The photos of our Farmworker Movement Collection not only capture events in California but also events in Texas during the melon strike in 1966-67 and the successful unionization efforts among Minute Maid farmworkers led by organizers of the United Farm Workers (UFW) in the early 1970s. You can see here some images of these events. Also, we invite you to read the blog entry about images of Bobtown, Louisiana written for our library’s Peek in the Stacks blog.
The Florida Union in the Farmworker Collection
By Marta Valier
In the late 1960s, effective boycotts led by the UFW inspired Florida workers to unionize. In 1971, UFW volunteers enlisted 75% of Minute Maid's Florida workers, a company owned by Coca-Cola. Following an election, the UFW became the union for Coca-Cola Minute Maid workers, leading to a groundbreaking three-year agreement in 1972. Despite modest resources, Manuel Chávez and Jerry Cohen negotiated a historic contract between Black, Mexican American, and white farm workers and the state's largest citrus producer, marking Florida's first citrus worker contract.
Farmworker Movement Collection
The agreement held historical relevance not only for the UFW but also for the U.S. South. Earlier efforts by citrus workers affiliated under the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s and 1940s had only led to minor pay improvements and, in some cases, to Ku Klux Klan backlash. By 1972, when the UFW contract was established, Florida’s agricultural system still echoed the legacy of plantation-era slavery. Farmers owned the land and contracted crew leaders who managed groups of workers, often subjecting them to debt and limited options. “Florida’s modern agriculture—wrote UFW member Roberta “Robbie” Jaffe in an essay for the Farmworker Movement Documentation Project of the University of California, San Diego—was still rooted in the culture of plantation days’ slavery.”
Farmworker Movement Collection
The UFW contract dismantled the crew leader system. Aside from improving wages and benefits, it introduced hiring halls which were crucial in restoring workers’ control over hiring practices. The UFW office in Florida was a former funeral parlor in Avon Park and it became a hiring hall and a service center where Mack and Diana Lyons administered the contract. In 1973, recognizing the significance of hiring halls for farm worker empowerment, growers lobbied for a "right to work" bill to revive the crew leader system. UFW organizers went to Tallahassee to oppose the bill. During a hearing, farm workers like Theodore Johnson testified before the Sub-committee, recounting their captivity under their crew leaders. Ultimately, the bill was defeated. In 1975, renewing the Coca-Cola contract met obstacles, strikes were impractical due to replacement workers and limited funds, and boycott threats had lost credibility, leading the UFW to organize smaller protests, fasts, and sit-ins. Coca-Cola eventually renewed the contract in November, and in 1976 Mack and Diana returned to Sacramento to support California's labor legislation.
The Texas Melon Strike and Roma, Texas
Photographer Emmon Clarke spent some time in Texas, documenting the activities of Texas farmworkers, organizers from Texas, and organizers sent to Starr County by the National Farm Workers Association from California. Texas melon pickers started their strike on June 1, 1966, demanding higher wages. Wages were often as low as 40-60 cents an hour. Following the successful march from Delano to Sacramento of Spring that year, workers in Texas organized a 400-mile march from Rio Grande City to Austin from July 4 to Labor Day, September 5, 1966. La Casita Farms, the largest melon grower, raised wages from 85 cents to $1.00 but refused to meet the workers’ demands for $1.25 and a contract recognizing their union.
Later, on October 24, 1966, eleven National Farm Workers Association strikers were arrested for blockading the International Bridge between Roma, Texas, and Ciudad Miguel Alemán, Mexico to prevent growers from bringing in Mexican workers. The strikers were protesting the harsh working conditions of farmworkers and demanding higher wages. The blockade lasted six hours, successfully halting the traffic of the growers bringing in the strikebreakers from Mexico. The event made national headlines, bringing attention to the farmworker struggles in Texas. The arrested strikers and organizers included Daría Vera, Irene Ramos Chandler, Eugene Nelson, Bill Chandler, Tony Orendáin, Marshal Méndez, and Gilberto Campos from the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC).
The men were first detained, and Irene Ramos and Daría Vera were arrested later after lying on the ground wrapped in a banner with the union symbol and the words "Ayúdanos Virgen de Guadalupe" (Help us Virgin of Guadalupe). Ramos and Vera were dragged off the bridge and sent to jail for disturbing the peace. Although Clarke was not present during this event in Roma, Texas, his photographs of the Texas campaign documented part of this important chapter in Texas’s farm labor history.
Roland Charles’s Bobtown, Louisiana
Our archivist Beth Peattie and student Trinity Acklin put together a must-read blog entry in The University Library’s Peek in the Stacks section about the documentary work by Los Angeles-based photographer Roland Charles of Bobtown, Louisiana. Charles grew up in Bobtown with his grandfather, Henry “Bud” Celestin, the son of one of the two founders of Bobtown, Robert Celestin. The other was Celstin’s father-in-law Robert Creecy. Bobtown was established in 1898, only two years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v Ferguson gave legitimacy to legal segregation in Louisiana and the rest of the country. Starting in the 1970s, Charles went back regularly to Bobtown, a freedom town formed primarily by relatives, to photograph it and celebrate its centenary in 1998. You can read more about Bobtown and Roland Charles here.
Correction: An earlier version of this newsletter indicates that the 1972 contract was negotiated by UFW organizer Dianna and Mack Lyons. The contract was negotiated by Manuel Chávez and Jerry Cohen. Dianna and Mack Lyons administered the contract.