The Crusades of Cesar Chavez
Page 65
17 thirty-one contracts UC Davis study cited in “Fast by Chavez Passes 29th Day,” New York Times, Aug. 16, 1988
18 “something I feel compelled to do” Chavez statement, in possession of author
19 “always led us by his example” Account of fast from newspaper stories, Hartmire notes, detailed chronology by Pat Hoffman for NFWM, Hartmire papers
20 called the FBI FBI report, Dec. 1988, SC-9A-1191
21 former accountant had embezzled U.S. v. Bryce Basey, court records, U.S. District Court, Fresno
22 “Hartmire and Chavez” Account of meeting from Hartmire notes and interview; John Hartmire to Chris Hartmire, Jan. 26, 1989, Hartmire papers
23 “difficult to believe” Moses to Hartmire, n.d., Hartmire papers
24 “Cesar is just too complex” Cook to Hartmire, Feb. 20, 1989, Hartmire papers
25 “got what was coming to me” Hartmire journal, Hartmire papers
26 case against Denison Index cards, OOP3, Box 32, Folder 13
27 “Indestructible Spirit” “Indestructible Spirit,” OOP3, Box 43, Folder 39; 1992 convention program, OOP Box 43, Folder 40
28 vice president emeritus 1990 convention proceedings, OOP3, Box 21, Folder 18
29 “hoping and praying” Irrgang to Hartmire, May 12, 1990, Hartmire papers
30 Aguila Azteca Memos on Aguila Azteca and trip, OOP3, Box 41, Folder 25
31 “He encourages me” Coachella Valley Sun, Oct. 24, 1990
Chapter 40
Sources: Video of Juana Chavez rosary, funeral mass and burial, Wayne State; video of Fred Ross memorial, on FMDP; author interviews with Chatfield, Hartmire, Moses, and Valdez.
1 “Remembering Nana” Details of rosary and mass from video, UFWA
2 “a wise woman” Chavez handwritten eulogy, OOP3, Box 7, Folder 45
3 buried Ross’s ashes Fred Ross Jr. to Chavez, Oct. 9, 1992, OOP3, Box 32, Folder 20
4 seven pages of notes OOP3, Box 32, Folder 20
5 the Ross memorial Quotes and details from video
6 went to many funerals Chavez family interview, JEL, Box 31, Folder 672
7 delighted in his grandchildren Eric Chavez, on http://chavez.cde.ca.gov/researchcenter
8 cooked an Indian feast Richard Chavez, Paradigm Productions interview, FMDP
9 sworn in as a witness Court transcript of Apr. 21 and 22, 1993, in possession of author
10 David Martinez entered the bedroom Los Angeles Times, Apr. 24, 1993
11 upside down Bruce Perry interview with paramedics, courtesy of Perry
12 “Death is nothing” “Cesar Chavez’s Causa,” Washington Post, Apr. 22, 1979
13 took thirty-eight hours to build Richard Chavez, Paradigm Productions interview FMDP
14 funeral procession Funeral description from interviews, newspaper accounts, and Hartmire planning notes, Hartmire papers
Epilogue
1 chose the name “School Named After Cesar Chavez,” Los Angeles Times, Jul. 12, 2002
2 “most important citizen” Interview with Zaninovich
3 “They taught us” Author interview with Nuño, Aug. 2005
4 “I’m an organizer” Author interview with Rivera, May 8, 2010
Cesario and Dorotea Chavez, Cesar’s grandparents, who homesteaded the family farm outside Yuma, with their youngest son, Felipe, and a grandchild. (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Placida Estrada, Cesar’s maternal grandmother, with her son, Jesus. (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Cesar Chavez at his eighth-grade graduation in 1942, the end of his formal schooling. (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Chavez poses in navy uniform at home in Delano, circa 1946. (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Fathers Tom McCullough (left) and Donald McDonnell (right) wrote Spanish liturgies and hymns and organized a union for Mexican American farmworkers in 1959. (Courtesy of Steve McDonnell)
Chavez (first row, second from right) at the founding convention of the national Community Service Organization in 1954. Others in the picture include CSO’s key financial backer, Saul Alinsky (far left); CSO founder Fred Ross (center in plaid shirt), flanked on the left by Edward Roybal, the first Mexican American elected to the Los Angeles City Council, and on the right by Herman Gallegos, who joined the CSO with Chavez in 1952; and Helen Chavez (third from right, back row). (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Chavez, with clipboard, organizes the Community Service Organization’s get-out-the-vote campaign in Oxnard, November 1958. (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
