Cesar Chavez Movie Guide

 

Printable version here

Locations 

Los Angeles, CA:  Community Service Organization (CSO) offices

Delano, CA: 40 Acres Union office

Sacramento: capital of California

Characters

Cesar Chavez: civil rights leader and labor organizer. His Catholic faith inspired much of his non-violent work. Founded United Farm Workers (UFW) with his wife, Helen. 

Delores Huerta: labor organizer, lead negotiator in the workers' contract after the strike

Larry Itliong: Filipino organizer of AWOC, later combined with UFW.

Fred Ross: had worked for Saul Alinsky, Chicago community organizer, founded CSO in LA in 1948

Jerry Cohen: UFW lawyer, protested Vietnam

Robert Kennedy: New York Senator, Attorney General to President John F Kennedy. Supported the Civil Rights Movement. Assassinated in 1968.

Mr. Bogdanovich: Fictional farm owner. Immigrant who built his own business

Governor Ronald Reagan: of California. Didn’t support strikes or workers, later a US President

President Richard Nixon: makes deals to support farm owners to break boycott

Dates

1834 “Mill Girls” textile workers protest wage cuts

1867 Chinese immigrant railroad workers strike, owners starve them out

1877 Irish immigrant coal miners protest, 19 hanged 

1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 150 workers

1935 National Labor Relations Act: gives workers the right to unionize. (Doesn’t include 

        farm workers.)

1938:         Fair Labor Standards Act: Child Labor Laws

1950s         Chavez does training with CSO, registers laborers to vote

1962 Chavez moves family from LA to Delano, starts United Farm Workers

1965 Filipino work camp strike, the two movements join together

1966 Pilgrimage 340 miles to state capital, Sacramento

1968 Chavez fasts 25 day for nonviolence

1970 growers sign agreements to end boycott and five year strike

1975 Agriculture Labor Relations Act gives farm workers right to organize

Farm Labor Injustices

no minimum wage, no bathrooms, paying for water. child labor, goal: keep people uneducated

hard labor hurts the body, no health insurance or disability pay. life expectancy: 49 years, no safety protections. Many big farms are dependent on undocumented labor: owners don’t have to provide the same human rights as to US Citizens. 

 

Spanish

Si se puede! Yes, we can!

Huelga: strike 

La Causa: the Cause 

Non-Violence Strategies

Unions: bringing people together empowers them. fights for safety, reasonable hours and wages

Credit Union: Many poor people don’t have bank accounts, opportunity for small loans. 

Union Newspaper: educating people, helping them know their rights, sending info about events and strikes. Cartoons help people who can’t read see new ideas.

Strike: Workers refuse to work. Historically, the police have helped owners by arresting workers

Boycott: getting the large community to refuse to buy a product.

Fasting: like Jesus and Gandhi, Chavez fasted from food. He did it mostly to inspire his own followers to commit to non-violence. Got national attention. He broke his fast with communion (Catholic/Christian ritual of bread and wine to remember Jesus’ body and blood)

Pilgrimage: Chavez utilized his religious tradition to make their march a pilgrimage. Historically, Catholics would walk hundreds of miles to visit a holy site and seek God. 

US Justice System

Police overlooked owners or locals harming strikers, favored the rich and powerful. Intimidation, violence, arresting without a crime. Judges and lawyers make rules against workers’ rights. 

Slurs

beaner: anti-Mexican slur insulting a main type of food.

greaser: 1950s insult, maybe referred to the job of greasing axels. 

wetback: slur for immigrants who recently swam across the Rio Grande

spic: uncertain origins, overlaps with anti-Italian insults.

brown n*****: compares Latinx to another despised people group

illegals: undocumented immigrants, dehumanizes people to focus on a minor crime

Discussion Questions

1. A rich farm owner says, “The farm workers chose this life. If it wasn’t good enough, they could go get a different job.” What hurdles did the farm workers face that made this untrue? Can minimum wage workers today easily get better jobs?
2. Farm and other US industries still run on undocumented labor today to maximize profits. Many people blame the immigrants for crossing the border and for working for low wages. How can we solve these problems?
3. Cesar Chavez incorporated his faith in his activism. How can your work be inspired by faith?

