“Delano Diary: The Visual Adventure and Social Documentary Work of Jon Lewis, Photographer of the Delano, California Grape Strike, 1966-1970″.

Reprint from Southern California Quarterly / Volume 91 / Number 2

DR. JEROME LACKNER / DELANO FARM WORKER CLINIC / PHOTO BY GILBERT ORTIZ

 Excerpt From Book Manuscript, “La Causa” by A.V. Krebs 2005 -
Account of Dr. Jerome Lackner’s 1966 Testimony To U.S. Senate Sub-Committee In Delano CA

(Al Krebs, a reporter with Religious News Service, was in Delano to cover the U.S. Senate hearings in 1966).

The last witness to testify before the Senate subcommittee was Dr. Jerome A. Lackner, a physician from San Jose, California, engaged in the practice of internal medicine. Lackner had been one of the doctors who had helped staff the Delano Free Medical Clinic. Along with a full-time registered nurse—Peggy McGivern—and Marion Moses, who served as volunteer nurse after having been head nurse of the medical/surgical unit at the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in San Francisco, they had maintained the clinic since October, 1965, providing free clinic care to both the NFWA and AWOC strikers. Medical and dental students from the University of California, San Francisco had also been assisting the clinic. Moses would later become a physician—board-certified in public heath and preventive medicine. Her interest in chemical poisons began with her work with the union, first as a nurse from 1966 to 1971, and then as the medical director of the National Farm Workers Health Group from 1983 to 1986.

Today, Dr. Moses directs the Pesticide Education Center, founded in San Francisco in 1988 to educate workers and the general public about the adverse heath effects of chemical poisons and the availability of safer alternatives. In addition to serving as a doctor to Chavez and the Catholic Worker’s Dorothy Day, she has also served on many government panels and committees, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Veterans Administration, and the Toxic Substances Advisory Committee.

Lackner explained to the subcommittee that most of his examinations of patients in Delano had shown them suffering from respiratory tract infections and gastroenteritis, both of possibly viral origin and of longer duration than those patients he examined in private practice. He gave an example, however, of a more serious case and the inordinate obstacles faced by farmworkers.

“I was asked by the nurse to make a house call on a person who was unable to come to the clinic. The husband, who had just two days previously joined the strike, came to the clinic and asked us to see his sick wife.

“We followed him to a very nice, relatively newly built bungalow apartment. Not bad looking, I thought. It had a bathroom, a small living room, and a little kitchen. It would have been an ideal residence for a young couple without children. Inside, though, were a mother and seven children. The stench of putrefying, necrotic tissue filled the interior of the apartment. A baby of 18 months lay asleep on the bare floor in front of a blazing gas heater.

“The mother lay sick on the couch, She had delivered her seventh baby at home with the aid of a neighbor lady several days before I arrived. There was reportedly a considerable blood loss. She was pale and febrile, appeared very toxic, and had a profuse malodorous lochia, which she absorbed on towels stuffed into her underwear. She complained of lower abdominal pains and unquestionably was suffering from fulminant endometritis and probable puerperal sepsis. It was Christmas Eve; I wondered who would take care of the children when she died; the new baby was asleep in the crib.

“I called the county hospital and talked to the admitting resident; prompt evaluation and probable admission was concurred on. I phoned the emergency room four times in the next five to six hours before the poor man showed up at the hospital with his wife. Even then, it was hard for me to understand how it could take anyone so long. The next day he explained.

“He had to go to the NFWA office to get money for gasoline. He had to find a friend whose car would make the trip. He had to place the six older children with a friend who had seven children. Once in Bakersfield, he had to find the house of a relative with enough know-how to bottle-feed and care for the new baby, and then the relative pointed him in the direction of the hospital, which he had trouble finding at midnight, as he had never been there before. Fortunately, the patient responded well to what must have been technically excellent treatment and was later discharged to return to her family.”

As Lackner spoke of the inadequate medical facilities available to farmworkers, many in the audience thought back to the night of January 27 and the death of the NFWA’s San Francisco field representative Roger Terronez. The 32-year-old farmworker and former prize fighter had been fatally injured in a freak automobile accident near Delano.

Terronez, father of four children, was taken alive to the Delano hospital. Neither the type of medical care nor the doctors that he needed were available. He was unconscious for two hours as specialists were brought from Bakersfield 32 miles away. The Delano equipment, however, was inadequate, and an ambulance was called to take him to a Bakersfield hospital. He died en route.

