Organized Religion Meets Organized Labor in the Civil Rights Movement in Texas, 1966-1975

Kristin Boeke

The literature on the civil rights movement has failed to recognize many links between the civil rights movement and organized labor, what historian Alan Draper has called an “academic omission.”[i]  Contributing to this breach in the literature has been images of racist union members adamantly opposing the civil rights movement in the urban North.[ii]  As Draper noted, “scholars have belittled and dismissed the assistance labor provided.  Not only does this view deny the substantial contributions labor made to the struggle for civil rights, but it fails to appreciate the price labor paid for its support.”[iii]  This paper analyzes how three strikes by Mexican Americans turned into the very backbone of the civil rights movement in Texas.  Chicanos fought for recognition of their unions, but they simultaneously experienced transformed personal identities whereby formerly quiet, apolitical persons became outspoken activists in the heart of the civil rights movement.  Organized labor supported these efforts, and without their contributions, the civil rights movement in Texas might never have begun.  Surprisingly, organized labor teamed up with organized religion on many occasions to assist the strikers in their pursuit of both civil rights and union recognition.  These brand new coalitions helped change the way that liberal politics took place in Texas during this period, and this paper traces how these changes began in the heart of the labor movement.

The first strike to be discussed is that of the farm workers who went on strike in 1966 to gain bargaining rights and recognition of their union, something that the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 guaranteed to most types of workers--except agricultural ones.  The most pervasive complaint of the farm workers was their relative powerlessness as opposed to the growers.  The strike by workers at the Economy Furniture plant in Austin will then be analyzed, followed by an examination of a strike by those employed at the Farah garment factories in El Paso and San Antonio.  Workers at the Economy Furniture and Farah plants had guaranteed bargaining rights, but the owners still refused to recognize their unions even under court order.  While each of these movements sometimes failed to achieve stated goals such as better wages or contracts, the strikers themselves often experienced profound personal transformations in their sense of identity which awakened their interest in politics.  I will show that, through their participation in the civil rights movement via the labor movement, many Mexican Americans developed new leadership skills and more assertive identities, and some changed so profoundly that they referred to their experiences as identity conversions.  As a result, local people joined the political process for the first time, and their new choices led to a realignment in both religious and political affiliations.

 Farm Workers

The farm worker strike became the first major civil rights event in Texas during the late 1960s.  It galvanized diverse types of supporters throughout the state.  Religious leaders united with secular liberals in support of some of the poorest people in the nation.  In a rare display of unity, organized religion intersected with organized labor and developed into the foundation of the civil rights movement in Texas.  This farm workers’ movement in Texas simply would not have taken place without the activism of organized labor which helped shape the fledgling union from the very beginning.

The farm workers’ union came into existence as the result of several forces, but most notably from organized labor.  The rumblings of change began in 1963 when the Texas AFL-CIO expressed interest in organizing the farm workers in south Texas.  They joined forces with the Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations (PASO) in order “to light a fire that is yet unfired under the people in the Mexican-American segment of the state.  They are trying to find leaders who can find and inspire followers.”[iv]  As Texas AFL-CIO president Hank Brown put it, “What we want to do is to help the poor and suffering people of the [Rio Grande]  valley.  We’re not here to organize him but to tell him of his rights.”[v]  Two years later, Brown reiterated his commitment to poor Texans when he declared, “We will take our stand with the Negro, with the Latin American, or in ten years we’ll not stand at all.”[vi]  In January 1966, organized labor expressed interest in the farm workers again when the Texas AFL-CIO invited Catholic labor activist Father Sherrill Smith to give a lecture at a meeting on organizing in south Texas.  He told them, “If you can’t [organize among the farm workers] then in a way you’re a failure.  You have your own little group, you’re fat, and you don’t give a damn about the others. . . . [Will] all these hi-falutin’ words here be turned into action?”  Apparently he used an “insulting manner,” as journalist Ronnie Dugger put it, “[but] got to these salaried bureaucrats of the working men, and they stood up and applauded with passion.”[vii]  This meeting served as a precursor to the alliance that would develop between organized religion and organized labor.

The lives of the farm workers can best be described as poor and powerless.  The regional director for the War on Poverty in Texas emotionally observed:

Texans would gag on their food if they could witness the kind of poverty I saw on that tour.  It is shameful and stupid that [people] should be hopelessly locked in poverty . . .  There are human beings existing . . . under conditions as indescribably cruel as can be found anywhere in the world. . . . And I’ll never forget the hungry eyes of some of the children.[viii]

Almost every observer of the migrant lifestyle noted the overwhelming hopelessness that trapped its victims.  Rev. Ed Krueger of the Texas Council of Churches put these observations in perspective:

What most people do not understand is the feeling these people have of the strength of the growers . . . on one side, and the feeling of powerlessness on the other. . . . These people are so used to the idea of the laws working against them, that it’s hard to inspire a feeling of confidence in them.[ix]

The fulcrum of power in the farm worker/grower relationship tilted so heavily in the latter’s favor, and the trend away from family farms toward agribusiness merely distorted power relations even further.  Some sympathetic supporters suggested the importance of dialogue between growers and laborers.  The Catholic bishop in the Rio Grande Valley observed, “We . . . teach that when disputes arise between management and labor . . . that every effort must be made to establish a dialogue or conversation . . . so that they may settle their differences in a human, civilized, just and Christian way.”[x]  He also successfully talked one Catholic grower into cooperating with the farm-worker union seeking recognition.[xi]  But usually the “grower” was a larger agribusiness and not a family farm.  In those circumstances, the Catholic bishop offered very different advice:

Given [the situation] of the Rio Grande Valley, there can be no effective dialogue between a large agricultural corporation and . . .  poor Mexican American farm workers.  It is not likely that the worker will be treated as a dignified human being unless he himself has that self-conscious dignity that comes with a sense of at least partial control over his economic destiny.  Power is more important. . . . The absence of such power produces apathy and frustration as well as fatalism.[xii]

Union leaders recognized that the system itself had to change, and spokesperson Antonio Orendain argued, “Now we have learned that it’s not the gringos; it’s the system.  We must go to the corruption of the system.”[xiii]  The union confronted the formidable task of convincing relatively powerless farm workers that together they could fight the odds against them.

The farm workers faced not only horrendous poverty and powerlessness, but they also had to face the indignity of the skewed racial views of the local white community.  Locals deemed Mexican Americans as culturally if not biologically inferior to whites, and so they “naturally” belonged at the lower end of the social ladder.  These views were so widespread in the local community that sometimes even farm workers internalized these racial hierarchies.  As one worker put it,

The growers think we are less than humans, that we don’t want the same things others have . . .  The growers think we are just a lot of animals to be worked and then forgotten. . . . Worst of all our own opinion of ourselves isn’t much better.  We think of ourselves as trapped . . .  We believe what the growers think about us, that we can’t get together long enough to get a good organization going.[xiv]

Trapped at the bottom of the social order, farm workers sometimes had to fight merely to retain a status as full human beings.  Catholic Bishop Patrick Flores noted such a situation when he remarked, “Mexican Americans have been called beasts and jackasses and I find this attitude very much prevalent and alive today.”[xv]  Even during the farm workers’ march, someone felt compelled to bring a burro in order to symbolize the important difference between animals and humans, but that did not prevent an observer from calling them “beasts.”[xvi]  A farm worker complained in a newsletter that “We who are farm workers have all been insulted.  We have seen ourselves treated like cattle . . .  We have known what it is like to be less respected, to be unwanted, to live in a world which does not belong to us.”[xvii]  Even labor leader Walter Reuther remarked, “We [need] to end the hypocritical double standard by which this whole nation has conspired, actively or through ignorance and indifference, to keep farm workers and their families from their full humanity.”[xviii]  A child of farm worker parents, Texas state representative Gonzalo Barrientos recalled his experiences in a similar light:

You don’t forget the shacks you lived in . . . or the sight of your mother and sister doing back-breaking labor . . .  You don’t forget how violently you throw up after too long in the one hundred five degree heat of the sun, and you don’t forget the indignity of being treated like a work mule.[xix]

Another child of farm worker parents, San Antonio’s Archbishop Patrick Flores also remembered the indignity and oppression his family faced: 

I worked in the fields with my family.  With my family I suffered.  My faith sustained me when my countrymen held me down.  My faith sustained me while church people [i.e. growers] oppressed me.  The way I look at the world . . . [has] undoubtedly been shaped by the fortune of my tiny proportion of the world’s population which is questionable.[xx]

The union perceived its role as providing a new vision of how life could be with the help of a union.

