Sowing Change Inquiry: The Delano Grape Strike and Boycott

The Farm Worker Movement: Lessons in Civics

“Sometime in the future they will say that in the hot summer of California in 1965 the movement of the farm workers began. It began with a small series of strikes. It started so slowly that at first it was only one man, then five, then one hundred. This is how a movement begins … ”

—El Malcriado: The Voice of the Farm Worker (newspaper), 1965

Histories of social movements like the farm worker movement are often told through the lens of charismatic leaders who helped bring about social change. While leaders do play an important role in the success of social movement, a curriculum that organizes history primarily around leaders overlooks the collective efforts behind social change and limits opportunities for students to see themselves as civic participants. As researchers Christopher Martell and Kaylene Stevens note:

When students continually receive implicit and explicit messages that social changes in the past were the result of actions by someone with great power or, at minimum, a single charismatic leader, they not only receive an inaccurate portrayal of the past, but also doubt the power of the people in the present or future to make social change. ¹

Rather than focusing on individual leaders, Sowing Change Inquiry: The Delano Grape Strike and Boycott tells the story of the California farm worker movement that emerged during the Delano grape strike (1965–1970) through the lens of collective action. At the heart of the inquiry is an examination of the various strategies that farm workers used to foster unity among themselves and bring large numbers of people to their cause. Students explore, for example, how Filipino farm workers persuaded Mexican farm workers to join their strike in 1966, how art and community gatherings helped to overcome the challenges of organizing a segregated and multilingual workforce, and how farm workers developed a sophisticated organizing strategy as they worked to build mass popular support during the nationwide grape boycott. In the process, students reflect on the power of collective action in enacting transformative social change—especially for people who are denied access to wealth or institutional power. 

Harvard professor Marshall Ganz, who participated in the Delano grape strike and boycott, explains that “young people see the world with what some call a ‘prophetic imagination’ that combines a critical view of what is with a hopeful view of what could be.” Adolescence is a time when young people are discovering their place in the world and developing an awareness of the change they’d like to see in it. Moreover, social studies educators are uniquely positioned to help students explore their own capacity to realize their vision for the world. Studying the farm worker movement helps foster in students the recognition that meaningful civic participation is not limited to those with wealth or influence. All communities—regardless of wealth, race, class, or legal status—can use their collective voice to expand justice and strengthen democracy.

Historical Context for the Farm Worker Movement

The history of California agriculture is inextricably linked to the state’s history of immigration and migration. Starting in the late 1800s, California growers relied on the labor of Chinese and Japanese immigrants, and by the 1930s, the state’s agricultural workforce included immigrants from India, the Philippines, and Mexico, as well Dust Bowl migrants who came from states like Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Despite their essential contributions to the state’s booming agricultural economy, farm workers were denied the basic rights and protections afforded to other American laborers. During the Great Depression, agricultural workers, along with domestic workers such as house cleaners, were intentionally excluded from New Deal legislation that allowed most workers to unionize, bargain collectively, and access unemployment benefits. The historian Linda Gordon writes: 

These exclusions were deliberate and mainly racially motivated, as Congress was then controlled by wealthy southern Democrats who were determined to block the possibility of … [people of color] rejecting extremely low-wage and exploitative jobs as agricultural laborers and domestic servants. ²

As a consequence, employers capitalized on farm workers’ exclusion from national labor laws and subjected them to poverty wages, grueling hours, and dangerous working conditions. Employers failed to provide their workers with basic human necessities, such as bathroom facilities and drinking water during summer harvest when temperatures soared over 100 degrees, and routinely exposed workers to toxic pesticides without protective gear. In addition, the housing provided to workers was frequently overcrowded and substandard, lacking plumbing and hot water. 

Because a large portion of California’s agricultural workforce was made up of immigrant labor, farm workers lived with the constant threat of deportation, a fear that employers used to discourage complaints or organizing efforts. Wage theft was also widespread. Workers were often paid less than promised, or in some cases not at all. By the 1960s, these injustices contributed to a grim statistic: the average life expectancy of a farm worker was 49 years, in contrast to the national average of 67. ³

In instances when farm workers did attempt to change their working or living conditions, growers often used their economic and political power to suppress those efforts. In one example of many from this period, a 1933 cotton strike in Pixley, California, was broken after growers shot at workers leading the strike, killing two and wounding eight. Although 11 growers were charged with murder, all were later acquitted. ⁴ In 1936, a lettuce strike in Salinas, California, was violently suppressed after growers hired the Glenn E. Bodell Industrial Detectives company, a private police agency, to break up the strike. ⁵ Farm workers used the term and metaphor “Rancher Nation” to describe the power that growers had in agricultural communities. One farm worker recalled:

The patron is like the absolute monarch. He is the king. He has his own private security guards. He has his own private judges and enforcement system. His rule is law, and nobody challenges him. He is life and death. ⁶

Faced with these challenges, the farm worker movement took shape in 1965 when Filipino farm workers from the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC)—led by Larry Itliong, Philip Vera Cruz, and Pete Velasco—went on strike after grape growers ignored their demands for a wage increase. Two weeks later, farm workers from the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), co-founded by Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez, voted to strike in solidarity after being persuaded by Itliong. The two unions would merge in 1966 to become the United Farm Workers Association. In this inquiry, students will examine what motivated farm workers to strike and will explore their demands, which went beyond wages and basic working conditions. For many, the strike represented farm workers’ claim to dignity, equality, and justice. 