Describing his relations with physician members of the Kern and Tulare county hospitals, Lackner was impressed with their interest and intent to provide proficient and prompt medical care for patients he referred in. He did not feel the same way about some of the paramedical personnel in the hospitals.

It was the same paramedical personnel that this writer was concerned about the night before the Delano hearings, but out of that fear came a demonstration of the giving humanitarianism of Lackner. In the process of covering the three days of hearings, I was accompanied by my then-wife and infant son, David.

The afternoon of the second day, he developed his first serious cold, and, being new and concerned parents, we were anxious about his condition. Originally, I had planned to stay with him and his mother in the Stardust in Delano that evening, in case his condition worsened. I remembered, however, that I had seen Lackner’s name on the witness list for the next day, and, knowing that the farmworkers were having a rally that evening, I decided to go to the rally to see if I could locate Lackner and get some advice on what we could do to relieve David’s misery.

At the rally I quickly found Lackner and after apologizing to him for taking advantage of his medical expertise at this late hour, explained to him David’s condition. He, being familiar with my coverage of the strike, didn’t hesitate a moment in writing out a prescription for me. After some searching I found a drugstore to fill the prescription and returned to our motel room. The medicine seemed to have some effect, but about 3 a.m., David awakened us with a terrible hacking cough, crying in discomfort.

Because I was fearful of how he might be treated if we took him to the local hospital, since by that time I wasn’t exactly appreciated by the Delano citizenry for my coverage of the strike, my wife and I worked out a plan whereby I would drive her to the hospital and let her take him to be examined, thereby not complicating David’s treatment.

She immediately bundled him up against the chill night air, and I went downstairs to warm up the car before we left. Descending the stairway, I met Lackner, who had just completed making some urgent house calls in the farmworker community. I explained to him that we were taking David to the local hospital since he didn’t seem to be getting any better, despite the prescription the doctor had given me earlier in the night.

Lackner, after listening to my concerns, told me to go back upstairs, get David undressed, and he would be in our room momentarily to examine him, which he did, and found that he was merely suffering from a bad cold with flu-like symptoms and gave us some medicine from his kit for David’s relief.

It was an act of kindness that neither my wife nor I would ever forget. Lackner later in the late 1960s and early ’70s became Cesar Chavez’s personal physician. In concluding his testimony before the subcommittee, Lackner pleaded that the senators speed legislation that would insure farmworkers those rights, protections, and benefits other American working people enjoy.

“I urge you in the health interests of the farm laborer to legislate to the effect that farm laborers have the right to federal minimum wages, to overtime pay, to sick leave, to unemployment insurance, to health, welfare, and pension plans, to the enforcement of child labor laws, to an intelligent, humane person-oriented rather than crop-oriented solution to the fact that some labor is by nature seasonal, and above all, to the effect that farm labor has the right and the duty to organize—the right to union recognition and to collective bargaining.

“Viva la huelga!”

This homemade edition, autographed by Andy Zermeño – a veritable collector’s item – is available for $35 + $3 postage. To order, make checks payable to: Andy Zermeño and send to: LeRoy Chatfield, 5131 Pleasant Dr. Sacramento CA 95822 OR use the Donate link on Website: www.farmworkermovement.us

COVER / INTRODUCTION / TABLE OF CONTENTS / TEASER PAGES

Eighteen years after leaving the farmworker movement, and as it turned out,  two years before the death of Cesar Chavez, I was asked to give a speech at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to mark the opening of an exhibit devoted to El Malcriado and the graphics of the farmworker movement. 

Much to my surprise, I accepted this invitation  -  for the first time since leaving the movement I would speak publicly about Cesar Chavez and then not again until  2004 when I founded the Farmworker Movement Documentation Project – a Website devoted to publishing primary source materials about Cesar Chavez and his farmworker movement.

(Note: the speech is presented here  as originally prepared in 1991)

Presentation to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

August 1991 

I told Cesar that as a teacher I THOUGHT EDUCATION was the answer to improving the lives of farm workers. He disagreed. He said that he himself had attended 28 elementary schools because he had to work in the fields and follow the harvest of the crops to support the family. Farm worker families, he said, had to have some STABILITY before their children could take advantage of education. That a farm worker union was the FIRST STEP in this process. The fact is, this corresponded with my own teaching experience in San Francisco where I taught for many years. Most of my students did come from families whose fathers where members of unions: longshoremen, building trades, teamsters, retail clerks, firefighters.