The actual formation of the union did not occur until April 1966.  While Cesar Chavez successfully organized the farm workers of California, he sent picket captain Eugene Nelson to Houston to organize the local boycott of Schenley products.  When the boycott ended in April, Nelson took the advice of several PASO leaders in Houston who recommended he attempt to organize among the farm workers of south Texas.  Against Chavez’s advice, Nelson moved to the Rio Grande Valley straight away.[xxi]  Upon arrival, the experienced organizer found the conditions to be “unbelievably terrible.  I had never seen such poverty before in the United States.”[xxii]  Nelson located two leaders of the local PASO group who had invited the Texas AFL-CIO to organize three years prior, and subsequently conducted about six months of educational classes in subjects such as politics and citizenship.  Later that month, Nelson traveled to The University of Texas at Austin to speak before the radical group “Students for a Democratic Society,” and there he announced the formation of the Independent Workers’ Association.[xxiii]  By late May, over 550 farm workers had joined the new union, although no union dues were collected.  Nelson turned to Chavez for financial support, and although he later opposed the strike in Texas, Chavez sent Antonio Orendain and Dolores Huerta along with money.  They sent letters to church leaders and labor groups requesting aid, most of whom eventually offered support.  By the end of May, the union had sponsored several evening rallies and signed up over 700 farm workers.[xxiv]

As the organizers continued to sign up people for the union, the neophyte union called its first strike against three melon farms and five packing sheds on June 1, 1966.  On the following day, growers obtained a restraining order to prevent picketing.[xxv]  But the union sponsored rallies during the evenings, and on that first night an unknown assailant drove through the crowd spraying insecticide.[xxvi]  In spite of such opposition, the union also had numerous supporters.  Organized labor offered the most significant support.  The international representative of the Meat Cutters and Butchers Local 173, AFL-CIO, arrived in the Valley to serve as advisor.  The 1800 union members he represented “gave rousing support” to the farm workers after he told them, “If you say we’ll lend these people our help, then I want you to know you’re dedicating everything you’ve got . . .  We’re not just going into it with food, clothing and financial aid, either.  We’re going to do it politically, economically and any other way we can.”[xxvii]  In addition, over 100 local unions donated financial aid to support the farm workers’ cause.[xxviii] 

Another major supporter turned out to be organized religion.  During the union’s first week, two Catholic priests appeared on the scene who worked directly for the liberal Archbishop Robert Lucey of San Antonio--a long-time supporter of both Mexican American and labor rights since the Depression.[xxix]  On June 29, the archbishop announced his full support for the union and strike, and condemned the “starvation wages” and “ghastly recompense” paid by growers.  He remarked how religion and labor intersected.  “It is the clear and constant teaching of the church that labor must be organized and strikes are sometimes necessary.  This teaching is dangerous heresy to businessmen who are blind to the necessity of labor organization.”[xxx]  Apparently the farm workers in the union likewise paid attention to Catholic teaching.  In a letter to a bishop, union leader Antonio Orendain wrote, “We are trying to form our union in accordance with the teachings of the Church in regard to collective bargaining and a living wage.  The Encyclicals of Popes from Leo XXIII to our present Pope Paul are known to the members of our movement.”[xxxi] 

As with Catholics, Protestants offered their support to the struggle of the farm workers.  Reverend Jack Alford, the southwest field representative for the National Council of Churches, surmised, “[Farm workers] who have been taking it and taking it have learned they do not have to take it anymore.  It is part of a nationwide--a worldwide--awakening on the part of the underprivileged.”[xxxii]  The Texas Council of Churches, an ecumenical Protestant organization, sent several representatives to investigate the working conditions of farm workers.  Their investigation resulted in the formation of the Texas Interfaith Council on Poverty, an ecumenical group with representatives from the Bishop’s Committee for the Spanish Speaking (Catholic), the Texas Council of Churches (Protestant), and the American Jewish Committee.[xxxiii]  The new council consisted of five Catholic, five Protestant and five Jewish representatives.[xxxiv]  This group led to the creation of an organization called the Texas Conference of Churches that contributed substantial funds and support to the civil rights movement throughout Texas.[xxxv]

Not only did labor and religious groups come together in support of the farm workers, but African Americans also joined the movement.  The NAACP noted that “during the past decade the NAACP has focused national attention upon the many injustices suffered by the migratory worker.  The element of racial bias is frequently an important factor . . . in the treatment of migratory farm workers.”[xxxvi]  The NAACP chapter of Houston sent Moses Leroy to march on behalf of their group.  Leroy observed that “the two [racial] groups had never been so united and would work together to help not only poor . . . minorities but poor Anglos as well.”[xxxvii]  The Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Texas displayed a surprising level of support.  Field representative Booker T. Bonner led about forty black youths on a “sympathy” march through the more conservative east Texas.  Bonner wanted “to show Mexicans that Negroes are behind them.”[xxxviii]  Because they marched in a more repressive part of Texas, or perhaps merely because they were black, these young people faced even more harassment than the farm workers.  Although their publicity campaign fared poorly, Bonner deemed the march an important gesture.  He remarked, “Even though we Negroes are not getting much publicity, we could not fail to support the Mexican-Americans in this march because basic human needs do not belong to any one particular skin color.”[xxxix]  At one point, even the SCLC executive director Andrew Young joined the march, along with black state representative Curtis Graves.[xl]   The support of African Americans in Texas pointed to the ways that race also played a central role in the intersection between organized religion and organized labor within the civil rights movement.

While the strikers received unprecedented support from afar, local leaders in the Rio Grande Valley looked upon the strike with disdain, and also usually held racial assumptions that placed the farm workers near the bottom of the social ladder.  The most obvious opponents were the small growers and large corporate farms who refused to recognize the legitimacy of both the union and the strike.  They argued that “there is no strike because [our] workers are not participating in the new workers’ association.”[xli]  Ray Rochester, manager for La Casita Farms, made his position clear: “I have no intention of dealing with those union people.  Our people are not interested in joining any union and I am certainly not going to negotiate with the union and force my employees to join it.”[xlii]  Because they worked so close to the Mexican border, his pool of available “strikebreakers” was bottomless.  Organized religion seemed to pose a bigger threat to the grower because it often held more egalitarian racial assumptions.  In a statement by local growers, they complained that “an undue measure of respectability has been given to this group of [outside] labor agitators by the clergy.”[xliii]  Willis Deines, executive-secretary of the Texas Citrus and Vegetable Growers Association, argued in essence that organized religion should keep politics and religion separate.  He commented, “I’ve always felt that . . . church groups best leave the problems to those directly involved.  This isn’t something new.  Church people have been busying themselves with matters such as this for years.”[xliv]  Indeed, as liberal religious groups began joining coalitions, they maintained that religion and politics were inextricably linked.   

Other observers believed the mixture of religion and politics to be problematic.  In a letter to the editor of a local newspaper in the Rio Grande Valley, De Witt Morgan argued that the church should not sponsor political causes “because there can never be a consensus of the varied opinions of the large number of clergy . . . who represented many different . . . backgrounds.”[xlv]  J.W. Gallagher expressed his confusion over the role of the clergy in secular affairs.  He commented, “I was taught to believe popes, bishops, nuns and priests were supposed, in their faith, to save souls from hell, instead of creating disturbances over rights between farmers . . . and their laborers.”[xlvi]  Some middle-class Mexican American Catholics in Floresville agreed.  They wrote a letter to the local newspaper that printed it on the front page.  They wrote:

In regard to ‘the marchers from the valley,’ . . . we did not feel ‘the marchers’ method to obtain better living conditions is in keeping with the Christian spirit. . . . We feel if they would put forth the same amount of effort to equipping their minds to assume responsibility in connection with their work, they would receive much more than they ask for.[xlvii]

Another middle-class church issued a much stronger statement.  The Board of the First Methodist Church of Rio Grande City wanted to “go on record as being against the food and money caravan that is being planned to aid the so-called strikers.  We appeal to you please . . . let justice prevail, before contributing to an evil cause that has disguised itself with the shield of righteousness, love and concern for the poor.”  Although they lived in one of the poorest areas of the nation, the Board also declared that “There are no starving or destitute people in Rio Grande City.  If there are such persons our local church has been unable to find them.”[xlviii]  These opponents of religious-based politics opposed contemporary changes taking place within the church as well.  In particular, Catholicism’s Second Vatican Council specifically called upon Catholics to bring social justice to the world in the form of political activism.  The American church in general split along conservative/liberal lines at that time over these very types of conflicts.

