Hope and Dignity: The Farmworker Movement
August 15, 2024–January 26, 2025
August 15, 2024–January 26, 2025
Carolina Franco holds a candle at a meeting during the march to Sacramento. Modesto, California, April 1, 1966. Photo by John Kouns © CSUN Tom and Ethel Bradley Center.
The photo exhibition attempts to capture the duality of the struggle faced by farmworkers—hope for a better economic future for themselves and their families by creating a strong union, and dignity in their quest for being recognized as human beings and citizens. A union and a civil rights struggle, as described by César Chávez during his speech of May 1968 in New York—only a month after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in Memphis, where he supported sanitation workers who marched with signs that said, “I Am a Man.”
The exhibition focuses on the early years of the farmworkers’ struggle, marked by the grape strike, the boycott, the first march or pilgrimage from Delano to Sacramento, the early efforts to organize workers in Texas, and César Chávez’s fasting calling for nonviolence and sacrifice. The diversity, energy, and enthusiasm of organizers and supporters infused into the union and La Causa is reflected in images of the marches, pickets, boycotts, elections, music and theatre performances, and union meetings. Other images reflect the dignity of the work performed in many cases by entire families, including children, and the indignity of their labor conditions, the housing they were forced to live in, and the constant threat of violence by strikebreakers and law enforcement.
The diversity of the coalition that formed the Farmworker Movement during this time is captured in the photographs taken by—and the volunteer work of—two young photographers who joined La Causa: John Kouns (1929-2019) and Emmon Clarke (1933-2022). Kouns documented the Civil Rights struggle in the South, the Farmworker Movement. Emmon Clarke served seven months as a photographer for the union newspaper, El Malcriado, starting in October 1966.
Curator: Dr. Kent Kirkton, Marta Valier and Joseph Silva
CSUN Tom and Ethel Bradley Center
National Endowment for the Humanities
The exhibition focuses on the early years of the farmworkers’ struggle, marked by the grape strike, the boycott, the first march or pilgrimage from Delano to Sacramento, the early efforts to organize workers in Texas, and César Chávez’s fasting calling for nonviolence and sacrifice. The diversity, energy, and enthusiasm of organizers and supporters infused into the union and La Causa is reflected in images of the marches, pickets, boycotts, elections, music and theatre performances, and union meetings. Other images reflect the dignity of the work performed in many cases by entire families, including children, and the indignity of their labor conditions, the housing they were forced to live in, and the constant threat of violence by strikebreakers and law enforcement.
The diversity of the coalition that formed the Farmworker Movement during this time is captured in the photographs taken by—and the volunteer work of—two young photographers who joined La Causa: John Kouns (1929-2019) and Emmon Clarke (1933-2022). Kouns documented the Civil Rights struggle in the South, the Farmworker Movement. Emmon Clarke served seven months as a photographer for the union newspaper, El Malcriado, starting in October 1966.
Curator: Dr. Kent Kirkton, Marta Valier and Joseph Silva
CSUN Tom and Ethel Bradley Center
National Endowment for the Humanities
EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
EXHIBITION VIDEOS
"Farmworkers and Music" video created by Sammy Garcia.
©Sammy Garcia
©Sammy Garcia