In 1960, a CBS documentary entitled “Harvest of Shame” aired on Thanksgiving Day to highlight the plight of farmworkers in the United States who labor to put food on the table for others but who cannot afford food for their own families. The report, which documented the appalling living conditions of farmworkers, opened with shots of farmworker “hawkers” in Belle Glade, Florida, attempting to recruit Black workers. According to the report, many migrant farmworker families at the time could only afford to provide milk to their children once a week.
Belle Glade officials immediately tried to discredit the accounts provided by farmworkers in the documentary, particularly the story of one Black woman, Aleen King. In response to Ms. King’s account about being paid one dollar a day for picking beans from 6 a.m. until late afternoon, the Vice Mayor of Belle Glade said that “[t]hat $1 a day…was taken outside the city limits.” Another official ridiculed her story, saying that, “beans are not picked until the sun has dissipated…9 a.m. usually” and that Ms. King’s husband made “good wages.” After rumors spread that Ms. King had recently purchased a $259 television set, the acting mayor announced that he himself had checked out the rumor and that it was false. The acting mayor admitted that, “Anyway, she couldn’t put up an antenna at her living quarters because they are of metal.” At the time, Ms. King lived at the “Okeechobee Camp for Negroes,” which was built to house Black farm workers from the Caribbean.
The documentary was so compelling that it is credited with motivating President John F. Kennedy to establish a food stamp pilot program in his first executive order in 1961.