Social Justice and Peace
Rev. Chris Hartmire and Coretta Scott King
Happy New Year! In this issue of Liberated, we feature John Kouns’s images of Rev. Chris Hartmire, who passed away last month. We also include a soundbite from an oral history interview with Hartmire by Professors Jorge García and Kent Kirkton—all part of our work on the Farmworker Movement Collection. We also celebrate Dr. King’s birthday with a series of images of his wife, Coretta Scott King, during an anti-war rally in San Francisco in 1967, captured by John Kouns as well. And we give you a preview of the sound of the Afro-Colombian hip-hop group Kombilesa Mi accompanied by Richard Cross’s images of Palenque de San Basilio. This amazing bilingual group (Palenquero and Spanish) will play on Thursday, March 30, at CSUN’s performing art center, The Soraya.
Rev. Chris Hartmire (1932-2022)
Last Dec. 18, Rev. Chris Hartmire died in hospice at Pilgrim Place in Claremont CA surrounded by family. Wayne Clyde “Chris” Hartmire was born on June 5, 1932, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied engineering at Princeton University, spent three years in the Navy, and studied at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. While in the seminary, he worked at the East Harlem Protestant Parish as a minister to youth. And after the seminary, he worked in East Harlem at the Church of the Resurrection.
In the summer of 1959, while still at the seminary, he did summer fieldwork in the California Migrant Ministry in Santa Clara County. where he met Doug Still. On September 1961, Still left as director of the California Migrant Ministry and persuaded Hartmire to take that position. Hartmire and his family moved to Culver City that year. Doug Still recommended Hartmire to meet Fred Ross and César Chávez, one founder and the other director of the Community Service Organization (CSO) in East Los Angeles. That encounter transformed Hartmire’s life. In November of 1961, he went to be trained at the CSO chapter in Stockton with Gilbert Padilla and Dolores Huerta.
At Ross’s and Chavez’s invitation, Hartmire attended the CSO convention in Calexico in mid-March of 1962, when Chávez proposed the task of organizing farmworkers. After the proposal was rejected, Chávez quit the organization, moved to Delano with his family, and began to organize the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). Hartmire became an important source of counsel and financial support for Chávez’s efforts. Hartmire invited Helen and César to the Migrant Ministry retreats, donated a mimeograph machine, and assigned his newest staff member, the Reverend Jim Drake, to work with Chávez. Drake’s little red Renault and credit card helped support Chavez’s early organizing efforts for farm workers. When the first convention to form the Farm Workers Association took place in late September of 1962, Hartmire delivered the welcoming remarks.
Chris Hartmire and his California Migrant Ministry (later renamed the National Farm Workers Ministry) were key allies and supporters of César Chávez and the farmworkers in the early stages of Chávez’s organizing efforts. In this soundbite from the Bradley Center’s oral history in July of 1995, conducted by the Center’s founder Kent Kirkton and Professor Jorge García, Hartmire summarizes his relationship with Chávez between 1962 and 1965.
Later, during the 1966 hearings of the Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor in Delano, Hartmire testified in support of the workers: “As Christians,” he said, “we cannot assume a position of non-involvement or neutrality in the presence of social injustice which reduces the dignity and well-being of any of God’s children.” According to a Los Angeles Times report, he also said, “The National Council of Churches and the Council of Churches in Northern and Southern California support collective bargaining for farm workers . . . minimum wages and other social legislation from which they are now excluded.”
Coretta Scott King for Peace
This January we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday by focusing on his wife, Coretta Scott King, who also shared in public activities regarding the American war in Vietnam. On April 15th, 1967, 100,000 people marched from Second and Market Street in downtown San Francisco to Kezar Stadium in Golden Gate Park, as part of the Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam. Coretta Scott King spoke at the event and photographer John Kouns captured some images of Mrs. King during the event.
Kombilesa Mi is coming to Los Angeles
On Thursday, March 30 at 8:00 pm, the Afro-Colombian hip-hop group Kombilesa Mi will play at CSUN’s performing art center, The Soraya. The group fuses traditional music and instrumentation with hip-hop, rapping in both Spanish and Palenquero—the only Spanish-based creole language and only spoken in San Basilio de Palenque, the first free black town in the Americas, recognized by the Spanish crown in 1691.
San Basilio de Palenque has a special place at the Bradley Center because photographer Richard Cross spent three years in the 1970s documenting life in San Basilio as part of a visual ethnographic project led by Colombian anthropologist Nina S. de Friedemann. The Center digitized and made available to the public more than 4,000 images of Palenque de San Basilio. Kombilesa Mi allowed our chief researcher Marta Valier to add a sequence of images taken by Richard Cross to their music video Ma Kuagro, which you can watch here: