The Crusades of Cesar Chavez (91 page)

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)