings, some sponsored by the increasingly popular Communist Party.

Woody was not a party member, though he liked to joke that some of his songs were, "So left wing I had to write them with my left hand."

Now he aimed to put his emerging political beliefs into action, and he quickly became a popular figure at fundraisers and union organizing rallies.

He printed a business card billing himself as, "Th' dustiest of th' dustbowlers."

One of his new songs hailed notorious Oklahoma outlaw Pretty Boy Floyd, pictured by Woody, of course, as a kind of modern day Robin Hood.

♪ Yes, as through this world I've wandered ♪ ♪ I've seen lots of funny men.

♪ ♪ Some will rob you with a six-gun, ♪ ♪ and some with a fountain pen.

♪♪ narrator: Through Ed Robin he also started writing daily reports in the style of Will Rogers, with deliberate folksy misspellings, and his own cartoons for the local communist newspaper under the banner "Woody Sez."

♪♪♪ narrator: Robin introduced him to actor Will Geer, who had just appeared in Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" on Broadway.

Geer, later famous for movie roles and his Grandpa Walton on "The Waltons" TV series, invited Woody to Hollywood parties where he met John Garfield and other stars.

Will Geer also introduced him to John Steinbeck at the Garden of Allah, where the writer was staying in LA.

By then Steinbeck's new novel "The Grapes of Wrath" had been hailed as a masterpiece and topped every bestseller list.

The renowned literary critic Malcolm Cowley said it belonged to the category of, "great angry books like 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' that have roused a people to fight against intolerable wrongs," but it also sparked wide criticism and controversy.

Steinbeck warned his editor, "The fascist crowd will try to sabotage this book because it is revolutionary.

They will try to give it the Communist angle."

Movie rights were sold to 20th Century Fox for an unprecedented $100,000.

One of Hollywood's greatest directors, John Ford, would translate the story to the screen.

Tom Collins was hired as an expert advisor.

Chosen as a music consultant, Woody Guthrie.

♪♪♪ narrator: Still, attacks on the novel continued.

Some objected to the profanity or the too frank depiction of the migrants' living conditions.

Books were burned in a few places or banned from schools.

It was kept off library shelves in San Francisco.

Leaders of the agribusiness industry led the charge, often aided by the press.

The powerful group known as the Associated Farmers claims Steinbeck's account was wildly exaggerated.

It was no wonder they were upset.

Steinbeck in his novel had written.

male: "There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation.

There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize.

There is a failure here that topples all our successes.

And the children dying of hunger must die because profit cannot be taken from an orange.

And the coroners must fill in the certificates that they died of malnutrition because food must rot if not sold at a profit.

And in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath.

In the souls of people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."

narrator: With "Grapes of Wrath" still a runaway bestseller, Woody Guthrie's image as a Dust Bowl refugee made him even more in demand for benefits and political meetings.

♪♪♪ ♪ Picked up a hammer in his little right hand.

♪ ♪ Said "Hammer be the death of me.

♪ ♪ Hammer be the death of me.

♪ ♪ Hammer be the death of me."

♪♪ narrator: Woody's new friend Will Geer reintroduced him to John Steinbeck at a hotel in Hollywood.

They took a stroll to a nearby newsstand where the writer bought both a right-wing Hearst newspaper and the Communist "Daily Worker."

Woody was impressed by Steinbeck's desire to consider all viewpoints.

Steinbeck was co-writing without credit a film titled "The Fight for Life."

His friend Pare Lorentz had received federal funding to make a movie drama that would encourage poor women to seek medical help for childbirth.

Lorentz was famous for his recent documentary "The Plow That Broke the Plains" on misguided farm practices that created the Dust Bowl.

Now Lorentz asked Geer to co-star in his movie, and Geer suggested Woody for a small role.

An added bonus for the director, both Geer's and Woody's wives were pregnant and could play expectant mothers in the film.

Woody's role would amount to one street scene with his guitar part dubbed later.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ narrator: With filming done Woody performed at migrant camps in California, sometimes in the company of Will Geer or John Steinbeck.

By now he was writing songs at a feverish clip.

Some of them attacked racism.

