National Center for Farmworker Health
info@ncfh.org
1770 FM 967 • Buda, TX 78610
(512) 312-2700
(800) 531-5120
fax (512) 312-2600

The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement

Author: Ferriss, S.
Date Published: 1998


Cesar Chavez, the founder of the United Farm Workers union, was a man of principles and piety, dedicated, as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., were, to strategies of nonviolent protest. Still controversial, Chavez is, nonetheless, beginning to fade from our collective consciousness. To preserve his story, two filmmakers, Rick Tejada-Flores and Ray Telles, created a PBS documentary titled The Fight in the Fields, and journalists Ferriss and Sandoval wrote and compiled this powerful, photo-filled biography. They trace Chavez's path from a happy childhood on his family's Arizona farm to the fields of California, where the Chavez family landed after being forced from home during the Depression and the great drought. Chavez never got over his shock at the brutality of farmworkers' lives and the blatant racism they endured. He founded the United Farm Workers union in 1962 to fight for basic human rights, devoting himself to union work at night after picking cotton all day with his wife to support their eight children. All that Chavez accomplished by organizing strikes, protests, and the now legendary grape boycott, was heroic in nature and profound in effect.

Price: loan
Number of Pages: