In this monograph, Ebel explores the religious dynamics in the eighteen farm labor camps that the Resettlement Administration operated in California from 1935 to 1943. He argues that the planners and managers of these camps sincerely sought to understand and assist migrant workers, yet they also worked to modernize their religions and enlighten their worldviews. Ebel's study is the story of “one group desperate for help” and another “eager to provide it, though not unconditionally” (20).
Ebel organizes the study by examining the main elements of the migrant camps. First, the camp gate symbolized “an official desire to address the vulnerability and the ‘savage’ living conditions” of workers (42). For decades, California's transient workers had lived in ad hoc shelters and faced vigilante violence, yet the whitening of farm labor during the Dust Bowl pushed officials to intervene. Given the tremendous need—150,000 migratory workers and a camp system that, at...