Other opponents accused the marchers of harboring dangerous Communists.  Rex Westerfield of the John Birch Society predictably claimed that the strike was being led by “revolutionaries” with funds from the Communist party.[xlix]  But even the Jaycees of New Braunfels expressed their opposition to the marchers because they believed the strikers had been duped by Communists.[l]  On the defensive, Roy Evans of the Texas AFL-CIO argued, “We don’t tolerate Communists in the labor movement because they don’t believe in free trade unionism.”[li]  Eugene Nelson dismissed such accusations as harmless.  He declared, “Oh-bah! Every labor organizer worth his salt since 1917 has been accused of being a Communist at one time or another.”[lii]  But even a more credible source called into question the loyalty of the marchers.  A Starr County grand jury issued a statement declaring the marchers to be “unlawful and unAmerican” and “abusive of rights and freedom granted them as citizens.”  They wrote, “The means as are practiced by the union group in Starr County are directly contrary to everything we know in our American and lawful way of life.”[liii]  These strong words were echoed by the governor of California, Ronald Reagan, who argued that a similar strike led by Chavez in California was “immoral” and “attempted blackmail.”[liv]

In order to boost its public image, the strike leaders arranged a short religious pilgrimage for the strikers, not unlike the one Chavez led in the heart of California.  The destination was the nearby Shrine of Our Lady of the Lake in San Juan, a site venerated by many Mexican Americans.  Over one hundred farm workers participated in the march and heard the Catholic bishop give a mass at the shrine.[lv]  One striker carried a large picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe that symbolized the “Day of Liberation” when Christ suffered, died and rose again.  In keeping with the ecumenical spirit, Father Antonio Gonzales carried a star of David as requested by Rabbi Moshe Cahana of Houston.  As to the purpose of the march, one scholar noted similarities with Chavez’s march.  “The California pilgrimage had been a march of faith, a commitment to the cause of the strike and a march of penitence to purify the strikers of any baser motivations.”[lvi]  At this point, the immediate goal was to publicize the importance of the strike.

The purpose of the march underwent a metamorphosis when the marchers arrived at the shrine.  Labor leader Eugene Nelson appointed two march leaders, Catholic priest Antonio Gonzales and Baptist minister James Navarro, both from Houston.  As Navarro put it, “This march was under Divine guidance, because how else could a Catholic priest and a Baptist minister get together?”[lvii]  He might also have asked how organized religion got together with organized labor.  The march leaders met with Eugene Nelson to discuss plans to continue the march to Austin.  Nelson opposed the continuation because he feared it would use funds needed for the strike.  At the prompting of the Texas AFL-CIO,  the two ministers wanted to change the purpose of the march from publicizing the local strike to requesting a statewide minimum wage of $1.25/hour.[lviii]  In effect, the ministers won the argument, and here the lines of class intersected with organized religion and organized labor.  As one reporter remarked,

the march arose from a strike for a union but has evolved into a campaign for a political objective . . .  ‘Viva la huelga’ . . . was the battlecry of the strikers . . . [until] the more politic and more middle-class clergymen . . . evolved into their central roles. . . . In the march to the Capitol, the strike was heard of less and less, the minimum wage more and more.”[lix]

The ministers planned to arrive at the state capitol symbolically on Labor Day, and planned to ask the governor to convene a special session of the legislature to pass a minimum wage.  Gradually, the strikers came to embrace the new goal of the minimum wage as time went on.  Father William Killian observed, “The strikers have made an enormous jump in awareness. . . . Formerly there was a hopelessness about the huelga . . . but they’re more aware now that others care about their strike.”[lx]  The march continued north from San Juan toward Austin, no longer in mere support for the strike, but for the more “middle-class” goal of a statewide minimum wage. 

On June 8, at the urging of Cesar Chavez, the union voted to affiliate with the National Farm Workers Association of Delano, California, and became the NFWA-AWOC Local 2, AFL-CIO.[lxi]  Later, the national AFL-CIO granted them an international charter.  This success delighted Eugene Nelson who predicted “that [the governor] will meet us on Labor Day at the state capitol now that we’re part of the mainstream of the American labor movement.”[lxii]  Participants in the march remained hopeful not only about the strike but the possibility of a statewide minimum wage.  Farm worker Valdemar Garza suggested that “the governor ought to receive us in a very special way.  He has to invite us into his office, and he’s gonna give us what we are asking for.  If he doesn’t, I know it’s [going to] be really an election.”  Farm worker Elvira Lopez recalled, “I never [went] to school because my parents were very poor.  I had to work to make money. . . . we want to be paid the minimum wages of the federal law.”  The previous federal minimum wage law specifically had excluded farm workers as a class.  Julia Ana Ramirez expressed her frustration.  “We were trying to get hope from the governor to change his course. . . . We waited so long and gave them a chance, and still nothing has happened.”[lxiii]  The eight Catholic bishops of Texas sent a letter to the governor urging him to meet the marchers in Austin.  Archbishop Lucey further blurred the lines between religion and labor by declaring that “the civil rights and minimum wage laws are moral laws.”[lxiv]  Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, Lucey secretly had urged the governor at least to meet with the marchers somewhere along the route, especially since the governor planned to leave Austin in order to avoid them when they arrived.[lxv] 

Instead of meeting the marchers in Austin on Labor Day, Connally surprised nearly everybody by meeting them in New Braunfels, about five days prior to their arrival in Austin.  When Connally approached the crowd in person, people yelled cheers of joy while he greeted them and shook many hands.[lxvi]  Apparently they believed his arrival meant he might convene a special session of the legislature to pass a minimum wage after all.  But accompanying him was House Speaker Ben Barnes who grimly noted, “We [arrived early] to show them that a march is not the correct way to get things done.”[lxvii]  When the crowd realized that the governor’s arrival actually symbolized his opposition to the march, many began taunting and yelling at him.  Needless to say, the “confrontation” crushed the hopes of many marchers.  All Eugene Nelson could say was that “this was a maneuver to try and take the wind out of our sails and try to cut down on our crowd on Labor Day in Austin.”  Even Father Sherrill Smith drew pessimistic conclusions.  “What Connally did really stirred up the Mexican Americans.  It was a slap on the hand, a Great White Father-type of thing.  . . . it backfired [because] they have not squelched [our] courage.”[lxviii]  The only good news they heard was that a federal minimum wage of $1.00/hour had been approved by Congress and for the first time did not exclude farm workers as a class.

In spite of the dip in morale, the march continued on toward Austin.  In most cities supportive onlookers met them.  In Edinburg, mayor Al Ramirez even left his hospital bed to greet them.[lxix]  In Falfurrias, they held a mass at the Catholic Knights of Columbus Hall.  In Kingsville, over 200 students and faculty from Texas A&I University joined the march, and an anonymous source donated a marching burro dubbed “$1.25.”  In Robstown, over 150 Mexican Americans joined the march carrying placards with supportive messages.  In the larger city of Corpus Christi, numerous groups joined together including the American G.I. Forum, over 30 students from Texas A&M University, and several local unions.  Just as in other cities, the lines of religion and labor crossed when Bishop Thomas Drury gave a mass, and over 800 people attended an evening rally.[lxx]  In San Antonio, Archbishop Lucey gave a mass at the San Fernando Cathedral for the farm workers who then led a vigil to the Alamo with over 1000 people holding candles.[lxxi]  But the prize event took place in Austin on Labor Day when 2000 people met the marchers for breakfast at the Catholic St. Edward’s University, followed by a march downtown of 6500 people.[lxxii]  It seemed as if every liberal politician in Austin made an appearance at the rally with literally dozens of people speaking to the crowd.

