American History Tellers - United Farm Workers | Birth of a Movement | 1

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

In the 1940s and ‘50s, farm laborers in California, many of them Mexican and Filipino, faced low wages and brutal working conditions. Their demands for change were often met with harsh tactics from the powerful growers. Soon, a plainspoken but magnetic labor organizer named Cesar Chavez stepped forward to rally workers in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Chavez and his allies joined forces to call an unprecedented strike, giving birth to the United Farm Workers of America.Listen ad free with Wondery+. Join Wondery+ for exclusives, binges, early access, and ad free listening. Available in the Wondery App. https://wondery.app.link/historytellersSupport us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's August 1957 in California's San Joaquin Valley. You're just outside a little town called Lodi, picking grapes in a large vineyard. You're what's known as a bracero, a temporary laborer from Mexico who's allowed into the United States to work the farms and vineyards of the American West. The faster you fill your wooden baskets with grapes, the more you'll get paid. But today, the sweltering late summer heat is slowing you down.

You haven't been allowed a break in six hours, and you're exhausted, dehydrated, and starting to feel a bit dizzy. The heavy basket slips from your grasp, spilling grapes everywhere. As you scramble to pick them up, you notice a young woman approaching between the rows of vines. She bends down to assist you. Let me help you with that, sir. No, that's all right. I can manage. But you can barely stand. It's nothing. I'm just a little lightheaded from the heat.

The woman takes a handkerchief from her pocket and hands it to you. As you wipe the sweat off your brow, you notice that she looks to be only in her early 20s and is wearing clean denim pants and a green blouse. You don't look like a bracero. That's because I'm not. My name is Dolores Huerta. I live in Stockton. My mother runs a hotel not too far from here.

What are you doing out here in the field? I'm here to advocate for workers like you. And I saw just now that you needed help. Can I take you to a doctor? No, no. I'm already behind on my work. If you're sick, you can't work. I just need some water. You try to stand, but you swoon again from the heat, staggering back to the ground.

The young woman looks around urgently. That's it. We need to get you some water and medical attention. The woman takes your arm and tries to lead you down the row of grapevines, away from your basket, but you resist. Stop. Miss, I know who you are. You're with that labor group CSO, aren't you? You're not supposed to be here. If a supervisor sees me talking to you, they'll fire me.

CSO is not welcome here. The conditions here are terrible. We can help you find another job on a different farm. In the distance, you can see your supervisor approaching. I don't want another job. Miss, look, if you really wanted to help me, you'd leave. You struggle to your feet, picking the basket of grapes back up again. I have a wife and a family back home in Mexico who rely on me to send

money. I can't miss any work in the end days. The woman pulls a piece of paper out of her pocket and hands it to you. I do. But if you change your mind, come to my mother's hotel on El Dorado Street in Stockton. Here's the address. I have helped many others like you. You take the paper and quickly shove it into your pocket. Then you turn your back on the young woman and continue down the long, seemingly endless row of grapes. You still feel lightheaded, but your supervisor is eyeing you menacingly. So it's back to work. You've got a family to feed. wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Kill List and more Exhibit C true crime shows like Morbid

early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. I'm Saatchi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And we're the hosts of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of the most infamous scams of all time,

the impact on victims, and what's left once the facade falls away. Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers. Our history, Your Story. On our show, we'll take you to the events, the times, and the people that shaped America and Americans, our values, our struggles, and our dreams. We'll put you in the shoes of everyday citizens as history was being made, and we'll show you how the events of the times affected them, their families, and affects you now. In the early 1940s, farm laborers flooded into southern and central California to work the

region's expanding agricultural fields. Many were temporary contract workers from Mexico, but they joined migrant Filipino and Mexican-American laborers to fill jobs left vacant as nearly 800,000 working-age Californians went off to fight in World War II. After the war, groups like the Community Service Organization, or CSO, formed in order to protect the rights of California's growing Mexican-American workforce. But CSO organizers like Dolores Huerta began to see that the best way to advocate for field workers might be to help them organize into labor unions. Out of these early efforts emerged a single, powerful organization, the UFW, or United Farm Workers of America. At its head was a plain-spoken but magnetic