The short-handled hoe, el cortito, caused backbreaking pain and came to symbolize the exploitation of farmworkers. (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Chavez, in his first Delano office, consults a dictionary as he writes on his Royal typewriter. (Farmworkermovement.us)
Helen Chavez goes door to door in the summer of 1964, surveying migrant workers for a state-funded health study. (Courtesy of Wendy Brooks)
Chavez, with Gilbert Padilla on his right, conducts a house meeting with Fresno farmworkers. (© George Ballis/Take Stock/The Image Works)
Chavez talks with a farmworker at the front counter of the union’s 102 Albany Street office. (Jon Lewis/farmworkermovement.us)
At the start of the grape strike, union pickets spread out at the edge of a field, trying to convince workers deep inside the vineyard to join the strike. (Jon Lewis/farmworkermovement.us)
Music played an important role in the movement. Donna Haber, Luis Valdez, Chavez, and Wendy Goepel (far right) lock arms and sway as they sing “De Colores” at a Friday night meeting. (John Kouns/farmworkermovement.us)
An enthusiastic crowd greets Chavez as he rises to speak at a Friday night union meeting in Delano. (Jon Lewis/farmworkermovement.us)
UAW president Walter Reuther (center), who provided crucial support for the grape strike, parades through Delano with Chavez and Larry Itliong on December 16, 1965. (George Ballis/Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Chavez and Robert F. Kennedy talk in the parking lot during a recess in the March 16, 1966, Senate hearing in Delano, where the two men first formed a bond. (Courtesy of Wendy Brooks)
Chavez shows the route of the three-hundred-mile pilgrimage to Sacramento that the farmworkers began the day after Kennedy’s visit to Delano. (Jon Lewis/farmworkermovement.us)
Chavez walked in pain for much of the march to Sacramento; he said penance was the most important part of the peregrinacíon for him. (Jon Lewis/farmworkermovement.us)
Farmworkers celebrate their victory over the Teamsters when the results of the DiGiorgio election are announced in Filipino Hall on September 1, 1966. (Jon Lewis/farmworkermovement.us)
Luis Valdez (center) performs with the Teatro Campesino, the farmworker theater troupe he founded on the picket lines. (John Kouns/Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Chavez and Jim Drake enjoy the Teatro Campesino skit at a Friday night meeting. (John Kouns/farmworkermovement.us)
LeRoy Chatfield speaks at a Friday night meeting as Larry Itliong looks on. (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Gilbert Padilla, one of Chavez’s early and key lieutenants, talks to a worker in the union office. (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Jerry Cohen confronts a deputy sheriff in the Imperial Valley. (Cris Sanchez)
Chavez breaks his twenty-five-day fast with Senator Robert F. Kennedy on March 10, 1968, as Helen Chavez looks on. (Richard Darby/Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Jessica Govea, at left, leads a boycott march through Toronto in December 1968. (Courtesy of the Govea family)
Chavez reaches for the bar installed above his bed in late 1968 when his back problems became so severe he could not sit up without assistance; he hung a rosary and a mezuzah on the metal bar. (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State Universi
ty)
Dr. Janet Travell examines Chavez in March 1969 in a Delano pool that was specially heated to ease his back pain; Marion Moses looks on. (Courtesy of Marion Moses)
Jane Fonda joins Chavez on a march through the Coachella Valley. (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
John Giumarra throws up his hands in mock surrender as he signs the historic grape contracts on July 29, 1970; his son, John Jr., looks on at far right. Celebrating victory, from left, are Jerry Cohen, Bishop Joseph Donnelly, and Monsignor George Higgins. (Cris Sanchez/Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Chavez in front of the Salinas jail, where he spent nineteen nights in December 1970 on a contempt charge for boycotting Bud Antle lettuce. (George Ballis/Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Salinas residents chant “Reds go home” as Ethel Kennedy walks with Dolores Huerta from an outdoor mass to the Monterey County jail to visit Chavez on December 6, 1970. (Gene Daniels/ Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Eliseo Medina, joined by Dolores Huerta, leads a march in Chicago to support the boycott. (Courtesy of Eliseo Medina)