I asked him why he didn’t have a telephone in his office. First of all he said, he couldn’t afford it and secondly who would call him? Farm workers didn’t have telephones either. And if someone wanted to speak to him, they would find him. After all, hadn’t I found him and wasn’t I here in his office talking with him.

I have to stop. History will record that Cesar Chavez is one of the greatest indigenous leaders in the history of this country. This art exhibit here tonight attests to his influence.

Thank you.

WE SHALL OVERCOME

DICK MEISTER - LABOR WRITER and COMMENTATOR

 DICK MEISTER - Labor writer and commentator - offers this piece about Walter Reuther and the farmworker movement: “I may have been fooled, but the farm workers were not fooled. They knew that Walter Reuther meant exactly what he said. He always did.”  WALTER REUTHER

*     *     *     *     *

MARC GROSSMAN - SPOKESPERSON FOR UNITED FARM WORKERS

MARK GROSSMAN – Spokesperson for UFW & Chavez Family – offers this Op-Ed piece from the Sacramento Bee.  CHAVEZ & IMMIGRATION

*     *     *     *     *

RUDY PADILLA – Caminos: Cesar Chavez Is Still Remembered

Willard Wirtz, Secretary of Labor 1962-1969, JFK & LBJ Administrations

That was the lifelong task of Wirtz, who served as secretary under presidents Kennedy and Johnson from 1962 to 1969, a brilliant, charming Harvard Law School graduate who spent his life helping ordinary Americans, especially the poor.

Much can be said of Wirtz’ long and distinguished career in government and academia, and his work in government and private practice as a mediator and arbitrator who helped prevent or settle many strikes and resolve many other serious labor-management disputes.

Wirtz expanded the Labor Department’s job-training and education programs that were developed especially for the underemployed and undereducated and at-risk youth, increased unemployment assistance for those who lost jobs to foreign trade, created literacy programs for workers and sharply and publicly chastised construction unions for their bias against African-American workers.

Wirtz was also a leader in the passage of laws that prohibit discrimination against women and older workers in pay and otherwise. And he was one of the first to call for laws protecting workers with disabilities from discrimination.

Wirtz clearly was what current Labor Secretary Hilda Solis calls “President Johnson’s general in the war on poverty.”

Wirtz himself said of his time as secretary that “If there was a central unifying theme . . . It was in the insistence that wage earners – and those seeking that status – are people, human beings for whom ‘work,’ but not just ‘labor’ . . . constitutes one of the potential ultimate satisfactions.”

I particularly remember a trip Wirtz made to California in 1965 in response to grower requests for creation of an “emergency program” that would in effect restore the highly exploitative Bracero Program that for more than two decades had enabled growers to hire underpaid, overworked and generally mistreated poverty-stricken Mexicans.

The Braceros had to silently accept the rotten conditions or be sent back to Mexico to be replaced by other poverty-stricken Braceros. And domestic workers had to uncomplainingly accept the conditions or be replaced by Braceros – if they were even hired, Growers much preferred the necessarily compliant Mexicans.

Wirtz did his utmost to enlighten the general public about the abysmal conditions of those who harvest most of our fruits and vegetables. He took a whirlwind tour of California’s lush farmlands with a planeload of reporters in a battered DC3, popping up unannounced at farms to ask embarrassing questions and point to conditions that most newspaper readers and television viewers associated only with the dim past recorded by John Steinbeck in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Growers tried to limit his agenda to farms where they had hastily and improved conditions for a token number of workers. But Wirtz would not be denied.

By closely examining the true conditions of Mexican and domestic workers alike, Wirtz was hoping to show the rest of the country the need for major reforms that would promise decent pay and working conditions and deny growers their request for Mexican workers under an “emergency program.”

On the ground, he sped with a busload of reporters over dusty roads from one huge square patch of green and brown to another. We had a hard time keeping up with Wirtz, Neither his good humor nor his seemingly inexhaustible energy lessened as he put probing questions to men and women working in the fields.

At one stop in Southern California, for instance, he strode briskly down one long dirt row after another, a pipe gripped tightly in his teeth, shoes covered with dust, to greet workers as they stooped painfully, grasping the short-handled hoes used to weed and otherwise prepare the strawberry, sugar beet and lettuce crops for harvest.

“Wirtz is my name, good to see you” was a typical icebreaker – first voiced at 5:30 a.m. – only five hours after Wirtz had gone to bed.

At another stop, he walked away shuddering from the communal lavatory in the center of a circle of a ramshackle two- and three- room buildings overrun with barefoot children.

He greeted me, his face twisted in disgust.

“Did you see it?” he asked. “God!”

At yet another stop, Wirtz stood in the center of a field, surrounded by workers, looking out over tall rows of asparagus that covered the land in all directions.

“Where,” he asked the grower, “are the toilets?” The grower, genuinely incredulous that the question would even be asked, explained that “there are none.”

Elsewhere, Wirtz paid a surprise visit to a farm labor camp at breakfast time, finding conditions that “make me ashamed anything of this kind exists in this country. Looking at the food, I wonder how anyone can eat it!”

Wirtz returned from California determined to greatly limit, if not halt, the flow of Mexican workers that growers hired in lieu of improving conditions to attract domestic workers.

As Wirtz and others predicted, curtailing grower use of Mexican workers forced growers to improve conditions in order to attract more domestic workers. The improvements were generally short-lived, however, as growers turned to the masses of undocumented Mexicans for workers.

Yet thanks in large part to Willard Wirtz, the country had seen clearly the great need to improve the conditions of some of our most necessary but most exploited workers. That helped lay the groundwork for Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers and others who are continuing the struggle today for decent farm labor conditions.

That’s but a small part of the invaluable legacy of Willard Wirtz, who helped guarantee decent conditions to millions of working people in a wide variety of fields.

What’s not generally known is Wirtz’ role in desegregating the Labor Department staff. As former Labor Department Director of Information John Leslie notes, at the time that Wirtz became Labor Secretary in 1962, the only African Americans on the staff were messengers and drivers. Leslie recalls that “Bill decided to send a message by starting in the deep South . . .We went to Atlanta and called all the regional directors together . . . and immediately drew agitated opposition.

“Every excuse not to hire blacks in professional positions was given – history, local custom, no qualified Blacks, employee relations ” and more, including an assertion that “our female staff won’t go to the bathroom with Blacks “… Bill quietly answered, ‘Then they will be mighty uncomfortable by the end of the day.’”

Despite the objections of his regional directors, Wirtz prevailed. The Labor Department staffs were integrated, in the South and elsewhere.

We shouldn’t forget, either, Wirtz’ courageous stand against the Vietnam War, including the bombing of North Vietnam ordered by his boss, President Lyndon Johnson. That drew a demand from Johnson in 1968 that Wirtz resign. But two days later, Johnson relented, fearing that Wirtz’ resignation would embarrass him and hurt Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic presidential nominee. Wirtz stayed on, but didn’t mute his opposition to the war.

Willard Wirtz & Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis 2009

Among his other considerable talents, former Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz was one of the country’s foremost collectors of malaprops. His collection, naturally, was studded with gems from Washington, that font of bureaucratese and other language butchery.

Wirtz, for instance, told of a Labor Department official who insisted that “it’s just a matter of whose ox is being goosed.” And there was:

A newspaperman who ‘d “been keeping my ear to the grindstone.”

A bureaucrat who was certain that “we’ve got to do something to get a toe hold in the public eye.”

A politician who demanded that “we hitch up our trousers and throw down the gauntlets.”

A corporate official who wanted to know “if you’ve got any plans underfoot.”

Another official who warned that “if this keeps up, we’ll all go down the drain in a steamroller,” One official was concerned that “we’re being sold down the drain.”

But not to worry, said an optimistic official, “We can get this country out of the eight ball.”

“It may not work,” said a high union official, “but let’s take a flying gambit at it.” An Agriculture Department official insisted that “we have to deal with the whole gambit of this affair.”

And that wasn’t the half of it. Consider these gems, also uttered by labor and management leaders and, of course, bureaucrats:

“That kind of business gets my dandruff up.”

“When I smell a rat, I nip it in the bud.”

“That idea doesn’t have a Chinaman’s chance in hell.”

“Let’s don’t go off the deep end of the reservation.”

“If we try this we’re likely to have a bear by the horns.”

“Somebody’s going to think there’s dirty work behind the crossroads.”

“Let’s grasp this nettle by the horns.”

“Somebody’s likely to rear up on his back.”

Wirtz himself was no slouch at malaprops. For example, there was his, “We’ve got to be careful about getting too many cooks in the soup.”

But few men, the secretary included, are likely to top the explanation of an unsuccessful candidate for the Maryland Legislature that Wirtz recalled.

