The United Farm Workers: A History Teller's Guide

In the early 1940s farm laborers flooded into southern and central California to work the regions Expanding agricultural fields Many were temporary contract workers for Mexico. They joined migrant Filipino and Mexican American laborers to fill jobs left vacant as nearly 800,000 working-age Californians went off to fight in World War two After the war groups like the Community Service Organization or CSO formed in order to protect the rights of California's growing Mexican American workforce. Dolores Huerta began to see that the best way to advocate for field workers might be to help them organize into labor unions Out of these early efforts emerged a single powerful organization the UFW or United Farm Workers of America At its head was a plain spoken