California Agricultural Labor (1860s-1960s)

• 1860s: Chinese immigrants who helped build the transcontinental railroad are recruited into California agriculture. Racially segregated and barred from most other jobs, they are ineligible for US citizenship.
• 1890s: After the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 bans immigration from China, Japanese immigrants are recruited to replace Chinese workers in the fields.
• 1910: Several thousand Sikhs from Punjab, India, are recruited to work as farm workers in California. Like others deemed ineligible for citizenship, they cannot own land in California. ¹
• 1913: California’s Alien Land Law prohibits immigrants “ineligible for citizenship” from owning land, including Japanese immigrants.
• 1917: The Immigration Act of 1917 bans immigration from Asia and parts of the Middle East, except for Japan and the Philippines.
• 1917–1921: During World War I, 71,000 Mexican immigrants are recruited to address labor shortages; most become farm workers, working alongside existing Asian and South Asian laborers.
• 1924: The Immigration Act of 1924 expands these bans to include Japan. Growers turn to the Philippines, a US colony, and recruit 16,100 Filipino farm workers by 1929. In California, Filipino immigrants, mostly single men, are not allowed to own land, become citizens, or marry outside their race.
• 1930s: Severe drought and economic hardship in the Dust Bowl sends white and Black workers from Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas to California fields, expanding the existing labor force.
• 1935: The 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) protects most workers’ right to form unions but deliberately excludes agricultural and domestic workers, the majority of whom are immigrants or people of color.
• 1942–1964: The US and Mexican governments create the Bracero Program, bringing 4 million Mexican men to the United States to address farm labor shortages caused by World War II. Braceros (meaning “manual laborers” in Spanish) faced low pay, discrimination, and harsh treatment.
• 1960s: By the 1960s, farm workers in California were a racially diverse group, including Mexican, Puerto Rican, Black, white, Yemeni, and Filipino workers. Many faced low pay and harsh conditions. ²

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• 1Karan Mahajan, “The Two Asian Americans,” The New Yorker, October 21, 2015, accessed March 25, 2025.
• 2Timeline based on details from Marshall Ganz, Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement (Oxford University Press, 2009), 24–51