Moore, the African American minister of St. Paul’s Baptist Church in Delano and “the only Negro in the Delano Kiwanis Club.” Moore was to observe the DiGiorgio election and had spoken out against the NFWA by arguing that farmworkers did not suffer discrimination and that “Delano had the best race relations in America.” Ganz, along with organizer Eliseo Medina, also conducted house meetings to educate farmworkers on the issues of the election. Additionally, SNCC co-sponsored the NFWA Student Summer Project. Based on SNCC’s Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964, the Student Summer Project brought together eighty students from activist groups such as the National Student Association, Students for a Democratic Society, and Young Christian Students to work for the NFWA from June through August 1966.6
Friends of SNCC chapters also continued to support the NFWA by organizing food caravans and hosting fundraisers. For example, the College of Marin Friends of SNCC held two screenings of the movie Salt of the Earth, about the Mexican American copper miners’ strike in New Mexico in the 1950s, with all proceeds going to the NFWA. In thanking the College of Marin Friends of SNCC, Chavez applauded the choice of the movie and stated, “We hope that you will continue to work beside us in the coming months.” Due in part to public pressure, including that from SNCC and other progressive groups, DiGiorgio agreed to conduct new elections for union representation of its workers supervised by the American Arbitration Association and with rules agreed on by the NFWA. In turn, the NFWA ceased picketing at DiGiorgio ranches and called off the boycott of DiGiorgio products. At the August 30 election at DiGiorgio’s Sierra Vista and Borrego Springs ranches, 530 field workers voted for the NFWA, 331 for the Teamsters, and 7 for no union representation.7
Despite the momentum generated by another SNCC-supported NFWA victory, the decision of the NFWA to officially merge with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO (UFWOC) in August 1966 threatened this productive alliance. Chavez and AWOC leader Larry Itliong believed that the merger was necessary because it created a united front between the two farmworker unions and enabled both to receive financial and logistical support from the AFL-CIO. Moreover, after the long battles against Schenley and DiGiorgio, the NFWA was cash-strapped and had only one foreseeable option—to join AWOC and the AFL-CIO. However, months before the merger, farmworkers and activists worried that the AFL-CIO bureaucracy would kill the farmworkers’ movement. One NFWA staff member asked, “If the AFL is so damn great, why couldn’t they organize the workers?” Marshall Ganz, however, was more practical: “I think it’s inevitable. . . . The Association doesn’t stand a chance in competition with the big money unions. The AFL-CIO could kill us by throwing millions of dollars into an organizing campaign. It has nothing to do with how good an organization they are. We have to join them.” This did not sit well with SNCC and others on the left because it appeared that the independent NFWA was being co-opted “by one of the giant institutions involved in preserving the status-quo in America.” In an analysis of the merger, The Movement declared that despite misgivings about the AFL-CIO, SNCC should still support the UFWOC because of “the justice of the cause itself.”8
The Movement’s statement on the merger reflects the complicated nature of the civil rights movement’s relationship with organized labor. Civil rights and labor activism shared many commonalities, especially in terms of organizing and protest strategies, guiding ethos, government response, and violent opposition. At a conference of the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA), Congress of Racial Equality executive director James Farmer pointed out that those opposed to civil rights were also in favor of “right-to-work” laws, which greatly limited the power of unions. Moreover, some union members viewed the achievement of racial equality as “a necessary precondition for economic and political equality.” Many labor unions were therefore supportive of the civil rights movement. Unions frequently staged sympathy protests around the country in response to civil rights demonstrations in the South, including one organized by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in San Francisco that drew around 30,000 people in solidarity with the protestors who had been blasted with fire hoses in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. Unions also frequently donated money to civil rights organizations, including SNCC. For example, the AFL-CIO funded SNCC’s founding meeting in April 1960 and issued public statements in support of Mississippi Freedom Summer. The ILWU, Packinghouse Workers, United Electrical Workers (UE), and other unions made financial contributions to several SNCC projects. SNCC organizer Ekwueme Michael Thelwell recalled after receiving a significant donation from representatives of the UE, “Two class-conscious workers—and a strong union—are worth a thousand students.”9
Labor’s support of the civil rights movement came only from northern unions, however. Southern unions did not offer support to SNCC or other civil rights organizations and occasionally donated to segregationist organizations instead. Numerous polls confirmed that southern white workers overwhelmingly did not support the struggle for black equality. In addition to their antagonistic relationship with southern unions, many in SNCC were wary of the compromises that came with northern unions’ support. For example, in October 1960 SNCC held a second conference in Atlanta, partly funded by a grant from the UPWA, to establish itself as a permanent organization. The union threatened to withhold the money unless Bayard Rustin, a noted civil rights activist and advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr., was disinvited as a keynote speaker. Rustin had formerly been a member of the American Communist Party, and therefore the UPWA—reflecting the liberal anticommunism of organized labor during the Cold War and attempting to distance themselves from the historical communist influence within the union—believed he was an “inappropriate” choice. SNCC field secretary Cleveland Sellers wrote in his autobiography that “the students decided that they needed the Packinghouse Workers’ grant more than they needed to hear Bayard Rustin.” Although SNCC acceded to the union’s demand and disinvited Rustin, Sellers noted that many conference participants later regretted this decision. This event also planted the seed of distrust for organized labor among those in SNCC, despite the Packinghouse Workers’ continued donations of bail money, food, and even college scholarships. James Forman, who later became SNCC’s executive secretary, reflected in his autobiography that the Packinghouse Workers’ “success in preventing Rustin from speaking must have suggested that it was indeed possible to influence if not control the student movement.”10
Forman’s reservations about organized labor were reflected in his perceptions of the March on Washington in August 1963. The march was originally conceived of by black trade unionists and coordinated by Rustin and A. Philip Randolph, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, to draw attention to the economic inequality experienced by African Americans, particularly in rates of unemployment, and its connection to racial discrimination. Despite the fact that unions took the lead in providing logistical and financial support for the march, Forman remained deeply suspicious of the involvement of organized labor. He recalled, “Everywhere there were large groups from labor unions and especially the United Automobile Workers, all with prominent signs. We had asked them for financial help and they refused. We felt that not only the UAW, but many other so-called liberal forces were shamming and this was just another march.” Forman was particularly wary of UAW president Walter Reuther, who had helped convince organizers not to incorporate direct action protests into the march and who later joined the planning committee mere weeks before the march occurred. But for many civil rights activists, Reuther’s participation was less troubling than AFL-CIO president George Meany’s refusal to endorse the march at all. Meany did not support it both because he was concerned that such a demonstration would lead to additional charges of communist influence in the labor movement and, as a member of an all-white plumber’s union, he opposed “any hiring preferences for blacks that might undermine union seniority systems.”11
SNCC’s relationship with organized labor was further strained during the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) attempt to unseat their state’s regular delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City in
1964. The MFDP was formed during Freedom Summer and represented an alternative to the segregationist Mississippi Democrats, who systematically disenfranchised black voters. According to historian Clayborne
