HARVEST

OF
SHAME
Phạm Hiền Minh - 11A3 - CNN

"The gold standard for television documentary

ILLUSTRATION

"The people you have seen have the strength to harvest your fruit and vegetables. They do not
have the strength to influence legislation. Maybe we do"

~ Edward R. Murrow ~

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TABLE
OF
CONTENT

01 Illustration

02 Table of content

03-06 Note taking

07-08 Keys

09-10 Summary

11-15 Question
template
20 Self - reflection

21 References

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 NOTE
TAKING

3
4
5
6
 KEYS
ACRONYM MEANING

-> (said) to

≈ around

♂ male / men

♀, female / women

NYS New York State

yr/yrs years

+ plus

=> so

ppl people

AM before midday (time)

PM after midday (time)

hrs hours

>< contrary

7
 KEYS

ACRONYM MEANING

1/2 half

m millions

min minimum

/ per

dif different

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 SUMMARY
F O R M

F O R M
Harvest of Shame
CBS NEWS

Harvest of Shame was a 1960 television documentary presented by broadcast

journalist Edward R. Murrow on CBS. It is a 55 minutes long documentary that
originally aired on November 25, 1960, focusing on showing the plight of
American migrant agricultural workers.
Harvest of Shame begins in an open lot, crowded with men and women looking
for jobs. It's what's called a "shape-up" for migrant workers. Crew leaders yell out
the going rate for that day's pay and men and women pack onto the backs of
large trucks that drive them to the fields. One farmer told CBS, "We used to own
our slaves. Now we just rent them.". In the documentary, Murrow called them “the
forgotten people; the under-educated; the under-fed”. It is insane that despite
America being the best-fed nation, the people who harvested crops earned barely
enough to feed themselves. They are not slaves, but in the way they are treated,
they are worse than slaves.
The film is full of vivid, black and white images reminiscent of Depression-era
photographers Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. In it, African-Americans and
whites; weary mothers, fathers, and their children recount their stories to producer
Lowe. Sitting with her nine children, one woman tells Lowe that an average dinner
is a pot of beans or potatoes. As for milk, she reluctantly admits the children might
have it once a week when she draws a paycheck.

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 The producers — Fred Friendly, Edward R. Murrow, and David Lowe — made no
secret of their goal: This was an investigative report intended "to shock Americans
into action," as it was "the first time millions of Americans were given a close look
at what it means to live in poverty" by their televisions. To maximize its impact,
CBS originally aired the documentary — about the people who pick fruits and
vegetables — the day after Thanksgiving Day in November 1960. The producer
said they felt that by scheduling the program the day after Thanksgiving, they
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.” - said
producer Lowe in the December 5, 1960 edition of Time.

(379 words)

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 QUESTION
TEMPLATE
1 What point is the author trying to make?
Throughout the documentary, the narrators made it clear that
the principal objective of this documentary is not only to show the
poor and miserable lives that all of these people live, but to let all
the other Americans who are above these workers on the social
and wealth scale know that the people who pick up their fruits,
vegetables and grains have no voice, no power, and no help to
battle the inequities and mistreatment they receive. Relying heavily
on interviews with workers and their children, it focused attention
on low wages, poor housing and grueling work that kept migrant
families locked in a poverty cycle that contrasted sharply with the
prosperity of their employers.
(115 words)

2 What can be the structure of the

documentary?

- The documentary can be structured like a thesis-first documentary :

Prequel: the opening with voiced over footage of migrant workers
being recruited.
Thesis: “This is the way the humans who harvest the food for the
best-fed people in the world get hired. One farmer looked at this
and said, "We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them."

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 1st sequence: The report starts in Florida
2nd sequence: The story moves from Florida to North Carolina
3rd sequence: And then the story continues in New Jersey
Conclusion: “The migrants have no lobby. Only an enlightened,
aroused, and perhaps angered public opinion can do anything
about the migrants. The people you have seen have the
strength to harvest your fruit and vegetables. They do not have
the strength to influence legislation. Maybe we do. Good night,
and good luck”
(138 words)

3 Do you find it interesting or informative?

I find it informative since the video has successfully provided me
with a substantial amount of information about the plight that
migrant workers had to go through. To further explain this, right
after the opening scene with migrant workers, Murrow - the
narrator calls it a 1960s Grapes of Wrath - a book that focuses on a
poor family of tenant farmers - of unrepresented people, who work
136 days of the year and make $900 a year. What really stands out
in this documentary are the numerous interviews throughout the
documentary. All of these are conducted by David Lowe in his nine
months of field reporting, of people working in the industry. The
interviews have brought to us not only a new perspective on
migrant workers and their countless hardships but also direct us to
take action as Murrow had said:

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 “"The people you have seen have the strength to harvest your fruit and
vegetables. They do not have the strength to influence legislation.
Maybe we do."
(165 words)

4 Are there any special concepts you need to

know to understand the news? Explain
them.
Although the documentary itself is pretty straightforward and has
already explained all the specific economics-related terms, there
remain some of the concepts that we had to know its basis to fully
understand the talk. The first and perhaps the only one we need to
know is “Grapes of Wrath”. The narrator first mentioned it in the
beginning, comparing the story of migrants as “a 1960s Grapes of
Wrath of unrepresented people, who work 136 days of the year
and make $900 a year”. Grapes of Wrath is a novel that focuses on
the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their
Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, agricultural
industry changes, and bank foreclosures forcing tenant farmers out
of work. Therefore by comparing this story with “Grapes of Wrath”,
the narrator wants to show us that these migrant workers are the
same if not worse than the characters depicted in the novel. The
author consistently and woefully points to the fact that the
migrants’ great suffering is caused not by bad weather or mere
misfortune but by their fellow human beings. The novel draws a
simple line through the population—one that divides the privileged
from the poor—and identifies that division as the primary source of
evil and suffering in the world. What a shame for the greedy
bastards who are responsible for this (the depression and the plight
of the worker)
(232 words)