While the rally and march had been a resounding success, the public fanfare faded while the small union continued its strike, even though the harvest season ended.  In one sense, the strike failed because the union failed to win any contracts with the growers nor did the legislature pass a minimum wage.  But Nelson pointed out that some growers voluntarily raised their wages from $0.85/hour to $1.00/hour.  Pointing to a new sense of identity, he also argued that success could be found in the fact that the “Tejanos no longer tip their hats to the gabachos.”[lxxiii]  A feeling of equality began to embolden their ranks.  One scholar pointed to another success.  “[The march] forever ended the myth that Mexican-Americans were ‘happy, contented and satisfied’ with second-class citizenship and a life of poverty.”[lxxiv]  These changes in personal identity eventually led to more tangible changes in other areas of life.  Participants in the strike and even the marches were politically awakened and began to lead very different lives.  According to local accounts, the strike literally started a Chicano movement.  One journalist wrote, “In the Rio Grande Valley there has in the past few years been an awakening, a stirring within the cocoon.  The . . . migrant workers are . . . starting to assert a sense of their own worth and dignity.  Their passive outlook on life is turning to activism.”[lxxv]  Others used the metaphor of a cocoon coming to life.  Another newspaper noted that over 40,000 farm workers “are beginning to wake up to the possibilities of activism and it’s changing their passive outlook on life.”[lxxvi]  Instead of business as usual, one journalist noted that “something new is stirring in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.  The farm worker strike . . . set off ripples of excitement. . . . The strike is also having a more subtle effect.  The Valley workers consider the Starr strikers . . . men of courage for defying the growers there.  They are proud of them.”[lxxvii]

To summarize, the Texas farm workers’ strike of 1966 served a number of functions with respect to the Texas civil rights movement, and it demonstrated the powerful role of identity throughout the struggle.  The strike brought together people from diverse backgrounds, including Chicanos, African Americans, students, liberal clergy, labor leaders and liberal Democrats.  Previously, certain issues served to separate these groups, who would later work in such close coalition during the 1970s.  But during the late 1960s, a realignment took place that put liberal Protestants, post-conciliar Catholics and Reform Jews in closer coalition with each other than between liberals and conservatives within any single denomination.  The clergy in Texas formed these ecumenical alliances for the first time during this farm worker strike in 1966, and sometimes worked closely with liberal interracial coalitions as well.  The strike also increased the political expectations of Mexican Americans who rarely participated in the electoral process.   Indeed, their effort to improve their sense of personal identity served as the springboard to political activism that had long been absent in this part of Texas.

Economy Furniture Strike

Labor and religion also intersected in the Economy Furniture strike that took place during the late 1960s in Austin.  Although workers in the furniture  industry had guaranteed bargaining rights from the National Labor Relations Act, the plant’s owner refused to recognize the union as bargaining agent.  When workers voted to go out on strike, they initiated the longest strike in Texas history which lasted over three years.  During that time, the Mexican American community underwent dramatic changes: new leaders emerged, diverse peoples united, lives were transformed, and a political movement of Mexican Americans began that led to further changes in the community.  Once again, organized religion cross-pollinated with organized labor in the heart of the civil rights movement and a simple drive for unionization led to much broader changes.  As one worker put it, “[Our strike] has become part of a greater struggle which will enable Chicanos to take their place among the free peoples of the world.”[lxxviii]  Significant changes took place for both individuals and the larger community.

In 1958, workers at the plant considered forming a union, but when owner Milton Smith promised to make numerous changes if they withheld, the workers agreed.  But Smith never made the promised changes, so ten years later, when a representative from the Upholsterers International Union contacted employees in February 1968, they seemed ready for change.[lxxix]  Frank Ramirez recalled, “[In 1958,] We didn’t go through [unionization] because the company talked us out of getting organized; they promised a lot of stuff . . . but the man . . . never came across with that.  But this time, all these old employees got together and we . . . told [the new employees] about what we knew about the last time.”[lxxx]  They formed an organizing committee composed of 26 workers and began meeting in homes on a weekly basis.[lxxxi]  For many, the entire unionization process was a novel experience.  As Felis Aleman put it,

At the time when the workers first started organizing, I really didn’t know anything about unions.  What I did know, however, was that anything would be better than the way we had it, working in those conditions.  When our coworkers started talking about a union and what could be accomplished, they gave us a new prospect of life.[lxxxii]

In March 1968, the committee registered members for the union and passed a petition on whether people wanted union representation.  On the defensive, the company held a series of mandatory meetings reiterating the supreme value of loyalty to the “family” atmosphere at Economy Furniture and the dangers of unionization.  Workers received fliers with their paychecks containing similar warnings.[lxxxiii] 

The National Labor Relations Board scheduled an official vote for May 17, 1968, and the Smiths felt so confident of victory that they actually supported the election.[lxxxiv]  Just prior to the vote, the union sponsored its first mass meeting in order to educate workers about the unionization process.  Lilia Bonilla noted, “Up until that time, most of us didn’t think about how things could be different . . .  we [began] looking forward to having a better life for ourselves and our families.”[lxxxv]  The mass meetings were held in a Catholic church, yet some workers worried about the “morality” of demanding higher wages.  Benina Castellanos recalled, “There were so many negative things we heard about unions.  But I think that when some of the Hispanic workers saw the priests who[m] we trusted and respected were in favor of the union, they felt like they were doing the right thing by voting for the union.”[lxxxvi]  Religion and labor intersected as the director of the Bishop’s Committee for the Spanish Speaking also wrote a letter to the community explicitly detailing his support.[lxxxvii]  The National Labor Relations Board hosted the election on May 17, 1968, and workers voted in favor of unionization by 252 to 83.  But Milton Smith filed an objection with the NLRB, alleging that employees had been intimidated by a “pre-election propaganda campaign” including “intimidatory speeches” by representatives of the Catholic church who “deceive[d] the Company’s uneducated, Catholic, Mexican-American employees.”[lxxxviii]  Smith continued to file appeals in order to delay the inevitable recognition of the union as long as possible.

The working conditions that served as the catalyst for the strike seemed fairly standard: low wages, no workers’ compensation program, no promotion system, toxic materials in areas with poor ventilation, no scheduled raises, and a poor vacation program.  But as historian Elizabeth Riley put it, “the most onerous aspect of their work at Economy Furniture was the piece-rate system.”[lxxxix]  While it afforded some measure of control to the worker, the management retained the right to change the rate of pay at any time, particularly when someone began earning significant wages for a faster rate of production.[xc]  The burden of responsibility for counting one’s output rested with the worker, and apparently management often miscalculated the totals in paychecks, again placing the burden on the worker to prove any mistakes.  Ramon Samilpa complained, “Almost every day I’d have to show them where they had made a mistake on my pay.  A lot of the others wouldn’t speak up.  Maybe they were too timid.”[xci]  Employees also complained of harassment and even spying by management.  Once the strike began, the company posted guards in the restrooms to listen for union information.  The worst of the working conditions was the lack of a grievance policy.  A supervisor could reprimand or fire an employee who then had no recourse for appeal.  Older employees with seniority often received the same pay as new employees and could not complain about it.  These conditions created an atmosphere of insecurity because an outcome often depended on the arbitrary decision of the management who never followed set guidelines.