Cross-racial solidarity between Filipino and Mexican farm workers was uncommon in the agricultural industry, where growers deliberately maintained segregated work crews and housing to divide workers along racial lines. When one group went on strike, growers often brought in workers from another racial group to break it. Given this history, leaders of the farm worker movement knew that building a multiracial union composed of both Filipino and Mexican workers was essential. Students will explore how farm workers in the 1960s had to make deliberate attempts to overcome these divisions, forging a new collective identity through music, theater, communal spaces, and the “unity clap”—a symbolic ritual used to close each meeting.

While farm workers made important progress toward strengthening their movement, growers quickly undermined the strike by replacing striking workers, allowing them to continue harvesting and selling. In response, the farm worker movement shifted its focus beyond Delano, where growers wielded their power, and into the public arena. Students will examine how farm workers transformed a local labor dispute into a national movement by employing a range of strategies and tactics, including eliciting support from influential leaders, forging alliances with other labor unions and civil rights organizations, utilizing the media to broadcast the aims of the movement and gain public support, and ultimately inspiring millions of people to participate in the California grape boycott.  

Of these strategies, scholars agree that the decision to institute a nationwide boycott on California grapes was one of the most innovative and effective tactics of the farm worker movement, bringing national attention to their cause and pressuring growers through widespread public support. No movement in US history had ever implemented a national boycott on such a scale. The campaign mobilized consumers, faith leaders, students, and labor allies across the country to stand in solidarity with farm workers and demand change. The power of the boycott was on full display when, in 1970, 26 Delano grape growers agreed to sign labor contracts with the United Farm Workers Association, formally recognizing the union and marking a significant victory for farm workers’ rights.

Although the Delano grape strike and boycott serves as a powerful example of solidarity and collective action, the farm worker movement also faced significant internal challenges. This inquiry explores those tensions through the perspective of Filipino farm workers, who often felt overlooked and marginalized. Despite playing a critical role in initiating the strike, their contributions were largely ignored by the media, labor contracts failed to recognize their seniority (which led to job insecurity), and their needs were frequently sidelined by union leadership. Although the United Farm Workers built the Agbayani Retirement Village in 1974 to meet the needs of retired Filipino farm workers, the tensions that existed within the United Farm Workers led Filipino leader Philip Vera Cruz to describe Filipinos as “a minority within a minority” within the movement. ⁷ By examining these overlooked perspectives, students will reflect on missed opportunities for solidarity and what it takes to sustain unity within a diverse movement for justice.

Students will also explore why others choose to participate in the farm worker movement, despite not being directly affected by its outcome. In particular, students analyze why Marshall Ganz, a Jewish college student, chose to join the movement. This exploration invites students to consider what compels individuals to take action on behalf of others and how their own choices can contribute to building a more just and equitable society. These insights will prepare students to engage in the Taking Informed Action project, where they will examine contemporary movements for change, draw connections to the farm worker movement, and use creative expression to advocate for a cause they care about—ultimately applying lessons from history to their own civic participation.

• 1Christopher C. Martell and Kaylene M. Stevens, “Teaching Movements in History: Understanding Collective Action, Intersectionality, and Justice in the Past,” The History Teacher 56, no. 3 (May 2023): 346
• 2Linda Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890–1935 (Free Press, 1994), 514–15.
• 3Luke Perez, “Essential and expendable: The rise of agricultural labor and the United Farm Workers,” National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institute, October 15, 2020, accessed February 19, 2025.
• 4Jacques Levy and Cesar Chavez, Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa (W. W. Norton & Company, 1975), 153.
• 5Elizabeth E. Joh, “The Forgotten Threat: Private Policing and the State,” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 13, no. 2 (Summer 2006): 357–78.
• 6Christian O. Paiz, The Strikers of Coachella: A Rank-and-File History of the UFW Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 2023), 12.
• 7Philip Vera Cruz, Philip Vera Cruz: A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farmworkers Movement, 3rd ed., with Craig Scharlin and Lilia Villanueva (University of Washington Press, 2000), 107.

This inquiry includes primary sources and formative tasks that build toward each supporting question. The materials allow students to construct an evidence-based argument that addresses the compelling question: “What can the history of the Delano grape strike and boycott teach us about what it takes to build solidarity in a movement for change?” 

Download the Inquiry Blueprint for an at-a-glance view of all inquiry materials.

This inquiry is expected to take ten 50-minute class periods. The inquiry time frame could expand if teachers think their students need additional instructional experiences or historical background information. 

Teachers are encouraged to adapt the inquiry​ in order to meet the needs and interests of their particular students. Resources can also be modified as necessary to meet individualized education programs (IEPs) or Section 504 Plans for students with disabilities.

The history of farm worker activism in the United States is long and complex. Efforts to improve the working and living conditions of farm workers began as early as the 1920s and continue to this day. This historical inquiry focuses on a pivotal period in that ongoing struggle: the Delano grape strike and boycott. The Delano grape strike began in September 1965 when Filipino and Mexican farm workers in Delano, California, went on strike for better wages and working conditions. Their action sparked a national movement that ended in July 1970 when 26 Delano grape growers signed union contracts with the United Farm Workers Association. This contract represented the first labor agreement in US history to significantly improve wages and working conditions for farm workers. While the broader farm worker movement extends well beyond the state of California and this time period, examining the history of the Delano grape strike and boycott provides students with an opportunity to explore the strategies, tactics, and choices that shaped a successful campaign for higher wages, improved working conditions, and, ultimately, dignity and justice for agricultural workers.