labor organizer named Cesar Chavez. Together with allies like Huerta and Filipino labor leader Larry Itliong, Chavez would win a series of stunning victories against growers in California and beyond, raising wages and improving working conditions for tens of thousands of agricultural workers. These victories helped the UFW expand rapidly in the 1960s and 70s, garnering national attention and widespread public support. But less than two decades after its founding, the UFW began to collapse. Shifting American politics unraveled the Union's hard-fought gains, and Chavez grew increasingly paranoid and isolated. By the late 1980s, what was once a thriving movement became a cautionary tale about the limits of

charismatic leadership. To help tell this story, we've enlisted actors Randy Gieiga, Joe Hernandez-Kolsky, and Pilar Uribe to voice the characters you'll hear throughout. This is Episode 1 of our three-part series on the United Farm Workers, Birth of a Movement. In June of 1943, several young Mexican-American men wearing flamboyant outfits were confronted by a group of white sailors and soldiers in downtown Los Angeles. The young men's outfits, with their high-waisted pants and long, broad-shouldered jackets, were called zoot suits, and for them they symbolized Mexican pride and cultural identity.

But the servicemen saw zoot suits as the uniform of criminals and delinquents. Many even considered the oversized outfits unpatriotic due to wartime rationing of fabric. So soon, a fight broke out. In the violence, one sailor was knocked unconscious, while the others fought back against the Mexican youths with bottles and rocks until the police were called to intervene. But the scuffle didn't end the animosity. The next day, nearly 200 white sailors poured into the Mexican communities of East L.A., scouring the neighborhood clubs and bars and brutally beating and stripping the clothes off anyone caught wearing a zoot suit. The violence spread even further over the following days,

until more than 150 young Mexican-Americans were injured. The attacks were part of a growing pattern of harassment and violence against the rising population of Mexican-Americans. A year before the zoot suit attacks, in August of 1942, L.A. police had rounded up 600 Mexican-Americans. A year before the Zoot Suit attacks, in August of 1942, L.A. police had rounded up 600 Mexican-American teenagers after the death of a gang member near a swimming hole called Sleepy Lagoon. A quick trial led to the imprisonment of 12 young men who were later proven to be innocent. Incidents like the Zoot Suit riots and Sleepy Lagoon trials fostered a new political awareness within the Mexican-American community and spurred the creation of new organizations

to advocate for Hispanic justice and equality, such as the Spanish-speaking People's Congress. But such groups had limited power and were mostly concentrated in large cities like Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans who lived and worked in rural areas faced even greater challenges. In 1942, the United States and Mexico signed the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement to address the labor shortfall caused by America's entry into World War II. This agreement launched what came to be known as the Bracero Program, which allowed Mexican nationals to seasonally migrate into America for farm work. The program promised decent wages and good living conditions,

at least in comparison to the grinding poverty in rural Mexico, where most braceros came from. In its first year, the bracero program admitted 4,200 workers into the United States. The new labor force substantially increased the country's agricultural production, and the program became very popular with farm owners, who now had access to an almost unlimited supply of cheap labor. So even after the war ended, growers lobbied the government to continue the Bracero program. And over the next 20 years, nearly 5 million Braceros would be given employment contracts across 24 states, with almost half working in California. But the temporary laborers competed for jobs with resident California workers, as well as Mexican-Americans

from other states who traveled west in search of farm work. The program only guaranteed braceros 50 cents an hour, which drove down wages for all agricultural workers. The program also lacked enforcement and oversight. Many non-braceros entered the country illegally and found growers only too willing to put them to work, often for even less pay than the guaranteed minimum. And once in the fields, braceros and non-braceros alike found themselves mistreated by their employers. Large agricultural companies took advantage of the fact that farm laborers did not have the same protections as other workers under American labor law. They were often housed in tin shacks with no indoor plumbing.

Child labor was common. Practices such as the use of short-handled hose, which laborers called cortitos, led to crippling injuries. These tools were often mandated by growers who insisted they provided greater control and less damage to crops than weeding and cultivating with longer hosts. But to use them, workers had to hunch over for hours at a time, and supervisors would discipline anyone who stood up to rest. Workplace protections were nearly non-existent. But soon, urban civil rights groups would take their efforts to the fields, hoping to end the abuses the farm workers faced. Fred Ross was a young social worker from Los Angeles who began his career in 1937 during the Great Depression. His first job was working for the State Relief Organization in Riverside, California, providing

