Oral History Project Explores UFW Roots

For nearly 40 years, the nameless, faceless farmhands who labored in fields, protested against growers and demonstrated for fair wages and decent housing have remained in the shadow of Cesar Chavez, the symbol of the farm workers’ struggle.

Now, these men and women are emerging through first-person accounts of the formation and early days of a labor movement that began in 1962 on rural farms in the San Joaquin Valley and spilled over into other movements in urban corridors across America.

In 1995, Jorge Garcia, Cal State Northridge dean of humanities, and Kent Kirkton, chairman of the journalism department, began the effort to gather laborers’ oral histories. The stories will broaden the available source material on the plight of the poor grape and lettuce pickers who organized the United Farm Workers union, Garcia said.

The collection process will take a significant step forward on Labor Day weekend, when the professors expect to interview a dozen elderly activists at the UFW’s national convention in Fresno.

Eventually, the tape-recorded interviews will be transcribed and placed in the special collections section of the Oviatt Library at Cal State Northridge. The collection will include photographs, memorabilia and videotaped interviews. So far, 30 workers have recorded their recollections from the earliest days of the union. “I think this kind of work is invaluable,” said Carlos Munoz Jr., professor emeritus of ethnic studies at UC Berkeley. “Down the line, this history will be lost unless the voices of those who made it are documented.

“Up until now, what is known about the United Farm Workers union is Cesar Chavez and other leadership of the union, which is well and good,” he said. “But very seldom do you have the rank and file add their voices to the historical record. This is extremely significant.”

The collection includes interviews with workers like Julio Hernandez, who took part in numerous strikes in the late 1950s before the union was founded, Garcia said.

“As a result of his participation in those earlier strikes, Hernandez was blackballed in California, so he moved to the Pacific Northwest, where he could find work,” Garcia said.

“When Chavez went looking for him to help organize pickers, [Hernandez] ducked him,” he added. “But it was his wife who told him that Chavez needed his help and he needed to be there.”

Hernandez became the first president of the UFW’s credit union, Garcia said.

Farm worker Antonia Saludado was a Delano teenager when she quit school to work in the fields to support her younger siblings. She talks about being among union workers whom Chavez inspired to fan out across the United States and Canada in 1968, urging shoppers not to buy California grapes.

“Antonia jumped into the car to go organize in Chicago,” Kirkton said. “She only spoke Spanish. She had never been anywhere except her native Mexico and Delano.”

She and other farm workers met with a union representative in Chicago who helped them organize protests. They shared their plight in union halls and church sanctuaries there and rallied sympathizers to join picket lines in front of grocery stores, Kirkton said.

In a taped interview, Saludado, now in her 50s, said Chavez’s faith in her had given her the confidence to overcome her fears and limitations. “That’s something the old man taught me: not to be afraid.”

The professors said they are racing against time to collect the oral histories. “Every month, we learn that someone we had hoped to interview has passed,” Garcia said. “A couple of people we already have interviewed have died.”

Garcia and Kirkton focus the interviews more on workers’ life histories than on anecdotes about union activity.

“We want to see where their activism comes from and who influenced them,” Kirkton said. “What brought them into the union? What effect did it have on their lives? Why did they make these sacrifices?”

The professors, who came up with the idea for the oral histories on the ride back to Los Angeles from Delano after Cesar Chavez’s funeral in April 1993, said they hope the collection will put a face on numerous anonymous laborers.

“The workers have the greatest respect for Cesar Chavez because he was a transforming agent in their lives,” Kirkton said. “However, the movement is still alive and it rests on the shoulders of thousands of people.”