Another complaint had to do with the paternalistic racial attitudes of the management.  Only one Mexican American had ever been promoted to foreman, yet Alex Calderon still received differential treatment from Anglo colleagues.  One example is the $75 bonus he received compared to the $500 bonuses received by Anglo foremen.  Smith made matters worse when he laughed, “Well, you didn’t expect to get five hundred dollars, did you?”[xcii]  To Calderon, the comment stung worse than the bonus, and he later retorted, “they really did not give Hispanics a chance.  I respected my supervisor, but he could have respected me, too.”[xciii]  Milton Smith’s wife, Helen Smith, interrogated Calderon about possible sympathies for the union, and he quipped, “They were always suspecting me.  And she questioned me about it, and I didn’t like that.”[xciv]  The company later fired Calderon for “low output” despite record levels within his department.[xcv]  Ramon Samilpa missed work when his daughter died.  To add insult to injury, the following day he received a letter from Helen Smith.  He recalled, “She scolded me just like a child. . . . she [eventually] said she was sorry.  But you know, it was just as if I slapped you, and then said I was sorry.  It was done.”[xcvi] 

The most blatant paternalism could be found in the Smiths’ assumption that the workers really did not want unionization, and even when confronted with evidence to the contrary, they chalked it up to Hispanic equivocation.  When the workers successfully voted for unionization, Smith filed an objection with the NLRB that blamed a supposedly erroneous outcome on the propaganda of a Catholic priest whom he dubbed a “stupid, self-styled, emancipator of Mexican Americans.”[xcvii]  Radical supporters at the University of Texas put it this way:

In his brief, [Smith] charged that the people were ‘ignorant, Catholic Mexican-Americans,’ and therefore were being misled by the Catholic Church and the Upholsterers’ union into something he was quite sure they did not want.  It seems as though he wasn’t able to give up the patronizing relationship he had maintained with his employees (emphasis in the original).[xcviii]

In another incident,  a loose wire electrocuted Johnny Zunia after a thunderstorm, and he died instantly.  Although working on company property, the Smiths assumed no responsibility for the death, and the company did not have a workers’ compensation program.  The Smiths outraged Zunia’s family even further with another act of paternalism.  Zunia’s sister recalled:

Mr. Smith didn’t want to do nothing [sic].  You know what they offered to do?  They wanted to give [the widow] some furniture for her house!  They wanted to pay for Johnny’s life with a few pieces of furniture! . . . They tried to get away with doing nothing at all.  That shows how greedy they were and how little they cared for their workers.[xcix]

Zunia’s family later won a moderate settlement in a lawsuit.  When Helen Smith passed out final paychecks, she set up a booth outside the plant because she vowed never to allow the strikers back on company property.  Manuel Villanueva remembered, “She told us that she would never, ever allow us back inside the plant. [She] was determined she would never settle with the strikers.  She just couldn’t see a bunch of Hispanics dictating anything to her.  She seemed to think she was above us.”[c]  The booth represented how racial and class views played a central role in the labor dispute.

Throughout the campaign, the strikers challenged such acts of paternalism--often to the surprise of the Smiths.  Strike leader Lencho Hernandez pointed out that injury to the strikers’ identity may have hurt even worse than other grievances.  He commented, “We are not wetbacks, ‘meskins,’ or slaves, but human beings.  Mr. Smith has demonstrated in the past that he can be a sensitive man, but now we ask that he be sensitive to his own employees.”[ci]  Another commentator wrote, “The Huelgistas have demonstrated . . . their refusal to give up their god-given rights of dignity and self-respect.”[cii]  Although the workers fought for specific changes in the workplace, they maintained that their personal dignity mattered above all else.

An element of irony entered the negotiations because the Smiths had a reputation as civic-minded leaders of the local community.  Not only did they frequent political events and charitable fund-raisers, but Milton Smith also served as the president of the Texas Manufacturers’ Association and as a director of Capitol National Bank in Austin.  In May 1969, in the middle of the strike, the National Council of the B’nai B’rith honored Smith with its National Humanitarian Award that “was intended to honor a person or persons who had demonstrated exceptional concern for others, and who had made a significant contribution to serve the needs of those less fortunate.  The recipient . . . was supposedly one who’s kindness extended not only to those in the Jewish community, but indeed to all of humanity.”[ciii]  Those hobbling along the poverty of the picket line protested vigorously to B’nai B’rith, but to no avail.  Their reticence was possibly related to the fact that Smith earlier had made a contribution of $125,000 to B’nai B’rith.  At the award banquet, over one hundred strikers protested with handbills detailing Smith’s “unhumanitarian” activities at his plant.[civ]

Nevertheless, the strikers enjoyed extensive support from the local community.  While the farm workers had received support from organized labor, the furniture workers received substantial support from organized religion.  In essence, the church as an institution explicitly legitimated the entire unionization process.  Just before the election, the organizing committee distributed a leaflet which asked:

Right or Wrong?  Is a union a good thing for working people . . . ?  This is a question that causes confusion for some people.  They read bitter things about unions in their newspapers.  They hear the boss talk badly about unions. . . . When we seek the truth we often turn to what our religion teaches and what our church says because we have faith that the word of the church will be based on an interest in our well-being, not the selfish interests of a very few.[cv]

The memo went on to detail the position of Catholicism, Protestantism and Judaism.  Catholic bishops noted, “Labor . . . must be free to bargain collectively through its own chosen representatives.”  The Protestant National Council of Churches observed, “Not only has labor a right to organize, but also it is socially desirable that it do so because of the need for collective action in the  maintenance of standards of living.”  The memo quoted the Central Conference of American Jewish Rabbis who argued, “Workers have the same inalienable right to . . . bargain collectively with their employers to such honorable means as they may choose.”[cvi]  The memo primarily represented organizations in the liberal wing of their religion or denomination.

As mentioned before, the strikers received another vote of confidence when the local director of the Catholic Bishop’s Committee for the Spanish Speaking wrote them a letter of support.  He shared that in his personal opinion, “unionizing is legitimate, moral and could not be considered wrong.”[cvii]  Four other Catholic priests became involved in the daily activities of the workers by attending demonstrations, hosting meetings, and through Sunday sermons.  Three of the priests belonged to a national support group for Chicano priests called PADRES.[cviii]  This organization invited strike leader Lencho Hernandez to speak at their national convention and it became involved in the civil rights movement in Texas in a number of settings.[cix]  Religion and labor also intersected when these priests led a weekly march from the state Capitol to the plush Smith residence every Friday night for over two years.  As Riley put it,

These processions were intended as a means by which churches of different denominations could unite in a display of support for the strikers.  The marches were also meant to provide an opportunity for community members who were not directly connected to Economy Furniture to exhibit their support for their Chicano sisters and brothers on strike.[cx]

After the ruling of the Fifth District Court of Appeals in their favor, the strikers intensified public pressure on the company to negotiate by hosting the largest ecumenical prayer vigil with over 200 participants.  Each carried a candle and walked in silence, but they did not recognize irony in the fact that they formed the symbol of a cross on the lawn of a Jewish family.[cxi]  Riley commented on the importance of the support of organized religion:

The organizing workers were able to find crucial support from within their Chicano community.  This occurred first at the parish level.  Roman Catholic priests from East Austin parishes played an important role in bolstering the cause of the furniture workers.  Not only did local priests give the drive for unionization a decidedly moral dimension, the parishes of the barrio also served as the vessels through which Chicano workers made their situation known to the wider community.  The local church was an effective vehicle for building community support.[cxii]

The strikers also received momentous support from young people in the barrios and the university.  Among the most ardent supporters were student groups at the nearby University of Texas.  White radicals from Students for a Democratic Society and those who published a weekly underground newspaper called the Rag formed “Students for Strikers,” a sympathetic group of white radicals who volunteered to man the picket lines for one week while the strikers took a break.  When the fall semester began, over fifty students expressed interest in the group.[cxiii]  Along with the picket lines, they also held several fund-raising dances that were attended by diverse crowds of strikers, supporters and students.  As their underground newspaper put it, the group formed “to help the workers survive Milton Smith’s humanitarianism.”[cxiv]  These SDS members learned much from their elders in the strike, particularly about themselves.  Pat Cuney recalled what she learned while on the picket line: 

When we went out the first time [to picket], white, middle-class, student revolutionaries, we thought we pretty well understood about class struggle, racism, and all that stuff.  We soon found out that we really didn’t.  What we learned was that consistent daily struggle . . . takes courage and dedication.  We learned a lot about racism too--how it exploits the Chicano, how it oppresses the white. . . . People coming together around a central issue, but almost unable to communicate because of acculturated distrust, cultural misunderstandings--and yet finally getting it together because we all cared enough to struggle.[cxv]

Several individual students also donated quite a bit of their time.  For instance, Brenda Silvas walked the picket line on a regular basis, wrote articles about the strike for the underground campus newspaper, and became the union’s secretary-bookkeeper.  She was also arrested at a boycott demonstration in Victoria, Texas.[cxvi]  The union appointed another University of Texas student, Janet Newton, as the public information coordinator and her duties included designing fliers, establishing a speaker’s bureau, coordinating volunteers, and writing speeches, press releases, and a monthly newsletter.  She devoted so much time, as she recalled, “I pretty much lived [at the Strike Headquarters].”[cxvii]  The importance of the role of students during the strike cannot be overstated.  As Riley put it,

The strikers’ acceptance of the service and support of the university students marked an important “opening” for the Chicano Huelga . . . [because] the Austin Chicano Huelga was no longer a labor struggle that was exclusively the concern of the Mexican American community.  The alliance between the huelgistas and the University of Texas students broadened the circle of support from the furniture strike, led to heightened awareness of the strikers plight among the largely Anglo university population, and brought about an end to the ethnic isolation that had characterized the Chicano Huelga to that point.[cxviii]

Through their participation, the white university students helped transform the labor strike into an interracial civil rights movement.