One was inspired by "The Grapes of Wrath" with a reference to the novel's preacher Casy, and he illustrated it with a drawing.

♪ Have you seen that vigilante man?

♪ ♪ Have you seen that vigilante man?

♪ ♪ Have you seen that vigilante man?

♪ ♪ I've been hearing his name all over the land.

♪ ♪ Preacher Casy was just a working man, ♪ ♪ and he said, "Unite all you working men."

♪ ♪ Killed him in the river.

♪ ♪ Some strange man was that, ♪ ♪ a vigilante man.

♪♪ ♪♪♪ male announcer: "Grapes of Wrath."

"The Grapes of Wrath."

"The Grapes of Wrath" "The Grapes of Wrath" "Grapes of Wrath."

"Grapes of Wrath."

As sales skyrocket, "The Grapes of Wrath" becomes the book of the nation.

Everyone, everywhere joins in the discussion of its vital problems.

Due to this unprecedented popularity producers vie for the motion picture rights, and finally, 20th Century Fox announces the purchase of the book and plans for its immediate production.

A storm of discussion arouses the nation.

Speculation and rumor are rife to the effect that no producer will venture to film this great dramatic masterpiece of human hearts.

Darryl F. Zanuck, production head of 20th Century Fox Studios, emphatically announces that "The Grapes of Wrath" will be made.

All of the resources of this vast studio are marshaled for the production.

John Ford, Academy Award winner, is given the directorial assignment.

The cast is carefully chosen to make John Steinbeck's unforgettable characters come to life.

narrator: Production began on the movie in late October, written by Nunneley Johnson and starring Henry Fonda, to be completed in five weeks.

This happened only after Darryl Zanuck, fearing the film would be labeled pro-communist, ordered a private probe to confirm the human tragedy in Oklahoma and California.

John Ford later confessed that he never bothered to read Steinbeck's novel.

Woody's most obvious contribution to the film was providing a song that okies might have sung around the campfires.

He picked "Goin Down the Road Feeling Bad," which would be sung by Tom Joad's brother-in-law in the film.

♪ I'm blowing down this old dusty road.

♪ ♪ I'm a-blowing down this old dusty road.

♪ ♪ I'm a-blowing down this old dusty road, ♪ ♪ Lord, Lord, and I ain't going to be ♪ ♪ treated this way.

♪♪ narrator: The movie would be filmed on location in Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona, and on the 20th Century Fox studio lot.

Woody claimed that he was offered a role, but had to turn it down because of prior commitments.

He did offer advice to those working on the movie in visits to the studio.

This upturn in Woody's fortunes came to a halt in November when his patron at the radio station finally fired him.

Woody had just gotten too political for his taste.

Now it was time for the eternally restless Guthrie to ramble off again.

The plan, deposit his wife Mary and kids back in Texas and then join Will Geer, who was starring in "Tobacco Road" on Broadway in New York City.

John Ford's version of "Grapes of Wrath" was set for release near the end of January, little more than three months after shooting on the film began.

male announcer: And now at last "The Grapes of Wrath" is ready for the screen as the motion picture captures all the drama, suspense, action, tears and laughter of the story that stirred a nation.

narrator: Would John Steinbeck approve?

Some of his strongest critiques of California agribusiness were deleted.

A year earlier he fought editors who wanted to kill the haunting conclusion to his novel.

A woman, after losing her stillborn baby, offers a breast to a starving stranger.

That was nowhere in the movie.

Replaced by an uplifting speech by Ma Joad.

Pa Joad: Well, maybe, but we sure taking a beating.

Ma Joad: I know.

That's what makes us tough.

Rich fellows come up and they die, and their kids ain't no good and they die out, but we keep a-coming.

We're the people that live.

They can't wipe us out.

They can't lick us.

We'll go on forever, Pa, 'cause we're the people.

narrator: Invited to an early screening, Steinbeck praised the film.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ narrator: After delivering his family to Texas Woody Guthrie caught a bus heading east.

At nearly every stop he heard on the radio or jukebox a song whose message really bothered him.

It was Kate Smith's booming version of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America."

♪ God bless America, land that I love.

♪ ♪ Stand beside her.