financial aid to the unemployed. He was later hired by the Farm Security Administration, one of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal agencies, where he was assigned to head up a relief program in the Coachella Valley, home to some of California's most fertile farmland. There, he saw firsthand the poor conditions workers faced, as well as the mistreatment that many non-white laborers endured from both their white co-workers and employers. Ross focused his efforts on community organizing, especially among the Valley's many Mexican-American farm workers. He spearheaded voter registration drives and worked to integrate the region's schools. His successes drew the attention of an influential community organizer from Chicago

named Saul Alinsky. Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation was a private nonprofit that worked to organize and educate poor urban communities, often with the help of local civic or religious groups. And in August of 1947, Alinsky hired Ross to be the IAF's West Coast representative. And within two years, Ross would develop a method of organizing that would influence a movement far greater than he could have ever thought. Imagine it's April 1947. You're the director of a local health organization here in Boyle Heights,

an ethnically diverse neighborhood in East Los Angeles with a growing Mexican population. Last month, you lost an election for a seat on the L.A. City Council. You had hoped to unseat your district's incumbent, Harley Christensen, but your efforts to get out the neighborhood's Hispanic voters fell short. Now you're climbing the stairs of an old Victorian building, knocking on the office door of a new arrival in your neighborhood who claims he can help you in the next election, an activist and community organizer named Fred Ross.

After a moment, a tall, slender man in a dark plaid shirt and pressed khaki pants opens the door. Director, welcome. Please come in and have a seat. Thank you. Ross ushers you into the office and gestures to a worn leather chair across from his desk. I want to applaud you for your efforts in the last city council elections. Thanks, but there's not much to applaud. I only finished third. I didn't even make it to the runoff. Well, it's tough when you're running against an incumbent. That's a powerful advantage. Too powerful, I'm afraid. Don't sell yourself short. I saw the results. You may have finished third, but you only lost by 375 votes.

Ross stands from his seat and steps to a small window. He opens it and looks outside. How long have you lived here, Director? Since I was six years old. So you've seen the changes to East Los Angeles. You know that you represent the community in a way Christensen never could. You know firsthand the racist violence, the lack of opportunity. No wonder the people here are tired and disengaged. But they need to be brought together or nothing will change.

That's true. And you're right. I do care about this community. I know I can do more for the people here. I know you can too. That's why I want you to run for city council again in the next election. And this time, I think you can win. Ross looks at you with determination in his eyes. We'll start organizing from the ground up. With my background and your connections within the community, we can awaken a voter base more powerful than Christensen can imagine. You're encouraged by Ross's confidence and enthusiasm.

You get up from your chair and join him at the window, gazing out over the neighborhood you love so much. I hope you're right, Mr. Ross. Because this isn't just about winning an election. This is about giving a voice to people who do not have a voice. So that injustices like the Zoot Suit riots and Sleepy Lagoon never happen again. Can you help me do that? Ross smiles and places a hand on your shoulder.

I can. You nod. Organizing Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles has always been difficult, but Fred Ross seems every bit as committed to it as you are. Maybe he's the ally you've been looking for in your fight to break through the community's mistrust of those in power. And maybe this time, two years from now, that city council seat will finally be yours. In 1947, with funding from Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation, Fred Ross co-founded the Community Service Organization, along with a health director named Edward Roybal.

Roybal, who had just lost a city council election, became the organization's first president. With the CSO, Roybal and Ross hoped to spur more Mexican-Americans to be politically active. They went to work in Los Angeles' 9th District, which included Roybal's home neighborhood of Boyle Heights. The group began going door-to-door to reach out to local residents, focusing on getting Mexican-Americans in East L.A. to register to vote and helping immigrants obtain citizenship. Over the next two years, they built up the district's voter rolls. And then, in 1949, Roybal ran for city council again. This time, he won the primary against incumbent councilman Parley Christensen by nearly 1,600 votes,

then defeated him in a runoff election. Roy Bull became the first Mexican-American to serve on the Los Angeles City Council since 1881. So, as Roy Bull served his district on the council, Ross worked to expand the CSO. He trained CSO organizers to set up small meetings in people's homes to discuss the needs of their communities. As these house meetings attracted more attendees, they grew into local CSO chapters. And with its growing power base, the CSO began to lobby city officials, take on corrupt police departments, and help more local candidates like Roybal win elections. After his success in L.A. in early 1952, Ross relocated to Northern California. There he turned his attention to the city of San Jose and its large Mexican-American

community. And there he would meet and train his most gifted organizer yet, a 25-year-old laborer named Cesar Chavez. Richard Bandler revolutionized the world of self-help all thanks to an approach he developed called neurolinguistic programming. Even though NLP worked for some, its methods have been criticized for being dangerous in the wrong hands. Throw in Richard's dark past as a cocaine addict and murder suspect, and you can't help but wonder what his true intentions were. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And we're the hosts of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims, and what's left once the facade falls away.