Many workers later recalled how significantly their lives had changed and how close they had grown with each other as a result of their participation in the three-year strike.  As one worker put it, “[the strike was] something that brought us together in a really incredible way. [It was] an experience that changed us all.”[cxix]  Riley summed up their participation this way: “when the Chicanos put down their signs, they were not the same individuals who had first picked them up in November of 1968; they had changed, and their community had changed.  The lessons . . . learned from their experience in the Austin Chicano Huelga were lessons that they will carry with them always.”[cxx]  Formerly apolitical Mexican Americans developed new political skills as a result of their participation in the strike and emerged as new leaders in the Austin community.  As Riley put it, “Indeed, the men and women of Economy Furniture were never the same after the Chicano Huelga.  The striking workers who struggled through the long labor battle were fundamentally and irrevocably changed by the experience.  The huelgistas had become an empowered, politicized group of people.”[cxxi]  In short, participation in the strike led to a transformation in their personal identities, and inspired many to become involved in the political process for the first time.  They not only asserted their rights as American workers, but they became the new generation of Mexican American leaders, and many strikers became involved in other local reform efforts in education, religion and politics.

Farah Strike

A third Mexican American strike took place in El Paso at the Farah garment factories where women composed 80% of the work force.  These workers had guaranteed bargaining rights as far as the NLRB was concerned, but the factory’s owner refused to acknowledge the union.  The recalcitrance of Willie Farah served only to inspire the workers to seek both union recognition and national support for a boycott of his products.  Diverse onlookers declared their support for the workers which enabled a very quiet Mexican American community to lead a well-publicized boycott and strike that permanently changed their lives and their community. 

The Farah plant was the largest manufacturer of men’s and boys’ pants in the United States, and it represented the scores of factories throughout the Southwest that did not have union representation.[cxxii]  As one scholar put it, the industrialists of the Southwest “kn[e]w that the Farah strike is the opening round in upcoming union drives throughout the southwest.”[cxxiii]  Thus, more was at stake than unionization of a single factory.  Rex Hardesty argued that the strike was unusual because the boycott “is being backed . . . by the entire American labor movement.  It includes the overtones of the changing South.”[cxxiv]  Though resistant to unionization up to that point, observers concluded that the labor movement had begun to penetrate the Southwest, and Farah’s conflict with labor captured widespread attention.

The Farah company started as a small operation but expanded rapidly during World War II.  Apparently employees perceived owner James Farah as a kind boss who treated his employees generously, including Christmas bonuses, free turkeys and a grand Christmas party.[cxxv]  Government contracts during World War II caused rapid expansion as in other industries throughout the sunbelt, and Farah undercut the contracts of northern manufacturers who had to pay higher wages to a unionized workforce.[cxxvi]  But the results of such expansion came at a price.  As one scholar put it,

The booming growth, new capital investment, and increased planning and control of marketing resulted in major changes within the plant, including increased pressure on workers to produce more, higher quotas, and greater impersonality on the job. . . . Many workers felt that the expansion ruined what had been warm relations between management and employees.[cxxvii]

Upon Farah’s death in 1964, his son Willie Farah took the helm of operations, but proved to be what one employee characterized as “a classic patron.”[cxxviii]  As an appreciative immigrant himself, Willie Farah touted a pro-American philosophy that rivaled even the most patriotic.  He labeled strikers as “Communists” and “filfth,” fired “longhairs” for refusing to cut their hair, and vehemently opposed using any product that was not American made.  Reportedly he even refused to play tennis with Dunlop tennis balls because they were made in England.[cxxix]  According to Willie Farah, “the strike [was] simple, a mere matter of right versus wrong.”[cxxx]  He felt justified in vehemently opposing all union activity.

Yet Farah offered some benefits.  He paid ten cents above the minimum wage, provided free coffee and donuts, and even sent transportation to pick up workers in the morning.  While Farah may have patted himself on the back for such perks, some of his employees held a different interpretation.  As Irene Chavez bluntly put it, “Getting free coffee and rolls is not a ‘benefit’ but a humiliation and an insult to the workers’ dignity.”[cxxxi]  The most pervasive complaint among employees centered precisely on this type of perceived paternalism.  As Bishop Sidney Metzger of El Paso noted, “The Mexican Americans have a legitimate pride and are very conscious of their ‘dignidad.’  And they consider many of Farah’s practices an insult to their ‘dignidad.’”[cxxxii] One journalist noted that “although money is cited again and again as the motivating factor in the walkout, one finds the strikers returning most often to questions of dignidad.”[cxxxiii]  But employees also had complaints about other policies.  Farah exchanged amenable employee relations for cut-throat production rates.  Bishop Metzger, who had conducted a thorough investigation of the situation, even noted, “Workers have said that they are treated as production machines and not as human beings.”  Female employees perceived his production quotas as so high that they could not afford to take a restroom break, and this actually led to a higher rate of kidney infections among the women.[cxxxiv]  Another familiar complaint was the lack of grievance procedures.  One journalist noted that “the people complain about not having any redress at all.  They can’t complain to a supervisor or even a colleague without reprisal.  It is a disgrace to their dignity.”[cxxxv]  The arbitrary nature of many decisions also irked some employees.  Management fired the elderly to prevent the collection of pension benefits; paid the lowest wages to those with the most seniority; fired the injured, anyone who questioned policies, those who talked, took too long in the restroom, or sometimes if a woman refused to date an Anglo supervisor.[cxxxvi]  Armando Telles bleakly commented on using the restroom, “Perhaps it is your period, you have to mess with the machine . . . or perhaps it is diarrhea you have.  But it is embarrassing to say this to the supervisor.”[cxxxvii]  Objecting or complaining about it did no good, because as one scholar noted, “Workers who challenged arbitrary decisions were dismissed on the spot.”[cxxxviii]  Other complaints included no maternity leave, a forced “savings” plan of $5/week that provided no interest yet apparently provided a personal loan to Farah, and the humiliation of constant surveillance even in the restrooms, where supervisors inquired into the reasons for “lengthy” visits.[cxxxix]

In spite of such objectionable working conditions, employees may have endured them quietly, but felt particularly enraged by one incident.  On March 26, 1972, the company fired several workers for walking out.  When several came from the factory in San Antonio to attend a union rally in El Paso, they insulted Willie Farah even further by returning late to work on Monday morning.  When these San Antonians were fired, several workers in El Paso objected and were also fired.  This scenario led to a larger walkout of almost 500 people.[cxl]  The union leaders believed that the walkout was premature and suggested the workers return to work, but they refused.[cxli]  Prior to this time, the union had passed a petition in order to schedule a vote for union recognition, and Farah became so convinced the election would fail that he actually welcomed it.  The union won the vote on October 14, 1970.

