The Texas Quote of the Day is exceptional, being that it describes part of Russell Lee's time in Texas:
"In the 19th and early 20th centuries, responding to fluctuating needs of Anglo employers, Mexican workers traveled frequently between the United States and Mexico, across a border that many perceived as arbitrary and nonexistent, because to most Mexicans, Texas was still Mexico. Depression briefly halted the movement, and in the early 1930s federal authorities deported large numbers of Mexican workers, who became scapegoats for the country's unemployment.
For those who remained, mechanization weakened their economic position. Lee found that machinery had reduced the production process (and jobs) by half, yet the labor population remained the same and verged on starvation. Tapping his Public Health contacts, he connected with a local doctor and PHS nurse and traveled with them through Crystal City's Mexican community. Most of the dwellings they explored were nothing more than shacks of scrap wood, metal sheeting, sticks and mud, with cardboard partitions and ceilings.
In nearly all the homes Lee visited, beds consisted of old blankets and quilts spread on the floor. Chickens roamed freely. There were inadequate bathroom facilities, which ---- along with a lack of running water and an overabundance of flies ---- gave rise to infectious diseases. He met victims of tuberculosis, syphilis, gonorrhea, arthritis, malnutrition, and impetigo. Lee was sensitive to those health problems, having had his own share of afflictions in the field. His traveling and working conditions ----- long days, lack of sleep, poor nutrition, inferior sanitation, and exposure to contagions ----- took their toll on his immune system. Periodic colds slowed him down and a few more serious ailments plagued hm, including conjunctivitis, a chronic sinus infection (before the widespread availability of antibiotics), a large carbuncle on the back of his neck (likely contracted while photographing skin lesions for the PHS), and a streptococcal infection in his left hand (from the same type of bacteria that causes impetigo).
Where Lee possessed the funds to seek medical treatment, the Mexicans he met in Crystal City did not. For example, the tubercular patients he photographed couldn't afford isolated living quarters, which would have minimized the spread of the disease. Many were in advanced phases.
Aware of the community's high mortality rate, Lee visited a Mexican cemetery in Raymondville. There he found graves embellished with a mixture of secular and religious objects: primitive crucifixes, toys, empty food tins and bottles, shells, glassware, and paper flower wreaths. Lee made a particular poignant image of a child's grave ornamented with a baptismal certificate, various bottles, glassware, and two small chairs. Chalkware figures of dogs ---- inexpensive prizes given away at carnivals ---- sit atop the chairs, facing each other as if in conversation.
The burial rituals intrigued him, and he expressed his wonderment to [his boss, Roy] Stryker: "that was really something, with all the decorations on the graves from electric light bulbs to children's toys." Lee's photographs of the Raymondville graves illustrate both the mourners' material poverty and their expressions of grief. The adornments demonstrated to him a devotion that he encountered and admired elsewhere in the Mexican community, in the form of domestic shrines and altars."
----- Mary Jane Appel, "Russell Lee: A Photographer's Life and Legacy," 2021. I was gifted this book recently by an anonymous reader (THANK YOU) and I believe it to be the best Russell Lee book out there.
Here is the photograph of the child's grave that Ms. Appel describes, above:
