Dear Campus Community,
As with any major movement, there are figures who work behind the scenes to ensure that the foundation is laid for strategic planning and coordination of actions. Having the operational pieces in place is a critical component for sustaining a movement and not just a moment.
Many of us know of César Chávez, a man memorialized by buildings, statues, and holidays for his work as an amazing, nonviolent, charismatic, and pivotal leader of the agricultural farmworkers labor movement (1959-1973). This movement heralded lofty goals that at the time seemed impossible to attain. They included ensuring improved working conditions for farmworkers, increased wages, health benefits, and unionizing to ensure institutionalized support mechanisms were in place to address future farmworker advocacy.
The impossible was made possible by Chávez and the mindfulness and rebel talent of other activists who served alongside this iconic symbol for justice. In this message, I will profile three individuals who were critical in securing farmworkers’ civil rights.
Dolores Clara Fernandez Huerta is a labor activist and Chicano civil rights leader who, along with Chávez, co-founded the United Farm Workers (UFW). As a child, Huerta experienced prejudice, discrimination, and deficit-minded teaching toward Chicanx/Latinx peoples. Inspired by her own negative schooling experiences, Huerta earned her teaching credential and taught many farmworkers’ children. Yet, witnessing the impacts of the system-imposed poverty that these students were experiencing because of the lack of living wage afforded to their families, she decided to work to organize and help those children’s parents obtain their civil rights.
In 1955, she co-founded the Stockton, California, chapter of the Community Service Organization and the Agricultural Workers Association. Three years later, she met Chávez, and together they founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which later became the UFW. Huerta was instrumental in organizing the 1965 Delano, California, farmworker strike against grape growers, fighting for improved and safe working conditions, healthcare and unemployment benefits, and participating as the lead farmworkers’ contract negotiator. Despite experiencing gender bias, her efforts led to the successful ratification of the 1970 union contract.
Her activist work has not stopped, and she continues to champion the rights of Latinx/Chicanx people, women, and issues of representation.
Modesto “Larry” Dulay Itliong, a Filipino American, was a labor organizer and civil rights activist. His advocacy focused on canneries and farmworkers and the rights of Asian American immigrants. He settled in Stockton, where he organized farmworkers as a member of United Cannery, Agricultural Packing and Allied Workers of America, the Filipino Farm Labor Union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the Legionarios del Trabajo (League of Workers), and the Filipino Voters League. Before his work in Stockton, Itliong was instrumental in the first major agricultural asparagus strike and was one of the key organizers of the Agricultural Worker’s Organizing Committee (AWOC), which represented multiple underserved groups, such as African Americans, Arabs, Filipinos, Mexicans, and poor European American laborers.
In 1967, Itliong recognized the importance of unity in fighting against oppressive systems. He joined with Phillip Vera Cruz and led 1,500 Filipino farmworkers in and around Delano to join with the NFWA. United, they strategically organized and implemented the national Delano Farmworkers 1965-1966 grape strike and boycott, leading to the establishment of the UFW. Itliong, serving as the assistant director and outspoken revolutionary of the movement, helped to win labor contracts that guaranteed farmworkers higher wages and safer working conditions. Because of stylistic and visionary differences between Itliong and Chávez, their partnership dissolved and they each continued to work separately on issues related to labor justice.
Phillip Vera Cruz was a Filipino national labor activist, leader, and prolific public speaker who had a gift for compelling farmworkers and laborers to action. As Itliong’s comrade and fellow activist, Vera Cruz participated in the 1948 asparagus strike in Stockton. As a member of the National Farm Labor Union (NFLU), his role included organizing Filipino, Mexican, and African American farmworkers for collective action. Vera Cruz knew from personal experience the negative and long-lasting impacts of working in below-standard conditions and for meager wages. His pursuit of the American dream was deferred as the land of free demonstrated, for some, that it was the land of unequal opportunity, systemic oppression, poverty, anti-immigrant sentiment, and legalized racism.
Despite those realities, Vera Cruz managed to send some of his wages to his family in the Philippines. In the 1960s, he joined the AWOC and paid his $2 union membership dues consistently, though at times his low wages made meeting that commitment a struggle. At this same time, Chávez and Huerta were organizing the National Farm Workers Association and preparing to strike. With encouragement from Itliong and Vera Cruz, on Sept. 8, 1965, at the Filipino Community Hall in Delano, the Filipino farmworkers of AWOC voted to strike and join forces with the Mexican farmworkers in the successful strike and boycott. Disagreements within the UFW arose when Vera Cruz spoke out about the unequal acknowledgment of the pivotal role Filipinos played in the movement and the UFW’s position on Philippine martial law.
This incredible movement in our California history shows what we can do when we join together to fight oppressive systems in all forms, no matter to whom or where it is happening. During the movement, participants and supporters chanted in Spanish “¡Si, Se Puede!” and in Tagalog “Kaya Natin!” – both meaning “Yes, we can!” Today, we benefit from and celebrate what they did for farmworkers and laborers across the nation.
In partnership,
Dr. Mia Settles-Tidwell
Vice President for Inclusive Excellence and University Diversity Officer
