the regular, all-white delegation, represented the expressed principles of the national Democratic party.” Moreover, the MFDP supported the election of Lyndon Johnson, as opposed to the regular Mississippi Democratic Party, who actually supported Republican candidate Barry Goldwater. Regardless, Johnson was determined to not alienate white southern Democrats and thus did not want the MFDP to be seated. Johnson’s forces therefore offered the MFDP two at-large seats, with the rest of the delegation as “guests” of the convention. The MFDP refused the compromise and viewed the entire situation as a betrayal by the Democratic Party leadership, including its allies in organized labor, especially those who had originally supported seating the MFDP and then urged them to accept the compromise. Stokely Carmichael later reflected,
The lesson, in fact, was clear at Atlantic City. The major moral of that experience was not merely that the national conscience was unreliable but that, very specifically, black people in Mississippi and throughout this country could not rely on their so-called allies. Many labor, liberal and civil rights leaders deserted the MFDP because of closer ties to the national Democratic party.
Following the convention, SNCC began to question the wisdom of working with the Democratic Party, which was not seen as representing the interests of African Americans. By extension, organized labor was increasingly not viewed as sincere in its support of the civil rights movement.12
Thus by the time that SNCC formed an alliance with the NFWA in 1965, the civil rights organization was already becoming disenchanted with labor unions. It was therefore due to the pioneering work of SNCC field secretaries like Mike Miller and George Ballis, whose ties to organized labor predated their civil rights activism, that the alliance with the farmworkers even occurred. Miller later explained,
I grew up with the idea that unions were a good thing. Nothing in my college education or the student movement persuaded me otherwise. At the same time, as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (and I) learned in the civil rights movement, most of organized labor was deeply intertwined with the Democratic Party’s established leadership.
Miller therefore believed that a careful “balancing act” was required in working with organized labor, but that doing so was worthwhile. The NFWA also alleviated SNCC’s reservations about organized labor by having conceptualized itself as a movement connected to other crusades for social change, making it far more palatable to SNCC than a union.13
The NFWA’s identity as both a union and a social movement caused considerable tension among members, supporters, growers, and fellow unions. In response to writer Eugene Nelson’s question about whether the NFWA strike was a civil rights issue, a volunteer explained, “Of course it’s a civil rights issue. Civil rights means equality of opportunity. . . . And farm workers don’t have equality of opportunity.” It was that line of reasoning that caused activists of the New Left to flock to support the NFWA. But this identity also caused problems for the farmworkers. White officials in AWOC at first resisted working with the NFWA because of its movement-centered identity and links to civil rights organizations. Chavez explained, “They just couldn’t make us out. . . . The NFWA didn’t speak the proper language, you know, worker solidarity, the union above all.” The Teamsters felt justified in representing field workers because they believed that the NFWA was not a legitimate union. Teamster official William Grami proclaimed, “They’re not even a union. They’re a civil rights organization.” Growers were alarmed by the NFWA’s popularity as a movement, prompting one to declare, “This isn’t a strike, it’s a revolution.” But despite the NFWA’s efforts to position la causa as a movement and the willingness of others to view it as such, it was still a labor union whose most basic goal was representation of its workers. By joining the AFL-CIO, the NFWA made it more difficult for SNCC to think of it as a social justice movement rather than part of organized labor. As one NFWA volunteer told John Gregory Dunne, “The romance is gone.”14
Although SNCC was critical of the NFWA for joining the AFL-CIO to become the UFWOC, it continued to support and assist the union in its struggles with Delano grape growers. Soon after the victorious DiGiorgio election, workers at A. Perelli-Minetti & Sons, almost all of whom were UFWOC members, went on strike September 9, 1966 to obtain wages and benefits similar to those guaranteed in the union’s contract with Schenley Industries. Perelli-Minetti was a small wine grape grower in Delano that was not struck in September 1965 because it did not grow table grapes. The forty-eight workers asked the UFWOC to represent them in negotiations with the growers and the union immediately agreed. SNCC was intimately involved in these negotiations; Marshall Ganz and Dolores Huerta met with the owners of Perelli-Minetti and proposed an election for union recognition. Less than a week later, while the UFWOC waited for Perelli-Minetti to decide on its proposal, the Teamsters crossed the picket line to sign a “sweetheart” contract (one more beneficial to the employer than to the workers) with the ranch. The involvement of the Teamsters served to escalate, rather than end, the conflict between Perelli-Minetti and the UFWOC. Although the striking workers numbered fewer than fifty, the UFWOC decided that it had to act in order to prevent the Teamsters from establishing a solid foothold in the grape-growing industry. Consequently, the UFWOC declared a nationwide boycott of Perelli-Minetti products on September 20.15
Although the Perelli-Minetti strike was gaining momentum, the boycott could not get underway for another two months. The labor dispute with DiGiorgio had not been completely resolved, and because of the UFWOC’s limited resources the union could not afford to be involved in both conflicts at the same time. The issue at hand was now DiGiorgio’s Arvin Ranch in Bakersfield, which had not previously been struck. Most Arvin workers had wanted elections the previous August, during the early harvest season, but DiGiorgio refused. The Arvin workers therefore pushed for elections in October during another peak in harvesting and before many migrant workers left to work in other areas. SNCC was particularly helpful in organizing the workers at Arvin for the UFWOC because many were African American or white migrants. Mack Lyons, an African American farmworker who had been recruited to the union by SNCC members Ganz and Dickie Flowers, was elected to represent the Arvin workers to the company. In recruiting Lyons, Flowers and Ganz succeeded in applying SNCC’s organizing principles of identifying and cultivating local leadership.16
Figure 4. DiGiorgio workers line up to register to vote in the election for union representation. Photo by Jon Lewis. Courtesy of the Farmworker Movement Documentation Project, http://www.farmworkermovement.org.
SNCC was also involved when UFWOC organizers, including Lyons, traveled to DiGiorgio’s San Francisco headquarters to personally demand that company President Robert DiGiorgio agree to an election. The protest at DiGiorgio headquarters revealed that the relationship between the union and SNCC was still quite close. While UFWOC organizers waited inside to meet with DiGiorgio, a picket line of over 200 supporters marched outside the building and El Teatro Campesino, a theater group affiliated with the UFWOC, performed strike songs. During the demonstration someone unfurled a sixty-two-foot banner from the roof of the building that employed a SNCC slogan: “DiGiorgio—One Man One Vote—Workers Demand Elections.” Inside, police arrested Terry Cannon, editor of The Movement, along with Lyons and six UFWOC and AFL-CIO officials for entering the DiGiorgio offices and refusing to leave until they were granted a meeting with the president of the corporation. The arrests of Cannon and the labor leaders were broadcast from San Francisco stations on that evening’s news. Rather than risk additional bad press, DiGiorgio agreed to an election when UFWOC organizers returned to the DiGiorgio offices the next morning (including those arrested, who had posted bail). The next day the Teamsters announced it would withdraw from the Arvin election. On November 4 the UFWOC won the right to represent the Arvin workers and negotiate a contract on their behalf. SNCC participation in the demonstration at DiGiorgio headquarters was crucial to this victory, as was its success in organizing African American farmworkers at Arvin. Huerta later asserted, “We wouldn’t have won the Arvin