♪♪ narrator: Woody had witnessed too many awful scenes in recent years to believe that God had truly blessed America, and the song seemed to preach passivity, not fighting for a better country.

A response started forming in his mind.

Woody ran out of money when he reached Pittsburgh.

Hitchhiking to New York he nearly perished in a blizzard, but finally made it to Will Geer's apartment in Midtown Manhattan in February.

He loved the energy of New York and started playing on the streets and in the bars, always attracting attention.

After a few days with Will Geer and his wife, Woody took a room in a cheap hotel near Times Square called Hanover House.

On February 23 he finally put down on paper his response to "God Bless America" that he had been pondering for weeks.

He called it "God Blessed America," then crossed that out and wrote "This Land Was Made For You and Me."

He also changed Staten Island to the New York Island.

♪ This land is your land and this land is my land, ♪ ♪ from California to the New York Island, ♪ ♪ from Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters.

♪ ♪ This land was made for you and me.

♪♪ narrator: Woody signed and dated it at the bottom along with the claim, "All you can write is what you see."

Guthrie continued to play around New York from bars to benefits.

He finally got a chance to watch "The Grapes of Wrath."

In his newspaper column he called it, "The best picture I have ever seen."

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ narrator: The film also inspired what became one of his most famous songs, "Tom Joad."

Written in 17 stanzas, it would be issued by the Victor label on two sides of one 78 record as part one and part two.

It would be the first six-minute single.

Woody wrote it the day he saw the movie, staying up all night with a jug of wine at an apartment where his new friend Pete Seeger was staying.

Seeger woke up to find Woody sleeping on the floor and a page with the lyrics stuck in a typewriter.

Accounts of John Steinbeck's reaction to the song vary, but one popular version has him admitting, "That little fellow said in six minutes what it took me 600 pages to say."

Woody would introduce the new song over a radio program in New York City.

Woody: Here's a song here that has to do with a book and a motion picture that come out here a while back by the name of "The Grapes of Wrath" wrote down by a man John Steinbeck, who throwed the pack on his back and went right out amongst the people to see just what is going on in the United States, and it just so happened that he hit a jackpot because he knew what it--where he was going and he knew what he was writing about it.

The name of this is "The Ballad of Tom Joad."

♪ A deputy sheriff fired loose at a man.

♪ ♪ He shot a woman in the back, ♪ ♪ but before he could take his aim again ♪ ♪ Preacher Casy dropped him in his tracks.

♪ ♪ Preacher Casy dropped him in his tracks, ♪ ♪ and they handcuffed Casy and they took him to jail.

♪ ♪ Then he got away.

♪ ♪ Met Tom Joad by the old river bridge, ♪ ♪ and these few words he did say, Preacher Casy.

♪ ♪ These few words he did say.

♪ ♪ "Well, I preached for the poor ♪ ♪ a mighty long time, preached about the rich ♪ ♪ and the poor, but us working folks ♪ ♪ has got to get together.

♪ ♪ We ain't got a chance anymore.

♪ ♪ God knows we ain't got a chance anymore."

♪ ♪ Now the deputies come, ♪ ♪ and Tom and Casy run down ♪ ♪ where the water run down, ♪ ♪ and a deputy thug hit Casey with a club ♪ ♪ and laid Preacher Casy on the ground.

♪ ♪ Oh boy, ♪ ♪ they laid Preacher Casy on the ground.

♪ ♪ Tom Joad, he took that vigilante's club ♪ ♪ brung it down on his head.

♪ ♪ Tommy took flight ♪ ♪ in the dark, rainy night.

♪ ♪ Was a preacher and a deputy ♪ ♪ laying dead, poor boy.

♪ ♪ A preacher and a deputy laying dead.

♪ ♪ Tommy run back where his mama was asleep.

♪ ♪ He woke her up out of bed, ♪ ♪ and he kissed goodbye to the mother ♪ ♪ that he loved ♪ ♪ and he said what Preacher Casy said.

♪ ♪ Yes, he said what Preacher Casy said.

♪ ♪ "Everybody might be just one big soul.

♪ ♪ Looks that way to me.

♪ ♪ Everywhere you look in the day or the night, ♪ ♪ that's where I'm going to be, Ma.

