To March for Others. Lauren Araiza
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farmworkers.29
Indeed, the NFWA welcomed the civil rights activists who came to their aid—regardless of their race—with open arms. Eliseo Medina, a young farmworker who had broken his piggy bank to join the NFWA when the strike began, appreciated the skills that SNCC workers brought to the strike. Growing up, he felt that there was no way to challenge the power held by the growers. He attributed the tactics and bravery of SNCC to changing this attitude. Medina recalled, “I think SNCC people were the only ones that really had any kind of concept about what to do. Particularly in things like marches and demonstrations and all those tools of the civil rights movement, hell, we didn’t have a clue.” Wendy Goepel Brooks acknowledged that at the beginning of the strike very few farmworkers had a practical knowledge of protesting, which resulted in “the blind leading the blind.” She believed SNCC’s greatest contribution was teaching the “not particularly nonviolent” farmworkers about the importance of nonviolence. She recalled that SNCC organizers who joined the strike “came up with new ideas about non-violent methods to use to convey our message about the strike in Delano. They preached non-violence and supported Cesar’s contention that the strike had to remain non-violent or we would all be losers.” NFWA meeting minutes reveal that the farmworkers warmly received SNCC’s lessons in nonviolent resistance. At one meeting, picket captain Julio Hernandez thanked volunteers from SNCC “for classes in non-violence which they have conducted for other staff members.”30
Despite the warm welcome that SNCC workers received from most of the farmworkers, some in the NFWA initially cautioned Chavez against recruiting volunteers from the civil rights movement. Those opposed to the NFWA also resented the presence of the SNCC volunteers, particularly those who were white. Al Espinosa, a Mexican American captain in the Delano police department, told journalist John Gregory Dunne, “I abhor those SNCC Anglos coming in here to teach the Mexicans how to be civilized and nonviolent. My people are by nature nonviolent and we don’t need Anglos to teach us nonviolence.” While Espinosa resented the implication that white SNCC volunteers were instructing the farmworkers in nonviolent resistance, many of the growers used SNCC’s presence to deny that the farmworkers wanted to strike and to blame any such activity on outside agitators. The NFWA actively rebuffed such claims in ways that reaffirmed their connection to the civil rights activists. Chavez told Dunne, “They say the farm workers are happy living the way they are—just like the Southern plantation owner used to say about his Negroes.”31
The involvement of volunteers from SNCC and other progressive organizations also increased the already substantial red-baiting of the union. Southern whites had long accused civil rights organizations and activists of Communism as a way to diminish support for the movement and deflect attention from their complicity in racial discrimination and segregation. Southern business owners also labeled unions as Communist in part to prevent cross-racial unity among black and white workers. Following the same strategies as their southern counterparts, California growers and their allies (including the far right, anticommunist John Birch Society) similarly levied charges of Communism against the NFWA. The alliance with SNCC thus opened the NFWA to further red-baiting because, according to Dunne, “in Delano, such associations were tantamount to taking instructions from Peking.” Nevertheless, Chavez was determined to continue working with these new allies because he believed that the benefits to the NFWA outweighed any negative repercussions. He explained, “If we were nothing but farm workers in the Union now, just Mexican farm workers, we’d only have about 30 percent of all the ideas that we have. There would be no cross-fertilization, no growing. It’s beautiful to work with other groups, other ideas, and other customs. It’s like the wood is laminated.” Chavez’s commitment to multiracial coalition building stemmed from his experience with the CSO, which engaged in numerous coalitions with African American, Jewish, and Asian American groups. CSO leaders believed that such collaboration was necessary—especially in racially and ethnically diverse California—to achieve progress and reduce discrimination.32
The relationship between SNCC and the farmworkers was facilitated by the fact that the NFWA had positioned itself as a movement, rather than as a labor union. As such, the farmworkers felt a kinship with civil rights activists and took inspiration from the milestones of the civil rights movement. For example, a flier advertising a march and rally for the Tulare County rent strike dubbed the region, “California’s Selma.” The NFWA newspaper El Malcriado editorialized about the situation in Tulare County,
In the rent strike once again the farm worker is showing what he learned from the Negro movement. . . . Each day the working people are proving their courage more and more as the Negroes do in their movement. The day in which we the farm workers apply this lesson with the same courage which has been shown in Alabama and Mississippi, this will be the day in which the misfortune of the farm workers will end.
When the NFWA joined AWOC in its strike against Delano grape growers, El Malcriado likened the strike to the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott. El Malcriado elaborated: “This is how a movement begins. This is why the farm workers association is a ‘movement’ more than a ‘union.’ Once a movement begins it is impossible to stop. It will sweep through California and it will not be over until the farm worker has the equality of a living wage and decent treatment.”33
The members of SNCC also related to the NFWA as a movement. SNCC frequently had a contentious relationship with some of the leaders of other major unions. Those in SNCC who did not approve of an alliance with organized labor nonetheless eagerly supported the NFWA on the basis of the farmworkers’ pursuit of racial equality. As Terry Cannon explained, “The core of the connection [between SNCC and the NFWA] was the similarity in treatment of blacks in the South and Latinos in the West and Southwest.” The fact that the union and SNCC combated both economic and racial discrimination enabled the alliance between the two organizations.34
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This feeling of kinship and common purpose prompted SNCC to rally to the side of the NFWA. However, SNCC’s involvement in the Delano strike was initially limited to the activities of the San Francisco staff, as the national organization’s headquarters in Atlanta was at first ignorant of the relationship that had blossomed between it and the NFWA. On September 25, 1965, Muriel Tillinghast in the national SNCC office sent a letter to Chavez explaining the organization and asking him for information on the NFWA. The national SNCC office did not appear to be aware of the strike because Tillinghast did not mention it. In the postscript, she informed him that “SNCC folk in San Francisco are working with Mexican-American [sic] and you might want to contact them . . . Mike Miller heads that office.” While this must have been confusing to Chavez and embarrassing to the San Francisco SNCC staff, who had been working with the NFWA for several months, it is not surprising due to SNCC’s loose structure, which fostered the independence of its offices. However, this loose structure also resulted in disarray and a breakdown in communication within the SNCC staff.35
The Movement was instrumental in eliminating the communication gap between the national and San Francisco SNCC offices. The October 1965 issue covered the strike on the front page and featured an interview with Chavez that was conducted on September 25, making it the first interview with Chavez since the beginning of the strike. The issue also included articles explaining the strike in detail, an account of Terry Cannon’s firsthand experience on the picket line, and a call for donations for the farmworkers. These articles, particularly one on the harassment and physical assault of the striking farmworkers by growers and the police, demonstrated that the NFWA faced many of the same challenges as SNCC organizers in the South. The October 1965 edition of The Movement not only served to increase the national SNCC office’s awareness of the issues confronted by the NFWA, but it also prompted the rest of the organization to support the strike. Despite the fact that the SNCC offices outside San Francisco were slower to come to the aid of the NFWA, they were eventually able to embrace the union’s cause wholeheartedly because the farmworkers’ fight against both racial discrimination and economic oppression fit SNCC’s mission and resembled its experiences.36
With the approval of the national SNCC headquarters, which distributed funding to local projects, overall SNCC participation in the strike accelerated. The organization supplied the NFWA with two-way radios, which were vital to the strike’s effectiveness.