We recently dove into the story of the godfather of modern mental manipulation, Richard Bandler, whose methods inspired some of the most toxic and criminal self-help movements of the last two decades. Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Scamfluencers and more Exhibit C true crime shows like Morbid and Kill List early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Check out Exhibit C in the Wondery app for all your true crime listening. Are you in trouble with the law? Need a lawyer who will fight like hell to keep you out of jail? We defend and we fight just like you'd want your own children defended.

Whether you're facing a drug charge, caught up on a murder rap, accused of committing war crimes, look no further than Paul Bergeron. All the big guys go to Bergeron because he gets everybody off. You name it, Paul can do it. Need to launder some money? Broker a deal with a drug cartel? Take out a witness? From Wondery, the makers of Dr. Death and Over My Dead Body, comes a new series about a lawyer who broke all the rules. Isn't it funny how witnesses disappear or how evidence doesn't show up or somebody doesn't testify correctly? In order to win at all costs. If Paul asked you to do something,

it wasn't a request. It was an order. I'm your host, Brandon James Jenkins. Follow Criminal Attorney on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Criminal Attorney early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Soon after Fred Ross's arrival in San Francisco in April of 1952, he met a local Catholic priest who gave him a tour of the communities his parish served. And in each of these communities, Ross held house meetings and spoke to local activists.

At one of these gatherings, he heard about a San Jose slum called Sal C. Puedes, Spanish for Get Out If You Can. There, he heard the unpaved roads frequently washed away and inadequate plumbing had caused an outbreak of dysentery. Ross believed that if any place needed to organize, it was likely Salci Puedes. So he opened the newest chapter of the CSO there in June of 1952 and began recruiting new members. Among them was a young lumberyard worker named Cesar Chavez. Cesario Estrada Chavez was born in 1927 in Yuma, Arizona,

and raised on his family's farm. His father managed the financial affairs of his extended family and operated a business on the property that included a pool hall and grocery store, but the family often struggled to make ends meet. Chavez and his four siblings were raised strictly Catholic, and his parents stressed the value of a good education. But at school, he was forbidden to speak Spanish to his fellow students, and his teachers insisted that he use the anglicized form of his name, Caesar. He would pronounce it that way for the rest of his life.

In 1939, when Caesar was just 12 years old, his family was forced to sell their farm to pay back taxes. Having lost nearly everything, they packed up their car and moved west, joining the growing population of migrants seeking work in California's farmlands. That June, his family arrived in the Mexican neighborhood of Salcipuedes in eastern San Jose.

They soon managed to get work in the fields, picking strawberries, beets, grapes, and other crops. They moved often, following the growing seasons, and Chavez was unable to settle into any school for long. In junior high, he dropped out to work the fields full-time alongside his parents and siblings. Then, in 1946, Chavez enlisted in the Navy, just days after his 19th birthday. By that time, World War II had ended, and he was stationed in Saipan and Guam, performing operations and maintenance duty on escort ships. After being honorably discharged in 1948, he rejoined his family in rural Delano, California,

and went back to work in the fields. He married his childhood sweetheart, Helen, and in 1949, he and his extended family returned to San Jose and settled back in the Sal C. Puedes neighborhood. Chavez was 23 years old and struggling. He and Helen had three children and shared a small wood-framed house with Chavez's parents. To make ends meet, Chavez pulled double duty picking apricots and loading and unloading wood for the general box company with his brother Richard. Then in the summer of 1952, word of a new organization called the CSO spread throughout Sal Cipuedes. On June 9, 1952, the Chavez family hosted a CSO house meeting for Fred Ross. And at this meeting, Ross recounted how his organization had worked to get Edward Royville

elected to the L.A. City Council, and how the CSO had pressed for charges against police who had beaten Mexican-American prisoners in jail. Chavez was impressed by Ross's victories in Southern California, and inspired by his vision of a better life for the people of Salisbury. So, without hesitation, Chavez agreed to volunteer for the CSO. By day, he stacked lumber for making wooden boxes. On nights and weekends, he helped Ross register new voters and establish a CSO chapter in San Jose. Ross admired Chavez's intelligence and work ethic and saw in him a natural talent for activism and community organizing. Despite having little formal education, Chavez was a quick study and a voracious reader, able to pepper his conversations with everything

