Harvest of Shame (1960)

Original title

CBS Reports: Harvest of Shame

Directed by

Fred W. Friendly

Genre

documentary film

Country

United States

Runtime

55 min

Rating

6.6 of 10 from 8 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This documentary exposes the harsh living and working conditions of migrant farm workers in the United States in the 1950s. Edward R. Murrow presents an investigative report meant to show viewers the reality of poverty among these laborers.

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What happens

Harvest of Shame was a 1960 television documentary presented by broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow on CBS that showed the plight of American migrant agricultural workers. It was Murrow's final documentary for the network; he left CBS at the end of January 1961, at John F. Kennedy's request, to become head of the United States Information Agency. An investigative report intended "to shock Americans into action," it was "the first time millions of Americans were given a close look at what it means to live in poverty" by their televisions. The program was an installment of the television documentary series CBS Reports, widely seen as the successor to Murrow's highly regarded 1951–1958 CBS program See It Now. Murrow's close associate, Fred W. Friendly, who coproduced See It Now, was the executive producer of CBS Reports. Their colleague, Edward P. Morgan, had taken up the issue of migrant labor in his CBS Radio Network commentaries. Morgan's assistant had visited Senator Harry F. Byrd's Northern Virginia farm during the apple harvest and was outraged by the conditions of the migrant laborers working there. According to Murrow biographer Joseph Persico, Friendly decided that the issue was a natural for Murrow, long seen as a champion of the oppressed. While Murrow and Friendly are often seen as the forces behind the show, broadcast historians such as the late Edward Bliss Jr. have also given credit to "Harvest of Shame" producer/reporter David Lowe. Lowe did much of the legwork, including a number of the interviews featured in the installment. The program originally aired just after Thanksgiving Day in November 1960. The December 5, 1960 edition of Time quoted producer Lowe as saying, We felt that by scheduling the program the day after Thanksgiving, we could stress the fact that much of the food cooked for Thanksgiving throughout the country was picked by migratory workers. We hoped that the pictures of how these people live and work would shock the consciousness of the nation. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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