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5 Are there any literacy devices (simile,
metaphor, etc.) used in the text? What are
they? What implications can you make after
the listening?
During one of the interviews with the president of the American
Farm Bureau’s Association, he has used a simile comparing the
value of migrant workers. He specifically said: “I think that most
social workers would agree that it's better for a man to be
employed, even if his capacity as such as to limit his income. We
take the position that it’s far better to have thousands of these
folks, who are practically unemployable, earning some money doing
some productive work for at least a few days of the year.” Before,
people would just own slaves, but nowadays employers can just
rent them. These migrants are treated even worse than slaves, they
had no voice, no lobbies, no federal protections/law or funding. They
were a politically insulated minority with horrific working conditions
who worked more than 20 hours a day and had little to no income.
And in the eyes of employers, it’s better to have more of these
people whose capacity limits their income (which means they’re
pretty much unemployable) since they will barely make any money
anyways. These workers are then given terrible working conditions
and put through many hardships. What an atrocious reality!

(197 words)

6 How does the information mentioned relate

to your background knowledge?
First and foremost, despite this documentary being made in the
1960s, sixty years later, migrant work is still backbreaking.

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But while the work is the same, wages have improved. Look no
further than Vietnam, our country has seen an increase in wages for
workers. In the past 5 years, the average income of workers
nationwide has increased by 35%. For Vietnam - a country that
depends on labor-intensive sectors to be its growth drivers for
economic development, the issues of life of the working class are no
joking matter. That’s why Vietnam has always strived to improve
workers’ life and working conditions in addition to salary. Like our
president has said: “We talk about growth and development, but
who makes material wealth in the fields of industry and services?
That is the working class. We must be grateful and thank the
Vietnamese working class for working day and night to develop the
country and overcome challenges." Such a thing means that things
are slowly changing. Soon it won’t be a harvest of shame anymore,
it will become a harvest of hope.
(198 words)

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 SELF -
REFLECTION

In the past few weeks, I have been working to finish this listening
profolio and I have been able to gain clarity on the subject I was
researching for - the labor problem -as well as improving
immensely on many different skills. In the beginning, I found it
really difficult to catch the main ideas while listening to a 51-
minutes documentary since many people were interviewed. But I
split the documentary into multiple parts as I have already done
above and it made listening much easier. After listening several
times and practicing my note-taking skills, I can definitely say with
my chest that my listening skill has been enhanced. This semester,
I also want to try and improve my design skill by learning how to
use Adobe apps for designing. I managed to learn the basics of
Photoshop and was able to create my first ever design (the cover
page for this portfolio) in this app. But sadly, the process of
learning and making the cover page took a little bit too long so I
decided that I would build my portfolio in Canva instead. It is a pity
that I didn’t get to finish designing my portfolio in Photoshop and
Illustrator but it was a fun experience nonetheless.

With regards to the difficulty, one of the major problems that I

encountered is time - management. Despite all my efforts trying to
resist the temptation of the mysterious beings called the Internet, I
still can’t stop myself from browsing through Twitter or watching
videos on Youtube.

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 It is even harder since half of my major projects or homework all
have deadlines on week 14 thus making it difficult for me to
adhere to my schedule, balancing between studying online, doing
homework, projects, and maintaining my health. But even if my
schedule becomes super hectic, I would never stay up late past 11
pm since it would have a negative effect on my health later on
even if I got to finish my homework, and instead I would wake up
early to finish it. I had my own share of solutions: to stop myself
from getting distracted, I used an app called Forest - you plant a
tree that will take 30 minutes to grow, if you exit the app then the
tree will die. Very useful right!!

Despite encountering many hardships, going through various

trials and errors, I’m pretty satisfied with the final product. I have
also broadened my horizon on the topic of labor and migrant
workers which is one of the major problems that has been going
on for decades. So if I were to give a score in terms of the process
and final products then I would confidently give myself a 9.5 on
the process due to the drastic and notable improvements in many
skills. For the final product, I would give it a 9 since I was pretty
satisfied with how the portfolio turned out even though I did have
some problems with coming up with a design for it.

Finally, I have two recommendations for this listening project. As

this is my second time doing this listening portfolio (the first time
being in 10th grade), I was able to adjust things easily. Still, for me
personally, the topic for this project “global issue” is a bit wide and
has no clear definition. Since there is a bewildering variety of
global issues when I first went to search for documentaries that
would fit this topic, I encountered several interesting topics and it
was really difficult for me to choose a final topic.

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 My recommendation is that maybe next time, teachers can give us
a few examples or maybe a short description in the oriental slide
so that we students won’t get too confused with what to choose.
Another recommendation is perhaps an easier question (?) for the
question templates. I have had several friends complaining about
how to answer question number 5: “Are there any literacy devices
(simile, metaphor, etc.) used in the text? What are they? What
implications can you make after the listening?”. It is already
confusing and troublesome for us to identify one in our own native
language let alone trying to find one in English which is our second
language. What is even harder is that it seems like most
documentaries have very few literary devices, with some even
having none. Therefore, it would be highly appreciated if clear
instructions are being made in the following years. I sincerely hope
that the teachers would take this and my fellow classmates’
recommendations into consideration.

Although the process was difficult and challenging, I still very

much enjoyed doing it. I'm thankful that I was able to learn and
improve my skills and broadened my knowledge through this
assignment. I’m looking forward to the next challenges in my final
year at CNN.

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 References

Listening source :
Harvest of Shame
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJTVF_dya7E)
Design tools :
Canva
Adobe Photoshop

*Special thanks to miss Mai Huong <3.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

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