from the California Labor Code to the teachings of Gandhi. Chavez had a lot of promise, and Ross eagerly took the young man under his wing. So when in 1953 Chavez was laid off by the General Box Company, Ross arranged to put Chavez on the CSO payroll. His new job was to travel all over California, setting up new CSO chapters. The work kept him away from his family for long stretches of time. So eventually, he uprooted them, bringing along Helen and their many children as he journeyed from town to town. Chavez was also tasked with attending fundraisers,

a major source of the CSO's revenue. At a 1955 fundraiser in Oakland, California, Ross introduced Chavez to another CSO worker, Dolores Huerta. The two hit it off immediately. Both were skilled organizers, trained by Ross in his brand of house-to-house community organizing. Chavez recognized that Huerta had great empathy for farm workers. And although she never worked the fields herself, her stepfather had been a bracerro and had often spoken of mistreatment at the hands of growers.

Her family ran a boarding house in Stockton that catered to farm laborers and their families. And like Chavez, she believed the CSO could improve the lives of California's farm workers and work tirelessly on their behalf. For several more years, Chavez stayed she believed the CSO could improve the lives of California's farm workers and work tirelessly on their behalf. For several more years, Chavez stayed on the road, organizing for the CSO. But by 1957, he was starting to become disillusioned. He believed the CSO had begun appealing more and more to the needs of urban workers, pushing aside the priorities that had appealed to him when he first joined. He was also angered by the CSO's decision to hold their 1957 National Convention

at a ritzy hotel in Fresno, which priced out ordinary members from attending. But then the CSO gave Chavez a challenge that reawakened his passion for the work. In 1958, Fred Ross's mentor, Saul Alinsky, brokered a $20,000 grant from the United Packinghouse Workers of America for the CSO to establish a new chapter in the seaside city of Oxnard, California. Oxnard was an agricultural town where the Packinghouse Union had been trying unsuccessfully to negotiate labor contracts for the largely Mexican-American workforce. The union hoped that the CSO could help organize the workers and strengthen its position. Fred Ross knew just the man for the job, Cesar Chavez. So in September of 1958, Chavez arrived in Oxnard and got to work. He quickly realized the main challenge he was up against. Farm owners in Oxnard were taking advantage of the Bracero program, pitting American-born workers against Mexican seasonal laborers.

According to the rules of the Bracero program, growers had to hire American workers first before they could bring on Braceros. But Bracero labor was cheaper, so growers often ignored those rules. Chavez was sympathetic to the Braceros, but his primary focus was the struggle of the unemployed Mexican-American workers in his community. Chavez worked to educate them and encouraged them to picket and file complaints with the government where they were denied work. He established voter registration drives and launched a campaign to document the growers' abuse of the Bracero program. And it was here, for the first

time, that Chavez used the non-violent tactics he had learned by reading about the Black Civil Rights Movement in the South. He organized sit-ins in the fields and boycotts of products grown by farmers using mainly Bracero labor. It took months, but slowly the tactics began to work. By May of 1959, several growers began coming directly to the CSO office to hire American workers. It was Chavez's first glimpse of what it might be like to run a labor union and win a victory for people like his own family, farm workers. But Chavez's bosses at the CSO were not interested in turning their Ochsner chapter into a labor office. Instead, they made Chavez redirect all employment activities

to the United Packinghouse Workers. But they were impressed enough to offer Chavez a big promotion to serve as the CSO's executive director. Chavez moved his family again, this time to Boyle Heights, where Fred Ross and Edward Roybal had founded the CSO 12 years earlier. But when Chavez opened the books, he saw that his organization was in dire financial straits. Many organizers had to be laid off to cut costs. Chavez tried to establish a CSO-sponsored life insurance program in order to raise funds,

but it never really got off the ground. But despite the CSO's shaky financial footing, they managed to establish dozens of rural chapters that serviced each town's growing farm worker population. But for the next several years, the CSO's financial troubles persisted. And underlying those, Chavez worried there was a deeper, more fundamental problem. For all its voter registration drives, the CSO was not addressing the true source of most rural Mexican-American struggles, their relationship with the growers they worked for. So in March 1962, at the ninth annual CSO

convention in the border town of Calexico, Chavez sought to create a committee to tackle this particular need of the farmworker. He wanted to create a pilot program on how to organize farmworkers into a union, and at first, there appeared to be some support for Chavez's committee. A wealthy benefactor had pledged $50,000 to help the CSO organize in the fields, and the organization's president, Luis Zerete, was in favor of trying it. But several factions within the CSO were opposed to the idea. Some felt that stepping into the realm of organized labor would move the CSO too far to the political left at a time when they were trying to maintain a non-partisan image.

