Early Strikes
A Frontier for Workers’ Rights:
The Delano Grape Strike and Boycott
The Delano Grape Strike: Strike and Unity
On September 8, 1965, members of the AWOC met at the Filipino Community Hall and voted for a strike. More than one thousand Filipino farmworkers struck against table grape growers in Delano. The grape workers left their jobs and protested the poor wages and gruesome working conditions. In response to strikers, growers hired Mexican grape workers to fill labor gaps. Therefore, to prevent the strike from failing, Itliong reached out to Cesar Chavez, the leader of the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), a Mexican labor union, to form a larger coalition.
Filipino Community Hall, National Park Service
AWOC picketing, Farmworker Movement Documentaiton Project, University of California San Diego Library, 1966
Cesar Chavez, Cesar Chavez Foundation
"Chavez felt that his group, then called the National Farm Workers Association, wasn’t ready to strike itself, but would honor the picket lines of the striking Filipinos. Yet if they were to honor the picket lines of Itliong’s group, Chavez’ members asked, Why not strike themselves? Why not? And so they did. That became the grape strike of 1965 that drew worldwide attention and support and ultimately led to the unionization, at long last, of California’s farm workers. It was Larry Itliong and his Filipino members who started it all, and who played an indispensable role throughout the struggle."
~ Dick Meister, veteran California labor writer, Dick Meister Archive, Farmworker Movement Documentation Project, University of California San Diego Library, 1977
On September 16, 1965, Mexican and Filipino strikers joined forces to fight for equality, forming the United Farm Workers Association (UFW) in 1966.
Cesar Chavez speaking at UFW gathering, University of Washington Libraries, 1969
Julio Hernandez, Larry Itliong, and Cesar Chavez at Huelga Day March, San Francisco, Gerald L. French Photograph Collection, 1966
On March 17, 1966, UFW protestors marched 280 miles from Delano to Sacramento, the state capital. As they marched, supporters from other unions joined.
Immigrants march to Sacramento, Farmworker Movement Documentaiton Project, University of California San Diego Library, circa 1966
"We were to talk for 25 days and cover over 400 miles! Cesar proposed that we visit the farmworker communities along the way. Our mission was to go see the governor and complain about the treatment of the strikers by the growers and the police department. The growers were refusing to meet with us about a union contract and how the police were treating us and arresting us for no good reason! By visiting these communities we were to let the workers know why we were marching and to invite them to come and join us. And to let them know we still have a strike in Delano and to please not go to work there."
~ Roberto A. Bustos, Delano striker, Farmworker Movement Documentation Project, University of California San Diego Library, 1973
"'Huelga, huelga… Viva la huelga… Viva la causa… Viva, viva…'
It sounds endlessly over the flat, green San Joaquin Valley. 'Long live the strike… Long live the cause,' chant the sun-burnt, footsore marchers, 200-strong.
Swarthy Mexican-American and Filipino farm workers; intense students; union men and women from the city; Negro civil rights workers; nuns in flowing habits; priests and ministers in somber black suits; children, uncomfortable in the broiling sun, but chanting rather than crying.
This is the 25-day, 300-mile march of California’s striking vineyard workers from their Delano, Kern county, headquarters to Sacramento.
There, on Easter Sunday, they’ll demand 'justice, freedom and respect,' in the form of laws which would grant them the protections long granted most other workers –mainly the right to bargain collectively with their employers."
~ Dick Meister, March to Sacramento, San Fransisco Chronical, 1966
March from Delano to Sacramento, Huelga!, 1968
End of march candlelight service, Farmworker Movement Documentaiton Project, University of California San Diego Library, circa 1966
"We would go to work and at noon or in the afternoons we would go to meet up with them over there to give them strength, encouragement; and in spite of being extremely tired some young men would even dance there in the hot sun because we had no shade only the sun in those days that we left for Sacramento. Our experience, I believe, could be used or it could be viewed that we, the organizers that are already in our golden years, the last one third of our lives, have…we will leave a great memory to the youth."
~ Jose Marin Barrera, Delano striker, Bob Hatton interview with Bob Jesus Marin and Rico Barrera, 1966
Marina Peng, Senior Division, Individual Website