Chavez waves an American flag as a lettuce worker addresses a Salinas rally of farmworkers eager to strike; Marshall Ganz looks on. (Courtesy of Bob Fitch photo archive © Stanford University Libraries)
Jessica Govea, smiling, at a rally in Delano on Mexican Independence Day, September 16, 1972; Virgina Jones on Govea’s left. (Courtesy of Govea family)
Cesar looks on as Manuel Chavez shakes hands with William Kelly, a Coca-Cola executive, after signing a contract for orange workers in Florida in April 1972. (Hap Stewart/Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Chavez campaigns for the boycott on the Phil Donahue show in August 1972. (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
A farmworker reads El Malcriado in the waiting room of the UFW clinic in Calexico, under a larger-than-life poster of Chavez. (Glen Pearcy/Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Joan Baez and Taj Mahal sing at the funeral of Juan de La Cruz, a sixty-year-old farmworker shot on a picket line in August 1973. (Cris Sanchez/Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Chavez meets with striking Gallo workers. (Courtesy of Bob Fitch photo archive © Stanford University Libraries)
Juana Chavez joins her son on a march from San Francisco to Gallo headquarters in February 1975. (Courtesy of Bob Fitch photo archive © Stanford University Libraries)
Chavez was an amateur photography buff, a hobby he developed in the navy. (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Richard Chavez, Cesar, and Fred Ross look grim as they contest the results of the Gallo election, which the UFW lost to the Teamsters. (© Rick Tejada-Flores)
Chavez walks at La Paz with California governor Jerry Brown, the only politician Chavez consistently praised, in February 1976, when the ALRB ran out of funds. (Cathy Murphy/Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Chavez jokes around with Chris Hartmire as they film a commercial for Proposition 14 in the fall of 1976. (Courtesy of Chris Hartmire)
Chavez with his mentor, Fred Ross, at the 1977 UFW convention. (© Cathy Murphy 1977)
Cesar and Richard Chavez on a ship during their October 1977 visit to the Philippines as guests of the Marcos government. (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Chavez with his guard dogs, Boycott and Huelga, in the Tehachapi foothills above the La Paz compound where he often took morning walks. (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Cesar and his son Paul consult on strategy on the handball court. (© Cathy Murphy 1976)
Chavez practicing yoga at La Paz. (© Cathy Murphy 1976)
Chavez poses with his son Fernando and parents in a picture that Cesar kept framed on his desk at La Paz. (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Cesar and Helen at the wedding of one of their daughters at La Paz. (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
At the funeral of Rufino Contreras, a twenty-eight-year-old farmworker shot on February 10, 1979, during the lettuce strike; left to right, Governor Jerry Brown, Cesar, Helen, Richard Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Lupe Murguia, and Gilbert Padilla. (© Cathy Murphy 1979)
Chavez marches for the renewed grape boycott in 1987. (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Three of Ethel and Robert Kennedy’s children visit Chavez on August 4, 1988, during his last and longest fast. (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University)
Family and friends stand guard during the all-night vigil on April 28, 1993, as Cesar Chavez lay in a pine coffin built by his brother Richard. (© Cathy Murphy 1993)
A Note on the Author
Miriam Pawel is the author of The Union of Their Dreams, widely acclaimed as the most nuanced history of Cesar Chavez’s movement. She is a Pulitzer Prize–winning editor who spent twenty-five years working for Newsday and the Los Angeles Times. In 2013, she was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship. She lives in Southern California.
By the Same Author
The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez’s Farm Worker Movement
Copyright © 2014 by Miriam Pawel
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