Others did not want to compete with the efforts of an existing union, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee. That union, known as AWOC, had already been initiating strikes against growers in the Imperial and Central Valleys of California, marshalling a workforce made up mostly of Filipino laborers. Facing these headwinds, Chavez suspected his efforts would fail. So even before the convention started, he had already begun plotting his next move, one that would shock CSO leadership.

Imagine it's March 1962. You're in the lobby of the Hotel de Anza in Calexico, California, the site of this year's CSO convention. Inside a nearby ballroom, leadership and regular members alike are voting on the organization's priorities for the new year. Usually, these conventions go off with little conflict, but today is different. You watch as your friend, CSO Executive Director Cesar Chavez, paces back and forth, awaiting the vote on his new Agricultural Labor Committee. You've spent the past few years helping him bring his vision of organizing farm laborers to life, and you share his frustration with the CSO's priorities. Today, though, he's angrier than you've ever seen him. Calm down, Caesar. You know how long these votes can take. It feels like a foregone conclusion. They're going to vote it down. You don't know that. Zarate even said he wanted justice for

the agricultural worker to be the theme of the whole convention. He's just trying to undermine me. This idea of labor organizing is just getting some rich lady to write a check for a strike fund. He doesn't understand the real work that goes into it. Well, what about AWOC? They sent a delegation here and said our members would be welcome to join them. I have nothing against AWOC, but that's a Filipino union. Our members don't trust them. Besides, their latest strike just failed, so what do they really have to offer? Maybe you're right. But if AWOC can't win a strike, so what do they really have to offer? Maybe you're right. But if AWOC can't win a strike, what chance do we have? Maybe if we lose this vote, that wouldn't be the worst thing.

We can regroup and try again next year. No, I'm tired of waiting. The CSO is becoming more conservative by the year. We have moved away from our grassroots. Our new members barely speak Spanish. We're losing touch with the people we're supposed to be fighting for. And I've had enough of it. Well, what are you planning to do? Resign.

If I have to. You can't just walk away. You built the CSO into what it is. So I'll build something else. There's room for you to come with me. The Lotus too. She and I are on the same page about this. The double doors to the ballroom swing open. Dolores Huerta stands in the doorway and looks over silently to Chavez and shakes her head no. Chavez folds his arms and looks down at

his shoes. We lost the committee vote. That's it then? Really? You're going to quit just like that? I am. It's time to try something new. Are you with me? Chavez lifts his head back up. His disappointment has already been replaced by a look you've seen in his eyes before. One of defiance. Before you can answer, he steps past you into the ballroom, flanked by Huerta. He already

knows you'll say yes. The man who became the heart of the CSO is about to leave and start a new journey. And despite your own doubts and fears, you can't wait to come along for the ride. Gilbert Padilla joined the CSO in 1955 after attending a house meeting with Cesar Chavez. As a former farm laborer himself, Padilla understood firsthand the difficulties faced by workers in the fields and shared Chavez's commitment to their plight. He accepted a position with the Stockton CSO to investigate the housing conditions of local farm workers. There, he worked directly under Chavez's close ally, Dolores Huerta. And then in March 1962, after the meeting in Calexico, Padilla left the CSO,

along with Chavez and Huerta. Together, they would co-found a new organization called the National Farmworkers Association. And within three years, the NFWA would be drawn into a fight that would define its legacy. I'm Tristan Redman, and as a journalist, I've never believed in ghosts. But when I discovered that my wife's great-grandmother was murdered in the house next door to where I grew up, I started wondering about the inexplicable things that happened in my childhood bedroom. When I tried to find out more, I discovered that someone who slept in my room after me, someone I'd never met, was visited by the ghost of a faceless woman. So I started digging into

