and material comforts was more than a mere act of youthful rebellion. Historian Howard Zinn argued, “They are not playing; it is no casual act of defiance, no irresponsible whim of adolescence, when young people of sixteen or twenty or twenty-five turn away from school, job, family, all the tokens of success in modern America, to take up new lives, hungry and hunted, in the hinterland of the Deep South.” By rejecting middle-class values, SNCC was free to openly confront economic inequality. This differentiated SNCC from the NAACP and SCLC, whose leaders were from the middle and upper classes and who sought middle-class gains for African Americans. Although SNCC initially joined the NAACP and SCLC in fighting for the integration of restaurants, schools, and public spaces, its members quickly realized that these achievements were of little value for a constituency that was trapped by their lack of economic and political power.55
SNCC’s emphasis on economic oppression enabled the organization to pursue equality for all poor people, not just African Americans. Once the barrier of class was eliminated, it was easier for SNCC to then bridge the racial divide because it could recognize the commonalities between poor people of all races and apply its principles and organizational praxis to a freedom struggle that did not involve African Americans in the Deep South. This resulted in the productive and successful coalition that formed between SNCC and the NFWA, which contributed to the farmworkers’ victory over Schenley Industries. As Hardy Frye explained, “To work with the farm workers was like an extension of what we had already been doing.” This coalition was also due to the understanding of Chavez and others in the NFWA that while the Mexican American farmworkers were discriminated against based on their race, all agricultural workers were economically oppressed. The union therefore championed multiracial equality, enabling it to find common cause with the civil rights movement. The shared commitment to fighting both racial and class inequality was the basis of the alliance between the two organizations, but it was strengthened by their similar organizing strategies and nonviolent resistance.56
CHAPTER 2
To Wage Our Own War of Liberation
Following the NFWA victory over Schenley Industries, journalist John Gregory Dunne asked veteran organizer Saul Alinsky what he would have done differently had he been in charge of the strike in Delano’s grape fields. Alinsky, head of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), was the virtual godfather to the NFWA. In 1947 he hired Fred Ross to organize Mexican Americans in Los Angeles, which led to Ross’s discovery and cultivation of Cesar Chavez as a farmworker organizer. Furthermore, Alinsky’s model of community organizing served as the blueprint for the organizing philosophy of SNCC’s Mike Miller, who initiated the alliance between the civil rights organization and the union. Alinsky recognized the importance of the SNCC/ NFWA alliance, but with significant reservations. He told Dunne, “The farm workers aren’t going to win this by themselves. When the SNCC kids and the civil-rights people leave, you’re back on page 27 of the newspaper. The money tree stops and who cares.” Alinsky, the master strategist, was prophetic: a year later, the once productive relationship between the two organizations was over. Although SNCC’s departure did not spell the end of the NFWA, as Alinsky had foretold, it did reveal the limits of multiracial coalition building.1
SNCC and NFWA organizers had developed an alliance based on their mutual recognition that African Americans and Mexican Americans experienced similar, intertwined forms of economic exploitation and racial discrimination. They built on these shared experiences of inequality to craft an ideology and praxis that prioritized cross-racial solidarity and cooperation in the pursuit of social change. The organizers believed that by working together and supporting each other, both organizations could more effectively reduce the power of agribusiness, which maintained racial inequities in order to continue to exploit the most vulnerable workers. Accordingly, SNCC organizers believed that supporting the NFWA by participating in picket lines, boycotting a liquor company, or donating food and supplies fit into their broader goal of pursuing racial equality and economic justice for all. Although these coalition politics resulted in an alliance that achieved significant victories for the farmworkers, racial unity proved insufficient in sustaining it. As SNCC evolved, its thinking on racial identity, discrimination, and cross-racial solidarity changed dramatically, which led the organization to shift its priorities to emphasizing race over class rather than addressing the two in tandem. These changes not only caused significant changes within SNCC, but led to the dissolution of its relationship with the NFWA. Furthermore, as the union grew and developed, its ideals, goals, and strategies became incompatible with SNCC’s new direction.2
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Conflicts over race arose within SNCC as early as 1964 during the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, when hundreds of primarily northern white college students went to Mississippi to conduct voter registration among African Americans in rural areas. Disagreements over the purpose of the project, the impact of white volunteers on local black leadership, and interracial relationships caused deep divisions within SNCC. Continued violence directed against African Americans and SNCC volunteers compounded these tensions. Many in SNCC began to question the value of their work, the practicality of depending on white allies and, in some cases, the wisdom of working with whites at all. As a result, many black SNCC staff members began to consider dismissing white SNCC workers. Initially, however, distance shielded the San Francisco SNCC office—which included several whites—from these conflicts, allowing SNCC members in California to focus on issues of economic inequality, rather than being distracted by the debate over black separatism that began disrupting SNCC’s organizing in the South. Furthermore, by working with the NFWA, SNCC was able to continue to apply the organizing principles on which the organization was founded.3
Immediately following the victorious Delano to Sacramento march, SNCC organizers continued to work alongside the NFWA in its battles with Delano’s grape growers. Four days after the conclusion of the march, the union turned its attention to the DiGiorgio Corporation, the largest of the Delano grape growers that had been struck by the NFWA since September 1965. On April 7, 1966, the day after Schenley Industries recognized the NFWA as the bargaining representative of its grape pickers, DiGiorgio sent letters to Governor Edmund “Pat” Brown, Chavez, and other union leaders informing them that the corporation wanted the California State Mediation and Conciliation Service to conduct elections for union representation on its ranches. While Chavez was in favor of elections, he was adamantly opposed to the conditions that DiGiorgio demanded, including limiting the election to active workers, who were actually scab workers and not the pickers who had previously worked for DiGiorgio. Chavez and the NFWA also objected to DiGiorgio’s stipulation that strikes could not occur during contract negotiations or harvest season. In response to DiGiorgio’s attempts to hem in its workers’ rights to collective bargaining, the NFWA began picketing at DiGiorgio’s Sierra Vista Ranch on April 14. Using the experience gained during the Schenley strike, the NFWA chose to boycott S&W Fine Food and Treesweet Juices, DiGiorgio’s most popular brands, rather than attempt to boycott DiGiorgio grapes.4
The NFWA strike and boycott of DiGiorgio had an immediate effect and union officials began meeting with the corporation to negotiate the terms of an election for union representation of its workers. However, in an attempt to circumvent the NFWA, DiGiorgio began meeting with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters regarding union representation of the farmworkers. DiGiorgio welcomed the intervention of the Teamsters, an overwhelmingly white union that did not truly represent the farmworkers and had no qualms about agreeing to no-strike clauses in its contracts. The company agreed to an election for union representation on the condition that the Teamsters appear on the ballot and then attempted to rig it by restricting organizing on its ranches solely to the Teamsters. The NFWA urged workers to abstain from the fraudulent election and established picket lines around the Sierra Vista Ranch, shouting, “No voten viernes” (“Do not vote Friday”). On the day of the election, June 24, only 84 of 219 eligible workers voted; the few who did so voted for the Teamsters.5
SNCC staff members organized many of the protest activities against DiGiorgio. For example, Marshall
