[Robert F. Kennedy and Cesar Chavez Celebrate Mass as Chavez Breaks a Twenty-Five Day Fast, Delano, California]

From the Getty Museum record

William James Warren took this photograph in Delano, California, on March 10, 1968, at a Thanksgiving mass to honor labor leader César Chávez (1927-1993) upon ending his twenty-five-day long hunger strike. With sunlight glinting off his camera lens, Warren captured Chávez, Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968), and Filipino American labor leader Larry Itliong (1913-1977) (directly behind Kennedy) in prayer alongside Latino and Filipino farmworkers, who fought together to secure rights under the National Labor Relations Act. Too weakened to speak, Chávez issued a statement that was read to the crowd by the Rev. James Duke. Chávez admonished, > “It is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life. I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally non-violent struggle for justice.” In his comments, Kennedy said he had come “out of respect for one of the heroic figures of our time.” On June 8th, less than two months after this photograph was made, Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles. Inspired by Mahatma Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), Chávez started his hunger strike on February 16th in the hope of recommitting the United Farm Workers’ (UFW) movement to non-violence. Fortunately, his physically trying efforts were rewarded. However, the UFW Grape Boycott continued until 1970. It had begun on September 8, 1965, under Itliong’s leadership, when 2,000 Filipino farmworkers of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) in Delano walked out. Mexican farmworkers from the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) joined the strike after Itliong enlisted Chávez and his organization’s support. In 1966 the AWOC and the NFWA came together to form the United UFW. The boycott ended after five years when over thirty Delano grape growers agreed to an increase in pay and medical insurance coverage for the farmworkers. The agreement also banned the use of toxic pesticides like DDT, Dieldren and Aldri, thus creating better work conditions for the farmworkers and healthier produce for consumers. Over the past fifty years, the farmworkers’ rights movement has experienced setbacks along with further successes building upon the work of Chavez, Itliong, and their organizations. The calls for improvements are ongoing. Mazie Harris and Carolyn Peter, J. Paul Getty Museum, Department of Photographs, 2021.