Many of the workers had very little knowledge of the unionization process.  One scholar pointed out that “many workers believed what Willie Farah said about labor unions taking their money and benefits.”[cxlii]  The union initiated an educational campaign to teach workers about unionization.  One scholar observed, “The first union meetings in people’s homes were a completely new experience.  ‘Oh, I did like them,’ a striker reminisced.  ‘There was a lot of . . . talking about new things, about the union. And especially, I felt that somebody was talking for us.’”[cxliii] 

The decision to walkout had a profound effect upon many of the women.  The walkout even surprised the company because, as one observer noted, “women who had worked docilely at their machines for years, women who had been reduced to tears by a supervisor’s reprimand, women who had never openly spoken a word in favor of the union, suddenly began to speak up.”[cxliv]  Some of the women spoke up in the face of tremendous fear.  Virgie Delgado called other workers to walkout with her.  But she remembered, “My legs were shaking the whole time.  We were really scared . . . [but the supervisor] was real shocked that I talked like that so he moved out of the way.”[cxlv]  A supervisor offered Alma a raise if she did not walk out as threatened.  However, when she stood up, she remembered, “I could not believe it.  It was something so beautiful.  So exciting.  I took a lot of people [with me] that were real good.”[cxlvi]  Another striker remembered, “When I walked out . . . way back then, it was like I had taken a weight off my back.  And I began to realize, ‘Why did I put up with it all these years?  Why didn’t I try for something else?”[cxlvii]  Another worker recalled,

If I had not walked out, I would not have been able to realize all those things about myself. . . . you think to yourself, ‘How in the world did I ever think I could not do anything?’ [It] held us back [that] . . . we did not think we could do it.  Until you actually get there and sit down and do it, and you find out, ‘I’m not so dumb after all!’[cxlviii]

Their participation in the labor movement helped them to turn frustration into new political skills and to gain experience in new leadership roles.  As one scholar noted, “the act of walking out began a process of change in the way they looked at themselves and their work.”[cxlix]

One interesting area of change centered in the shifting perceptions of gender roles.  Many women described how their attitudes, beliefs and values regarding their roles “as Chicanas, as wives, and as workers” changed as a result of their participation in the strike.[cl]  At the heart of their assumptions was the notion that women should be naturally dependent on the men in their lives, deferring to their authority.  But changing assumptions often led to changes in other areas of their lives.  As one striker concluded,

Maybe it’s just that the Mexican woman has been brought up always to do what somebody else tells you. . . . and as you grow up, you’re used to always being told what to do.  For years I wouldn’t do anything without asking my husband’s permission. . . . I see myself now and I think, good grief, having to ask to buy a pair of underwear!  . . . [the strike was] when it started changing.  All of it.  I was able to begin to stand up for myself.[cli] 

Another striker described the changes she experienced in her perception of the male, Anglo supervisors as inherently superior.  She recalled,

I felt that I was inferior to my supervisors, who were at the time Anglo.  None of this affects me anymore.  I have learned that I am an equal. . . . I may not have the education they have, and I may not earn the money they earn.  But I am their equal regardless.  And it’s done a lot for me, it’s changed a lot for me.  It made me into a better person.  It used to be if a supervisor got after me for anything I’d sit there and cry.  Well, they don’t do this to me anymore.  They don’t frighten me anymore.[clii] 

One teenager described the changes her mother experienced in stark terms: “Mom used to be a slave.  But since the strike she thinks for herself.  It’s a lot better.”[cliii] 

Actively participating in strike activities provided women with experience in new leadership roles.  But one scholar noted that “nothing in their backgrounds had prepared them to assume roles traditionally restricted to male heads of household.   . . . the move was a radical departure from their upbringing.”[cliv]  Many husbands objected to the public activities of the strike that drew their wives outside the home.  One scholar noted how it was “not uncommon for husbands threatened by the new eloquence, assertiveness, and political awareness of their wives simply to walk out.”[clv]  One striker pointed out that “Some of the husbands, they don’t like it at all. . . . [my husband] didn’t like it.  Sometimes [we argue] and my daughters help . . . back me up. [My sons] like it too.”[clvi]  Participation in strike activities alienated some husbands, and often led to changes in the structure of power within the family.  One striker even observed, “You know, I think [the strike] has made my kids more outspoken.”[clvii]  Many women also began discussing the white women’s liberation movement and its implications for their lives.  One woman put it this way: “I believe very much in fighting for you [sic] rights, and for women’s rights.  I don’t believe in burning you [sic] bra, but I do believe in our having rights.”[clviii]

Along with gender, religious identity also played a central role in the strike, most notably in the person of Catholic Bishop Sidney Metzger of El Paso.  Many of the strikers were his parishioners who asked for his advice and blessing.  At first torn between choosing sides, Metzger led an in-depth investigation of the situation.  He remembered, “I was approached by the strikers for my support.  They are poor workers and if I had refused they would have been bitterly disillusioned with the Church.  It was a difficult decision.”[clix]  He formed an investigating committee composed of 14 Protestants, Catholics and Jews, noting that “the idea . . . came spontaneously from our Protestant brothers. . . . It is most significant that this support . . . crosses denominational lines.”[clx]  In response, Willie Farah sent a 22 person delegation to the chancery to convince Metzger of the rightness of his own position, but one person on the delegation later recanted because “her conscience bothered her because she realized that not all is as it should be.”[clxi]  Metzger sided with the strikers because during the course of his investigation, Farah refused to disclose wages, the number of retirees, and would not discuss negotiations with the union.[clxii]  In return, Farah described Metzger as a man “lolling in wealth” who “does not represent the opinion of the Catholic community.  He is an elderly man who is not getting the pulse of the community.”[clxiii]  Farah may have been referring to middle-class Catholics who supported his own position, including his wife.  Nevertheless, Metzger sent a letter to every American Catholic bishop to ask each to pressure local retailers into boycotting Farah products.  Here, the lines of race, class and gender intersected in the labor-centered civil rights movement in Texas.

In religious circles, the Texas Conference of Churches also voted to endorse the nationwide boycott.  When Farah learned of the decision of this state-level organization, he pleaded with them to be able to present his side, but in doing so betrayed his paternalism.  He asserted that the church “has been used as a weapon of intimidation to coerce people into joining a union they don’t really want to join.”[clxiv]  But he failed to see that many of his workers genuinely desired to join the union.  The Texas Conference of Churches maintained its public support of the union, and tellingly, the vice president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers’ Association acknowledged how “the widening support of religious groups of all denominations has given the strikers a great moral boost and is a major factor in the sharp production cutbacks and drop in Farah’s sales.”[clxv]  Religion legitimated the demands of the strikers, and intersected intimately with the labor movement.

An important group of Farah supporters were the employees who would not strike against him.  The strikers characterized these Farah supporters as “happies” because they wore buttons with smiley faces.  One reporter suggested that “The company keeps instilling in the happies the idea that if the union comes in, all now inside will be kicked out and have no job . . .  Some don’t know what a union is all about.  Many . . . do not read even the newspaper.”[clxvi]  As a result, the strike led to fissures within families and the local community, often along racial, gendered, class and/or religious lines, leaving even husbands and wives at odds with each other.[clxvii]  A group of “happies” once planned to picket a church in protest of Bishop Metzger’s endorsement of the boycott.  The strikers responded by surrounding the church before the “happies” arrived, thereby pre-empting their demonstration.[clxviii]  When the strike ended, Farah was forced to recognize the union, but to pre-empt its power, he forced every “happie” employee to sign a union card just before negotiations began.  He thereby managed to secure several spots on the union’s negotiating committee for his supporters, much to the ire of the strikers.[clxix]

The union leaders in New York negotiated the contract with Farah, and they accepted his recognition without consulting the workers.  They did not even take questions nor vote on the contract.  This type of unilateral decision-making by the union inspired some workers to form a splinter group which focused on bringing democracy to the union itself.  As one scholar put it, “The strikers, inexperienced at contract negotiations, felt outmaneuvered by a process in which the company set the terms and the union lawyers made most of the decisions.”[clxx]  In this case, participation in the movement helped shape not only the negotiations with the company, but inadvertently the internal workings of the union itself.

The Farah strike served as a site where many lines of racial, class, gender and religious identity connect and conflict with each other.  Local people joined the strike and experienced drastic changes in their sense of personal identity.  These changes led to participation in the political process and new leadership roles in the Mexican American community.  As these women joined the local labor union, they experienced significant personal changes, and they became part of the larger civil rights movement in Texas.

Conclusion

Civil rights scholars have largely failed to appreciate the role of organized labor in the civil rights movement, in particular in Texas where it played such a key role.  Here Mexican Americans fought for both union recognition and civil rights.  Strikers were often transformed by their experiences, and formerly apolitical persons joined the electoral process for the first time.  Supporters of the strikers likewise experienced substantial personal change, and the coalitions they joined began to change the makeup of liberal politics in Texas.  Liberal Protestants, post-conciliar Catholics, and Reform Jews joined together in the labor movement after centuries of division between these groups.  Black power, Chicano and women’s liberationists also joined together in spite of a mild separatist ideology.  These groups came together for the first time during the labor movement and the civil rights movement in Texas, and eventually their coalitions became institutionalized within the Democratic party.  Liberal, organized religion experienced an unusual intimacy with organized labor in Texas, and these ties led to a new way of conducting politics in the state of Texas.  

