I spent some time on the Farmworker Movement Documentation Project website today, and found it absolutely fascinating. You may wonder why I’m posting a blog about the Farmworker Movement on a genealogy-related website. Well, because it was a very people-oriented movement – a movement that touched nearly all Americans, as well as many Mexicans, in one way or another.
Although I was raised on a farm, it was made up mostly of greenhouses, with our employment levels usually being only a half dozen people at a time. We had a high of 40 employees in 1973 as I remember it. Being in rural Pierce County of Washington State, I can’t remember of hiring what we would classify as migrant workers, although we did hire a lot of hippies to do seasonal work during the early 1970s.
My only very slight personal interaction with the Farmworker Movement was in about 1971. We owned a gardenshop and fruitstand in Puyallup, Washington. The fruitstand business was very busy during the summer and fall months, and I really enjoyed it, long hours and all. When the “Boycott Grapes” portion of the movement was taking place, I decided to attempt to be funny, and posted a sign on our readerboard that said something like, “Support Unorganized Labor – Buy Nonunion Grapes.” Hmmm… Something only a 21-year old kid would do… As luck would have it, some nice lady stopped by, took me aside, and explained that there were tens of thousands of very union-supportive folks driving by my readerboard every day, and they just might not be impressed. Not being entirely stupid, I changed the sign to something else.
The following is an excerpt from an article posted at the April 16, 2014 edition of the utsandiego.com website.
The UC San Diego Library on Wednesday unveiled a large digital archive it acquired that documents the history of the United Farm Workers movement, a treasure trove of materials that officials expect will serve as a valuable research tool for scholars and students.
The archive contains thousands of items, including a timeline of the labor union’s milestones, oral histories and manuscripts, photographs and videos. All of the content can be accessed on the library’s website.
Although the acquisition was finalized late last year, UC San Diego had to spend a few months to move the information to its computer servers.
The collection was compiled by LeRoy Chatfield, 79, a friend of United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez who worked closely with the civil rights activist in the 1960s and ’70s. The university paid Chatfield $50,000 for the project, which he gathered over more than 10 years.
Click Directly to the Farmworker Movement Documentation Project website.
Thanks to ResearchBuzz for the heads-up.