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The first convention of the National Farm Workers Association was called to order on September 30, 1962, in Fresno, California. About 200 laborers and their families attended. Together, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Gilbert Padilla had worked quickly to build up the membership ranks, employing the same person-to-person, house-to-house method of organizing they had learned from Fred Ross. At the convention that day, members agreed to establish a dues-paying structure and death benefits for workers' families. In a dramatic moment, Chavez unveiled the association's logo, designed by his brother Richard, a stylized black Aztec eagle, a symbol of the Mexican people, against a bold red and white background. A press release announcing the formation of the National Farm Workers Association declared,

The last day of September 1962 may go down in California history as the beginning of a new era for the lowest-paid, worst-abused, and most unjustly treated group of people in our economy, the farmworkers. But despite Chavez's rhetoric, the NFWA was not the first organization to attempt to unionize farmworkers. Three years earlier, in 1959, the powerful AFL-CIO union had formed the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, or AWOC. And they had a rising star of their own, a hard-nosed Filipino labor activist named Larry Itliong. Itliong had immigrated to the United States from the Philippines when he was just 15 years old.

He was part of a wave of unmarried young Filipino men called the Manongs, who soon became a major part of the agricultural labor force on the West Coast. They had few rights as workers and no protection as immigrants, because at the time the Philippines were a U.S. territory. They also endured anti-Asian racial discrimination, and as a result, Filipino workers often found themselves in some of the toughest, most dangerous, and lowest-paid jobs in the western U.S. Just a year after his arrival, It Leong became active in labor organizing, joining a 1930 lettuce picker strike in Washington state.

Later that year, he moved to Alaska to work in a salmon cannery. There, after a gruesome workplace accident, he acquired the nickname Seven Fingers. He also got his first taste of leadership, co-founding the Alaska Cannery Workers Union. During World War II, Itliong served in the Army and gained U.S. citizenship for his service. After the war, he settled in Stockton, California, which had a large population of Filipino farm laborers, and resumed his work as a labor rights activist. In 1948, he helped organize a strike against Stockton asparagus growers, and for the next decade, he traveled up and down the West Coast doing more union work,

especially among Monongs. When the AFL-CIO founded AWOC in 1959, they put Itliong in charge of the new union's growing Filipino membership. Even though AWOC was open to workers of any ethnicity, Filipinos soon accounted for the majority of its members, thanks mainly to Itliong's organizing skills. So it wasn't long before Itliong became AWOC's southern regional director and moved to Delano, California in 1960.

There, he intended to organize the community's large contingent of Filipino grape workers. Meanwhile, further south, AWOC led an unsuccessful strike in 1961 against 18 Imperial Valley lettuce growers, protesting their exploitation of Bracero labor. This strike failed to extract concessions from the growers, but it succeeded in drawing public awareness to the abuses of the Bracero program. In 1964, after mounting public pressure, President Lyndon Johnson's administration finally ended the program. But even with no more Braceros, Itliong and his fellow agricultural workers still struggled to receive fair pay and treatment.

The low wages set by the program remained the benchmark across most of the agricultural industry, and abusive workplace practices like mandating the use of the dreaded short-handled hoe known as the cortito remained commonplace. Itliong believed AWOC had the numbers and strength to take on a larger fight. So in 1965, he called for a strike against seven vineyards in California's Coachella Valley on behalf of underpaid and overworked grape pickers.

Roughly a thousand workers quickly joined the action, making it one of the largest strikes of its kind in state history and giving Itliong the leverage he needed at the bargaining table. Imagine it's May 9th, 1965. You're a grape grower in the Coachella Valley. Today, you're sitting with several other growers in a small, prefabricated office trailer tucked within your large, sprawling vineyard.

Seated at a wooden conference table across from you is Larry Itliong, a short Filipino man with a square jaw and a crew cut. He's here representing the workers that pick your grapes. There are only a few weeks left in the growing season, so you're eager to settle this dispute as quickly as you can. You lean forward across the table. Look, we already gave your people an increase in price per box. What more do you want from us?

Numbers are part of it. But for me and AWOC, it's about dignity, too. What good is a few extra pennies per box if you growers are just going to keep exploiting us in other ways? How so? Well, for example, many of the... Mind if I smoke? It Leong pulls out a half-smoked cigar and a dented brass Zippo lighter from his short-sleeved shirt pocket. You nod and he gives the cigar a few puffs before continuing. Many of the workers are Manongs like me, 50, maybe 60 years old.

