Farm Workers Gain Support of Influential Leaders

Delano was a small agricultural town of just 11,000 people. When Filipino and Mexican farm workers went on strike in 1965, movement leaders knew they needed national attention to pressure growers into negotiations. They sought support from influential leaders who could amplify their cause and bring farm workers’ struggles into the public eye.

In March 1966, the NFWA convinced the US Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor to move a public hearing from Fresno, California, to Delano. Over 1,000 farm workers packed into the Delano High School auditorium, where New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy questioned sheriff Leroy Galyen of Kern County about the recent arrest of 44 peaceful strikers:

Sen. Kennedy: What do you charge [the striking farm workers] with?

Sheriff Galyen: Unlawful assembly.

Sen. Kennedy: Who told you [the striking farm workers] were going to riot?

Sheriff Galyen: The men [working] in the field said, “If you don’t get them out of here, we’re going to cut their hearts out.” So rather than let them get cut, you remove the cause.

Sen. Kennedy: But how can you arrest someone if they don’t violate the law?

Sheriff Galyen: Well, they’re ready to violate the law.

Sen. Kennedy: Could I suggest in the interim period of time … that the sheriff and the district attorney read the Constitution of the United States! ¹

The hearing brought the farm worker movement to a national audience, and Kennedy’s support for the movement continued until his untimely assassination in 1968. “Whenever we needed him, whenever we asked him to come,” Cesar Chavez remarked, “we knew he would be there. He approached us with love; as people, not as subjects for study … as equals, not as objects of curiosity … His were hechos de amor. Deeds of love.” ²  

This reading is used in a Jigsaw activity in the lesson Building Support for the Farm Workers Movement: Supporting Question 4. Explore the other readings used in this activity: 

• The 300-Mile March to Sacramento
• How Farm Workers Built Alliances to Sustain Collective Action
• The California Grape Boycott

• 1United Farm Workers, “Robert Kennedy took on Kern County sheriff,” YouTube video, posted August 18, 2015.
• 2Dick Meister, A Long Time Coming: The Struggle to Unionize America’s Farm Workers (Macmillan, 1977), 144.