“I think I deserved to win,” he told a gathering of his supporters after his defeat. “I went to every cranny and crook in this district.”

LABOR SECRETARIES DURING FARMWORKER MOVEMENT 1962-1993

Past Labor Secretaries: (l-r) William Brock, W.J. Usery, Jr., Peter Brennan, James Hodgson, Raymond Donavan, Ann McLauglin, George Schultz, Ray Marshall, Willard Wirtz, John Dunlop

WIRTZ THE BEST WE’VE EVER HAD

No Secretary of Labor was more helpful to farm workers than Willard Wirtz, who served during the height of the UFW’s drive for union contracts. Wirtz , an appointee of pro-labor Democratic presidents, openly supported farm workers, and workers generally. But many of his predecessors – appointees of anti-labor Republicans – did very little to help workers and much that harmed them.

Wirtz was succeeded in 1969 by George Schultz, who left after only a year. He was appointed by Republican Richard Nixon, who publicly condemned the UFW’s grape boycott and brushed off the union’s demand that farm workers be granted the rights and protections of the National Labor Relations Act.

After Schultz came another anti-labor Nixonian, James Hodgson, who served three relatively quiet years from 1970 to 1973. Also serving three years was Hodgson’s successor, Peter Brennan. Despite his construction union background, Brennan did little to help workers. He served under Nixon and Nixon’s Republican successor, Gerald Ford.

President Ford broke the anti-labor pattern by appointing highly regarded Harvard economist John Dunlop as secretary in 1975. Rather than hamper unions, Dunlop tried diligently to bring labor and management closer together. But he quit after less than a year because of interference from the White House, which invariably sided with management and opposed concessions to labor.

Despite President Ford’s interference with Dunlop’s approach, he appointed another advocate of closer labor-management relations to succeed Dunlop – - William Usery, who was head of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which plays a major role in settling key labor-management disputes.

Usery, however, was secretary for only about a year, between 1976 and 1977. He left after Democrat Jimmy Carter was elected president. True to his pro-labor stance, Carter named an outstanding union supporter, Ray Marshall, to replace Usery. Marshall served until 1981, drawing praise from union leaders for his strong support of labor rights.

Carter’s successor, Republican Ronald Reagan, was one of the most anti-union presidents ever. During his time in office, between 1981 and 1989, he was at least as dismissive of farm workers’ demands for union rights as his Republican predecessors. Reagan was an outspoken enemy of the UFW, despite his background as president of the Screen Actors union. Reagan demonstrated his animosity by gleefully plopping boycotted grapes into his mouth as he stood on stage during political campaign rallies.

Reagan’s Secretaries of Labor shared his distaste for union organizers in agriculture and everywhere else. First came Ray Donovan, 1981 to 1985, who sharply reversed the pro-labor direction the Labor Department had taken during Jimmy Carter’s presidency. Donovan, a New Jersey contractor, resigned after he was indicted on charges of grand larceny and fraud. He was found not guilty after an eight-month trial, but never returned to the Labor Department.

Labor didn’t get any breaks from Donovan’s successor, William Brock, ’85 to ’87. As a member of Congress from Tennessee, he had cast 107 of what the AFL-CIO termed anti-labor “bad” votes” and only 17 “right votes.”

As secretary, Brock was no less anti-labor. He was especially neglectful of the urgent need of farm workers for much improved working conditions – for such simple amenities as fresh drinking water, toilets and hand-washing facilities.

In seeking congressional confirmation as secretary, Brock promised to seriously consider implementing regulations requiring growers to provide sanitary facilities. After his confirmation, however, he decided to defer action another 18 months in favor of encouraging states to adopt regulations. A federal court of appeals said that was obviously a stalling tactic that amounted to “disgraceful . . . legal neglect.”

Brock was followed as secretary by three women, all as anti-labor as the Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who appointed them. The first, Reagan appointee Ann McLoughlin, who served from 1987 to 1989, agreed that American workers badly needed on-the-job education and benefits, but said government shouldn’t provide them. McLaughlin’s immediate successor, Elizabeth Dole, was secretary from ’89 to ’90, Her successor, Lynn Martin, served until 1993.

Like McLaughlin, Dole and Martin believed the federal government should do little itself to help workers – even the farm workers who are among the most necessary yet most exploited and needy workers.