♪ ♪ That's where I'm going to be.

♪ ♪ Wherever little kids are hungry and cry, ♪ ♪ wherever people ain't free, ♪ ♪ wherever men are fighting for their rights, ♪ ♪ that's where I'm gonna be, Ma.

♪ ♪ That's where I'm gonna be."

♪♪ narrator: Woody explained that he wrote the song for people who did not have the money to buy Steinbeck's novel or a ticket to the movie.

Another turning point for Woody came when he performed at a benefit in New York for the John Steinbeck Committee for Agricultural Workers.

He not only proved to be the hit of the evening.

He met other important folk singers such as Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, who became a close friend.

More importantly, he was embraced as a folk genius by one of the most important proponents of roots music in the country, Alan Lomax.

With his father John Lomax he had traveled rural America for years, creating what were known as field recordings of hundreds of little known blues, folk, and gospel singers such as Lead Belly and Muddy Waters.

Alan Lomax now headed a music division at the Library of Congress known as the Archive of American Folk Song, and he immediately invited Woody to come to Washington.

Lomax recorded hours of Woody talking about his life and travels and singing dozens of songs.

Thanks to Lomax, Woody performed as a regular on New York radio stations and for the first time on national broadcasts, including NBC and CBS.

He received a contract to write a memoir to be titled "Bound for Glory."

He also recorded his first album, "Dust Bowl Ballads," which drew critical acclaim and would influence generations of songwriters, and he wrote extensive notes for a song book compiled by Lomax titled "Hard Hitting Songs For Hard Hit People."

It featured a preface hailing Woody written by John Steinbeck.

male: "Woody is just Woody.

Thousands of people do not know he has any other name.

He's just a voice and a guitar.

He sings the songs of a people and I suspect that he is, in a way, that people.

There is nothing sweet about Woody, and there is nothing sweet about the songs he sings.

But there is something more important for those who will listen.

There is the will of a people to endure and fight against oppression.

I think we call this the American Spirit."

narrator: John Steinbeck, after many years of writing about California migrants, turned to other subjects in novels such as "Cannery Row" and "East of Eden."

He would win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, with "The Grapes of Wrath" cited for special praise.

Woody Guthrie, feeling he was being asked to compromise some of his principles, quit his high paying radio jobs in New York and hit the road, sometimes with young Pete Seeger.

When he returned to California he once again performed at migrant camps.

♪ I was born in South Carolina.

♪ ♪ Down to Georgia I did go.

♪ ♪ There I met a very young lady, ♪ ♪ and her name I never did know.

♪♪ narrator: Living in Los Angeles and penniless, Woody was again aided by Alan Lomax, leading to a job with the federal government.

Woody traveled to the Pacific Northwest to write about the Columbia River Hydroelectric Project and Grand Coulee Dam, which helped farmers survive and provided thousands of jobs for migrant workers.

Woody wrote 26 songs in 30 days, some used in a film, often still focusing on the migrants, including one of his greatest.

♪ We worked in your orchards of peaches ♪ ♪ and prunes, ♪ ♪ and we slept on the ground 'neath the light of the moon.

♪ ♪ We picked in your cotton, cut the grapes from your vine ♪ ♪ to set on your table, your light sparkling wine.

♪ ♪ Look down in the canyon and there you will see, ♪ ♪ Grand Coulee showers her blessings on me.

♪ ♪ My land I'll defend with my life if it be, ♪ ♪ 'cause my pastures of plenty must always be free.

♪♪ narrator: When informed that public money was being paid to a left-wing activist, the FBI in Washington opened its first file on Woody Guthrie.

It would expand to include 447 pages.

Guthrie was even added to the FBI's so-called security index, a list that marked alleged subversives for detention in the event of a national emergency.

Returning to New York, Woody joined Pete Seeger's group The Almanac Singers and wrote anti-racist and anti-Nazi songs such as "All You Fascists Bound to Lose."

He famously carried a message on his guitar, "This machine kills fascists."

Then with his singing partner Cisco Houston he joined the Merchant Marine, helping to supply US forces for the D-Day invasion, while surviving two German torpedo strikes.

