Boxcar bertha thompson biography

Boxcar Bertha Thompson, a poor southern girl, is orphaned when her father's crop-dusting airplane crashes. The Great Depression hits, and she soon takes to freighthopping. A few years later, she meets Big Bill Shelly, a union organizer, and they become lovers. Hobo jungles, bughouses, whorehouses, Chicago's Main Stem, IWW meeting halls, skid rows and open freight cars—these were the haunts of the free thinking and free loving Bertha Thompson. Early years First steps Professional growth Public recognition Peak period Later years Public interest Professional activity Media attention
Born in the shadows of a railroad yard, of a wandering mother who took her lovers where she found them and a father who was scarcely conscious of her arrival in the world, Bertha Thompson took to ‘the road’ as soon as the restless impulses of adolescence stirred in her.