I covered those Secretaries of Labor and all the other secretaries who served between 1962 and 1993 as a newspaper, radio and television reporter and columnist. Willard Wirtz stood out to me then, and stands out now, as almost in a class by himself, as one of the best friends farm workers – all workers – have ever had. – Dick Meister

Dick Meister / San Francisco-based Columnist

Dick Meister is a San Francisco-based columnist who’s covered labor and politics for a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator. He can be reached through his website, www.dickmeister.com

There is no end to how the history of Cesar Chavez and his farmworker movement can be told. Case in point: Raymond W. Rast, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of History and Associate Director of the Center for Oral and Public History at CSU-Fullerton is using “PLACE” to write this history . . . AND he asks for your assistance.

Professor Rast has developed a preliminary list of sites and properties relating to the farmworker movement, but he is asking viewers of the Farmworker Movement Documentation Project – especially former UFW volunteers and supporters – to bring to his attention additional “places” that need to be included. He can be reached at: rrast@fullerton.edu or 657.278.8563.

Preliminary List of Farmworker Movement Sites and Properties

Raymond W. Rast, Ph.D.

Teaching interests: U.S. History Since 1877, History of the American West, Public History/Historic Preservation, U.S. Urban History, Racial/Ethnic History, American Cultural History

Research interests: Tourism in the American West, San Francisco, Western Literature, Cesar Chavez and the Farmworker Movement, Orange County History

Brief biography: A native of Independence, Missouri, I earned the B.A. in History from Yale University in 1995. After brief stints at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, and the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, I entered the M.A. program at the University of New Mexico. In 1998, I moved into the Ph.D. program at the University of Washington. During my years in Seattle, I pursued my interests in Western American history, urban history, cultural history, and tourism. I finished my dissertation, “Tourist Town: Tourism and the Emergence of Modern San Francisco, 1869-1915,” and earned my doctorate in 2006. I also worked on historic preservation projects for the National Park Service related to Japanese American internment during WWII and Cesar Chavez and the Farmworker Movement. During the 2006-07 academic year I was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the College of Wooster. I joined the History Department at CSUF in 2007

“Miriam Pawel, author of ‘The Union of Their Dreams – Power, Hope and Struggle in Cesar Chavez’s Farm Worker Movement’ and Chris Hartmire, UTS ‘60, former director of the National Farm Worker Ministry, discuss the church’s role inside the UFW and the lessons for organizers today.” – Poverty Initiative Program Announcement

HARTMIRE-PAWEL DISCUSSION:

Tape 01   / Tape 02    / Tape 03   / Tape 04   / Tape 05   / Tape 06   / Tape 07   / Tape 08   / Tape 09

(l-r) Jorge Mariscal, Ana Rosas, Mario Garcia, LeRoy Chatfield, Yolanda Barrera, Maria Blanco, Roberto Calderon

“On Saturday, April 17, 2010, at a meeting organized by UC San Diego professor, Jorge Mariscal, the first board of trustees of the Farmworker Movement Documentation Project (FMDP) was formed.  The new trustees agreed to preserve, develop, and expand the FMDP by creating a new non-profit organization dedicated to that purpose. The trustees also voted to expand the board to include others who will be needed to increase the FMDP’s availability to all levels of education and to other organizations interested in Cesar Chavez and his farmworker movement.” – LeRoy Chatfield, Founder/Director of the FMDP

STATEMENT OF BOARD OF TRUSTEES

“History is on our side.”—Plan de Delano, 1966.

 ”As the Board of Trustees for the Farmworker Movement Documentation Project (FMDP), we are committed to safeguarding the content and founding spirit of the FMDP so that future generations will understand and appreciate the significant history of the farmworker movement.  

 Our principal goals are to continue to expand the archive and make the source materials available to students, teachers, scholars, artists, writers and the general public in a manner that honors the legacy of all who made La Causa a compelling movement for social change, empowerment and pride.  

 We are honored that LeRoy Chatfield, the creator of FMDP, has granted us his trust, and we dedicate ourselves to growing and protecting the FMDP out of respect for the legacy of activism that informs it.”

Yolanda M. Barrera
Federal Criminal Defense Attorney
Monrovia, CA

María Blanco
Executive Director
Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity & Diversity
Berkeley, CA

Roberto R. Calderón
Department of History
University of North Texas
Denton, TX

Mario T. García
Department of Chicana/o Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara

Jorge Mariscal
Department of Literature
University of California, San Diego

Ana Rosas
Department of History
University of California, Irvine