Endnotes

Bibliography

Adair, Doug. “Texas Strike.” Liberation 12 (August 1967): 6-9.

  Allen, Ken. “The Rio Grande Valley Farm Workers’ Strike and March,” M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1967.

  Avant, Jack Nathan. “The 1966 Rio Grande Farm Workers’ Strike: Role of the Church.” M.S.W. thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1967.

  Baer, Barbara L., and Glenna Matthews. “‘You Find a Way’: The Women of the Boycott.” Nation (February 23, 1974): 237.

  Cantarow, Ellen. “Jessie Lopez De La Cruz: The Battle for Farmworkers’ Rights.” In Ellen Cantarow, Susan Gushee O’Malley, and Sharon Hartman Strom, eds. Moving the Mountain: Women Working for Social Change. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1980.

  Chavez, Cesar. Basta! La Historia De Nuestra Lucha (Enough! The Tale of Our Struggle). Delano: Farm Worker Press, 1966.

  _____. “The Dignity of the Farm Worker.” In Luis Valdez & Stan Steiner, eds. Aztlan: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972.

  Coalson, George O. The Development of the Migratory Farm Labor System in Texas, 1900-1954. San Francisco: R&E Research Associates, 1977.

  Cohen, Jan Hart. “To See Christ in Our Brothers: The Role of the Texas Roman Catholic Church in the Rio Grande Valley Farm Workers’ Movement, 1966-1967.” M.A. thesis, University of Texas at Arlington, 1974.

  Coyle, Laurie, Gail Hershatter, and Emily Honig. “Women at Farah: An Unfinished Story.” In Magdalena Mora and Adelaida R. Del Castillo, eds. Mexican Women in the United States: Struggles Past and Present. Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Publications, 1980.

  Daniel, Cletus. Bitter Harvest: A History of California Farmworkers, 1870-1941. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981.

  Day, Mark. Forty Acres: Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971.

  Draper, Alan. Conflict of Interests: Organized Labor and the Civil Rights Movement in the South, 1954-1968. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1994.

  Dunne, John Gregory. Delano: The Story of the California Grape Strike. New York: Farrar, Straus and Girouz, 1967.

Ferriss, Susan, and Ricardo Sandoval. The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1997.

  Fusco, Paul, and George D. Horowitz. La Causa: The California Grape Strike. New York: Collier Books, 1970.

  Glover, Robert W., and Allan G. King. “Organized Labor in Texas.” In Louis J. Rodriguez, ed.                 Dynamics of Growth: An Economic Profile of Texas. Austin: Madrona Press, 1978. Farah

  Goldfarb, Ronald L. Migrant Farm Workers: A Caste of Despair. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1981.

  Gomez-Quinones, Juan. Mexican American Labor, 1790-1990. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994.

  Green, George. “The Heritage of Texas Labor 1838-1980.” Austin: Texas Committee for the Humanities, 1982.

  Green, James R. The World of the Worker: Labor in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Hill and Wang, 1980.

  Griswold del Castillo, Richard, and Richard A. Garcia. Cesar Chavez: A Triumph of Spirit. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.

  Hill, Herbert. “Race, Ethnicity and Organized Labor.” New Politics 1 (Winter 1987): 31-82.

  Hintz, Joy. Valiant Migrant Women/Las Mujeres Valerosas. Tiffin, OH: Sayger Printing, 1982.

  Hoffman, Pat. Ministry of the Dispossessed: Learning from the Farm Worker Movement. Los Angeles: Wallace Press, 1987.

  Honey, Michael Keith. Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers. Urbana: 1993.

  Houston Metropolitan Ministries. Position Paper in Support of the United Farm Workers of America. Houston: Houston Metropolitan Ministries, 1974.

  Jenkins, Craig. The Politics of Insurgency: The Farm Worker Movement in the 1960s. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

  Korstad, Robert, and Nelson Lichtenstein. “Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor, Radicals, and the Early Civil Rights Movement.” Journal of American History 75 (December 1988).

  Landolt, Robert Garland. The Mexican-American Workers of San Antonio, Texas. New York: Arno Press, 1976.

Levy, Jacques E. Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa. New York: Norton, 1975.

Levy, Peter. The New Left and Labor in the 1960s. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994.

  Light, Ken. With These Hands. New York: Pilgrim Press, 1986.

  Majka, Linda C., and Theo J. Majka. Farm Workers, Agribusiness, and the State. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982.

Matthiessen, Peter. Sal Si Puedes: Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution. New York: Random House, 1973.

  Maverick, Maury, Jr. “Marching for a ‘Ghostly Recompense’ in Texas.” New            Republic 155 (September 24, 1966): 11.

  Meister, Dick, and Anne Loftis. A Long Time Coming: The Struggle to Unionize America’s Farm Workers. New York: Macmillan, 1977.

  Milkman, Ruth. “Women Workers, Feminism and the Labor Movement since the 1960s.” In Ruth Milkman, ed. Women, Work and Protest: A Century of U.S. Women’s Labor History. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.

  Murphy, Jean. “Unsung Heroine of La Causa.” Regeneracion 1:10 (1971).

  National Advisory Council on Farm Labor. Farm Labor Organizing 1905-1967: A Brief History. New York: National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor, 1967.

  Nelson, Eugene. Huelga: The First Hundred Days of the Grate Delano Grape Strike. Delano: Farm Worker Press, 1966.

  Nieto, Ernest. “New Age Hispanic Leadership.” National Hispanic Journal 4:2 (Summer 1984).

  Nieto-Gomez, Anna. “Chicanas in the Labor Force.” Encuentro Feminil 1:2 (1974): 28-33.

  Plascenia, Luis F.B., Miguel Ceballos, and Robert W. Glover. Texas Farm Worker Enumeration Project. Austin: Center for the Study of Human Resources, University of Texas at Austin, 1989.

  Riley, Mary Elizabeth. “Austin Chicano Huelga.” Master’s Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1996.

  Rhinehart, Marilyn, and Thomas Kreneck. “The Minimum Wage March of 1966: A Case Study in Mexican-American Politics, Labor and Identity.” Houston Review 11 (1989): 27-44.

  Rose, Margaret Eleanor. “‘From the Fields to the Picket Line: Huelga Women and the Boycott,’ 1965-1975.” Labor History (forthcoming). 91?

Rose, Margaret. “Traditional and Nontraditional Patterns of Female Activism in the United Farm Workers of America, 1962-1980.” Frontiers 11:1 (1990): 26-32.

  _____. “Women in the United Farm Workers: A Study of Chicana and Mexicana Participation in a Labor Union, 1950-1980.” Ph.D. diss.,UCLA, 1988.

  Rothenberg, Daniel. With These Hands: The Hidden World of Migrant Farmworkers Today. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1998.

  Ruiz, Vicki L. “‘And Miles to Go . . .’: Mexican Women and Work, 1930-1985.” In Lillian Schissel, Vicki Ruiz, and Janice Monk, eds. Western Women: Their Land, Their Lives. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988.

  _____. Working for Wages: Mexican Women in the Southwest, 1930-1980. Tucson: Southwest Institute for Research on Women, 1984.

  Rungeling, Brian Scott. “Impact of the Mexican Alien Commuter on the Apparel Industry of El Paso, Texas.” Ph.D. diss., University of Kentucky, 1969.

The Sabotage and Subversion of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act: A United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO White Paper. La Paz, Keene, CA: United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO, 1975.

  San Francisco Bay Area Farah Strike Support Committee. Chicanos Strike at Farah. San Francisco: United Front Press, 1974.

  Segura, Denise. “Chicanas and Triple Oppression in the Labor Market.” In Teresa Cordova, et. al. Chicana Voices: Intersections of Class, Race, and Gender. Austin: Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas, 1986.

  Smith, Sydney D. Grapes of Conflict. Pasadena, CA: Hope Publishing House, 1987.

  Taylor, Ronald. Chavez and the Farm Workers. Boston: Beacon Press, 1975.

  Texas Farm Workers Support Committee. The Struggle of the Texas Farm Workers’ Union. Chicago: Vanguard Books, 1977.

  “Trouble in the Melon Patch.” Newsweek 69 (June 19, 1967): 38-43.

Winn, Charles Carr. “The Valley Farm Workers’ Movement, 1966-1967.” M.A. thesis, University of Texas at Arlington, 1970.

Home | Index