Lauren Araiza, 'To March for Others: The United Farm Workers and the Black Freedom Movement' (U Pennsylvania Press, 2014)

Summary

Co-founded in 1962 by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, the National Farm Workers Association would eventually become the United Farm Workers (UFW), the landmark labor union dedicated to achieving better wages and working conditions for rural California agricultural workers. In To March for Others: The Black Freedom Struggle and the United Farm Workers (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), Lauren Araiza uses the UFW as a lens through which to examine the factors that contribute to the viability of cross-racial coalitions in achieving civil and economic rights. Specifically, Araiza looks at the UFW's alliances with "five organizations that represented a wide spectrum of black activism", namely the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Urban League, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Black Panther Party. In this interview, the author discusses, among other things, her deliberate departure from the black/white and North/South binary paradigms that dominate the discourse on race in the United States, instead examining the intersecting interests of organizations representing African Americans and Latinos. Listen here.

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