By then, now divorced, he had married Marjorie Mazia, a dancer and teacher with the Martha Graham Dance Company, and he began a new family in Brooklyn.

Their children would be named Cathy, Nora, Arlo, and, inspired by "The Grapes of Wrath," a boy named Jodie.

Near the end of the 1940s he began to display erratic behavior and other signs of the Huntington's chorea disease that had killed his mother.

He was just 36 years old.

Woody would write one of his last great songs in 1948 after hearing about a plane crash in California that took the lives of 28 migrant workers being deported to Mexico.

♪ Goodby to you, Juan.

♪ ♪ Goodbye Rosalita.

♪ ♪ Adios mi amigo, Jesus and Maria.

♪ ♪ I don't have a name and I ride this big airplane.

♪ narrator: He was outraged that the victims remained unnamed in media accounts, and so wrote the lyrics for the song called "Deportees."

♪ One more deportee.

♪♪ ♪♪♪ narrator: The migrant crisis in California exposed by John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie finally eased when military production for World War II provided tens of thousands of jobs for refugees from the Midwest and Texas.

Meanwhile, driven by the lack of jobs, Jim Crow racism, and the promise of factory work in the post-war economic boom millions of black sharecroppers left the rural South for northern and western cities in what would be called The Second Great Migration.

Now, in California the lowest paying farm worker positions were mainly filled by Mexicans and Filipinos.

Intense union organizing began in 1952.

The United Farm Workers led numerous strikes by grape workers and others.

male announcer: One farmer looked at this and said, "We used to own our slaves.

Now we just rent them."

narrator: But conditions were also rough for farm workers across the country.

In his final documentary for CBS News, Edward R. Murrow in 1960 created one of the most important films ever aired on national TV.

"Harvest of Shame" exposed terrible living conditions for migrant workers on both the East and West Coasts.

male announcer: This is an American story that begins in Florida and ends in New Jersey and New York State with the harvest.

It is a 1960 "Grapes of Wrath."

narrator: Today there are well over 2 million farm workers in the US, most of them Hispanic.

Despite their essential role in the economy they experience low pay and hazardous working and living conditions, with an estimated 40 to 50% lacking legal status, and they now face the intense daily threat of arrest and deportation and the crippling fear of home and workplace raids led by ICE officers who sometimes resemble Woody Guthrie's so-called vigilante man.

♪ Well, what is a vigilante man?

♪ ♪ Tell me what is a vigilante man?

♪ ♪ Has he got a gun and a club in his hand?

♪ ♪ Is that a vigilante man?

♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ Men walking along the railroad tracks, ♪ ♪ going someplace and there's no going back.

♪ ♪ Highway patrol choppers coming up over the ridge.

♪ ♪ Hot soup on a campfire under the bridge.

♪ ♪ Shelter line stretching round the corner.

♪ ♪ Welcome to the new world order.

♪ ♪ Family's sleeping in their car in the southwest.

♪ ♪ No home.

♪ ♪ No job.

♪ ♪ No peace.

♪ ♪ No rest.

♪ ♪ Well, the highway is alive tonight.

♪ ♪ But nobody's kidding nobody about where it goes.

♪ ♪ Sitting down here in the campfire light, ♪ ♪ searching for the ghost of Tom Joad.

♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ Tom said, ♪ ♪ "Mom, wherever there's a cop beating a guy, ♪ ♪ wherever a hungry newborn baby cries, ♪ ♪ where there's a fight against the ♪ ♪ and hatred in the air, look for me, mom, ♪ ♪ I'll be there.

♪ ♪ Where there's somebody fighting ♪ ♪ for a place to stand, or a decent job ♪ ♪ or a helping hand, wherever somebody's ♪ ♪ struggling to be free, look in their eyes, ♪ ♪ mom, you'll see me."

♪ ♪ Well, the highway is alive tonight, but nobody's kidding ♪ ♪ nobody about it where it goes.

♪ ♪ I'm sitting down here in the campfire light ♪ ♪ with the ghost of old Tom Joad.

♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me.

♪ ♪ The sign was painted, said private property, ♪ ♪ but on the backside it didn't say nothing.

♪ ♪ This land was made for you and me.

♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