Title

Central Coast Farm Labor Organizing Collection

Description

The Central Coast Farm Labor Organizing Collection contains materials relating to migrant farm workers on the Central Coast of California, including oral histories, reports, correspondence, strike ephemera, and secondary sources. Photographs taken by Manuel Echavarria documenting the United Farm Worker movement and used in the exhibit "iViva la Causa! A Decade of Farm Labor Organizing on the Central Coast" are included in the collection. Finding aid available at https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt3g50363t/

Collection

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Local Identifier
098-1-a-01-00-02
Date Created
1969
Description

As a result of low wages, day care was not an option for most farm workers in the Santa Maria Valley. Children also worked to help supplement income for the family. The girl helps her family plant strawberries during May to August season in 1969. Unfortunately, the practice continues to this day.

Local Identifier
098-1-a-01-00-13
Date Created
1972-03
Description

In March 1972, la causa came to Guadalupe. UFW supporters and organizers, otherwise known as the Santa Maria Ten, were charged with disrupting a public meeting in the towns grammar school. Witnesses testified that the 300 community members in attendance had in fact booed a member of the ultra-rightist John Birch Society incited by the Parent-Teachers Club to lecture against the UFW. A U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report concluded that the charges, most of which were dropped, illustrated a pattern of reprisals taken against Mexican-American UFW activists who spoke out against racist school officials. Starting from left to right in the first row, is Margarita Cabello, Juanita Estorga, Carmen Magana, Maria Manriques Cota Vaca, Jesus Ortiz. Starting from left to right in the second row, Angel Fierro, Sammy Gonzalez, Fermin Sepulveda, and Manuel Echavarria, the only one who served jail time.

Local Identifier
098-1-a-01-00-34
Date Created
1973
Description

It was a busy year. Members of Santa Maria's UFW chapter witnessed the bloody summer of 1973. The photograph captures a tense moment in which Cesar Chavez, hand on chin, and flanked by UFW supporters, is locked in a heated debate with a Coachella Valley grower. Chavez had asked the farm owner why he had picked the Teamsters, who are standing behind the owner, to represent the farm workers who picked his grapes. By accepting Teamster representation, Chavez argued, growers were trying to deny farm workers their democratic right vote for a union.

Local Identifier
098-1-a-01-00-33
Date Created
1973
Description

Guadalupe, a small farm worker community located 10 miles west of Santa Maria, was also a site of many rallies in support of various UFW causes. Guadalupe, una pequeña comunidad agrícola, situada a diez millas al oeste de Santa Maria, también fue escenario de numerosas demostraciones en apoyo a las diversas causas de la UFW.

Local Identifier
098-1-a-01-00-16
Date Created
1973
Description

That same year, Santa Maria UFW members learn another lesson in grassroots politics. They go to Los Angeles to join in letter writing campaigns urging state senators to support the lettuce boycott, and denounce unfair labor practices against farm workers.

Local Identifier
098-1-a-01-00-14
Date Created
1973
Description

The UFW's national lettuce boycott is taken up in Santa Maria. Photograph shows local farm workers and UFW supporters striking in 1973 against one of the valley's largest lettuce growers, H. Y. Minami & Sons.