To Burlington via I-85 to meet the Whitfields whose family Dorothea Lange photographed in 1939: Colene, the oldest daughter, and Millard and his wife. We meet at Millard’s house, across the street from Colene’s. Millard and his wife moved here first, about ten years ago, and built this house. It feels larger than it is, one story, but with high ceilings, spacious living room, a kitchen-dining area with a glass-top table set with placemats, glasses, and napkins elaborately folded in a fan shape. The house is decorated like a showpiece and is also quite comfortable.

Dorothea Lange. White Share-cropper Family. July 3, 1939. “Reject.”

We sit in the living room. They have already seen the photos that Lange made in 1939, which were published some years ago in a local newspaper, and their niece Cindy found others on the Internet. They ordered a few from the Library of Congress. They also show me a photograph that Lange sent to the family in 1939 (probably Hagood did), but regretted that the father was not depicted. Colene looks so much like Lange’s photo of her as a girl. The eyes and the cockiness. She and Millard have an easy, teasing relationship.

Dorothea Lange. “Refer to Genral Caption No. 22. Wife and children of tobacco sharecropper on front porch.” July 3, 1939

Anne Whiston Spirn. Millard Whitfield and his wife, with Colene Whitfield Yarbrough. October 11, 2007.

Lange mixed up Dorothy Lee and Colene (and misspelled the name). Colene was the oldest (nine years old in 1939), and Dorothy Lee was the “knee baby” (she died of cancer in the 1980s). The Whitfield mother’s name was Irene Isabel. She died at 98 (?) only a few years ago.

When Lange photographed the Whitfields, they were sharecroppers who lived down the road from the Gordonton country store in Person County. Today no one in the family farms. “It’s too hard,” At five and six years old, the children worked very hard. They helped their father string tobacco, putting together three leaves and holding them up for him to string. In those days, the farmers graded tobacco themselves.

Like most folks I’ve visited in North Carolina (and in eastern Oregon), folks come and go through the back door (actually the side since this is a corner house). The front door is rarely used, if ever. We took photos in the front yard, though, since the sun was too bright at the back.

On the photographs:

Dorothea Lange’s black and white photographs were taken in 1939, the color by Anne Whiston Spirn in 2007. Read the stories behind these photographs in Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the Field.

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