Some of them have been picking grapes for 30 years. You rely on that experience. They're fast and efficient. But you've got them working 12 hours a day with no breaks, no clean drinking water. Their bodies are breaking down. We've already made concessions on that front. They get breaks now. But not enough. And what about toilets?

The women workers, they have to huddle around each other for privacy. It's humiliating. Listen, I'm sympathetic. Okay, I come from a family of immigrants myself. I spent 15 years building my vineyard up from nothing. Most of the growers you're protesting have a similar background. We're small operations in the grand scheme of things. Our aim is to treat our workers as fairly as possible. I admire your story. It's the American dream, but let's face it, no one working your fields is ever going to achieve that dream on what you pay them now. We aren't asking for much, just for what's fair.

And we're prepared to keep this up for as long as it takes. Yitliang rises from his seat. Chopping his cigar, he smiles wide. And without a word, he leaves the office. He's obviously feeling supremely confident in his position. You look around at the table at your fellow growers and shake your head. You know that many of them are itching for a long, protracted fight, but you also know that without a swift resolution, your entire harvest could be lost. Like it or not, Larry Itliong's workers are holding all the cards. Lionel Steinberg ran three large vineyards,

making him one of the biggest grape growers in the Coachella Valley. After meeting with Larry Itliong, Steinberg conferred with the six other area growers. Some wanted to fight AWOC every step of the way, but Itliong's strike was timed to coincide with the end of the Coachella Valley growing season. A protracted strike could ruin the grape harvest and wipe out the growers' profits. Steinberg's company was large enough to weather a long strike, but he knew that many others could not. So only a week into the strike, Steinberg and the other growers gave in to the workers' demands. They agreed to improve working conditions and to raise wages by 15 cents to $1.40 an hour,

plus a so-called piece-rate bonus of 25 cents per box of picked grapes. Thanks to Itliong, AWOC had achieved its first major victory. Eager to build on that success, Itliong turned his attention back to his home base of Delano and made plans for his biggest action yet. On September 8, 1965, the membership of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee voted to strike against some of the largest agricultural growers in the country. But this time, AWOC wouldn't be acting alone. To ensure that Delano's many Mexican-American workers also joined the strike, Itliong reached out to another, newer union, the National Farm Workers Association. So on September 16, Mexican Independence Day,

Cesar Chavez addressed an NFWA meeting and called for members to strike in solidarity with AWOC. This joint action would become known as the Delano Grape Strike. It would launch a national movement with Cesar Chavez at its center and become the catalyst for the formation of a new kind of farm workers' union, one powerful enough to take on the biggest growers in California and win. From Wondery, this is Episode 1 of United Farm Workers from American History Tellers. On the next episode, farm workers in Delano, California, band together in a struggle against some of the most powerful

agricultural businesses in the world. A strike and boycott extend beyond America's shores, sparking a movement that captures the world's attention and transforms Cesar Chavez into a new kind of civil rights leader. If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. If you'd like to learn more about the United Farm Workers, we recommend The Crusades of Cesar Chavez, a biography by Miriam Powell, and America's Social Arsonist, Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the 20th Century by Gabriel Thompson. American History Tellers is

hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsey Graham for Airship. Audio editing by Christian Paraga. Sound design by Molly Bach. Music by Lindsey Graham. Voice acting by Randy Ghiaga, Joe Hernandez-Kolsky, and Pilar Uribe. This episode is written by Jamie Robledo. Edited by Dorey Marina. Produced by Alita Rozanski. Our production coordinator is Desi Blaylock. Managing producer, Matt Gant.

Senior producer, Andy Herman. Executive producers are Jenny Lauer-Beckman and Marshall Louis for Wondery. In November 1991, media tycoon Robert Maxwell mysteriously vanished from his luxury yacht in the Canary Islands. But it wasn't just his body that would come to the surface in the days that followed. It soon emerged that Robert's business was on the brink of collapse, and behind his facade of wealth and success was a litany of bad investments, mounting debt, and multi-million dollar fraud. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show Business Movers.

We tell the true stories of business leaders who risked it all, the critical moments that defined their journey, and the ideas that transformed the way we live our lives. In our latest series, a young refugee fleeing the Nazis arrives in Britain determined to make something of his life. Taking the name Robert Maxwell, he builds a publishing and newspaper empire that spans the globe. But ambition eventually curdles into desperation

and Robert's determination to succeed turns into a willingness to do anything to get ahead. Follow Business Movers wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app.