Selma Movie Guide

 

printable version here

Location 

Selma, Alabama march to Montgomery (state capital): five days, 50 miles.

Washington, DC: US Capital where the House and Senate vote on new laws, President rejects or approves.

Characters 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Baptist pastor and civil rights activist. Powerful speaker and strategic leader of the civil rights movement. His team of clergy and others made up the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). They selected issues and planned marches, protests, boycotts.

Coretta Scott King: Martin’s wife. This movie downplays her activism and role in the Civil Rights movement. Raised their four children who are all activists today. Coretta is used in this movie to show King’s imperfections, and the problems of having a single hero leader.

John Lewis: student activist with The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). later served in the House 33 years. Passed away in 2020.

President Lyndon B Johnson: is pressured by King’s fame and growing popularity to pass civil rights laws.

Malcolm X: radical activist, considered to be the scary alternative to King’s peaceful protest. But, they agreed more than they disagreed. Muslim minister, assassinated in 1965.

J Edgar Hoover: ran the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Spies on King, tries to discredit him.

Sheriff Jim Clark: of Selma, bully. an elected county official. 

Governor George Wallace: of Alabama, complains that black people always want more. Makes excuses and won’t take responsibility. 

White Clergy: Christian pastors and Jewish rabbis, Catholic nuns and more join in support. But other white clergy ignored the issue, or even preached in churches and wrote to King telling him he needed to calm down. (King responded with “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”)

Dates 

1619 Slavery begins in the American Colonies

1861 American Civil War fought over slavery 

1863 Slavery ends with the Emancipation Proclamation, and 13th Amendment.

        Reconstruction in the South leads to Jim Crow

1870 15th Amendment gives voting rights all men

1954 Brown vs Board of Education: begins the end of segregation in schools

1956 Montgomery Bus Boycotts (Rosa Parks)

1961 Freedom Riders

1963 Birmingham Campaign for integration

        16th Street Baptist Church bombing kills 4 little girls in Birmingham AL

1964 Civil Rights Act begins the end of segregation

        King awarded Nobel Peace Prize

1965 March 7: Bloody Sunday

        March 21: Selma March completed

        August 6: Voting Rights Act

1968 King assassinated

2013 Voting Rights Act gutted

Racial Slurs

Negro is not a slur at the time. (Black or African American become preferred terms later.) 

N*****, Nigra: the root of these words is simply “black,” but the meaning evolved and is used to remind people, “We are different. I used to own you.” 

Pickaninny: refers to little slave children picking cotton

Mongrel: a description of dogs with mixed parentage, used to describe people of mixed race, dehumanizing. Wallace says blacks voting will cause “mongrel politics.”

Confederate Flag: a minor symbol from the American Civil War, brought into popularity during Jim Crow. A flag shows what side you’re on.

Uncle Tom: a black person who supports oppression 

Spook: slur for a black person, implying that they are scary and able to hide in the dark.

White Trash, Cracker: insult to poor white people. A lot of American racism keeps poor white people fighting with poor black people instead of together standing up to the rich and powerful. 

Jim Crow Laws

Segregation: keeping black and white people separate in public. schools, bathrooms, drinking fountains, restaurants, buses, building entrances.

Voting: poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation, doxxing, voting vouchers

Legal injustices: lynching, police brutality, execution, unfair prison sentences, slavery continues in prison. 

Nonviolent Resistance and Civil Disobedience

Jesus suggests peaceful resistance in Matthew 5:38-42. He was later executed by the state. Henry David Thoreau wrote “Civil Disobedience” in 1849. Gandhi was an early practitioner of nonviolent resistance as he spoke out against England’s colonial occupation of India in the 1940s. Nelson Mandela modeled the same practices against apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s.. 

Strategies: collective action, marches, protests, boycotts, sit-ins, civil action, hunger strikes, refusal to obey unjust laws, labor strikes, placing one's body in the way of being harmed, imprisoned, or killed.

Discussion: 

1. Many indirect strategies stopped black people from their legal right to vote. What strategies are used today to limit voting rights? How can we ensure the right to vote? 

2. King was a widely hated figure at the time. He was called violent and provocative. He broke the law and was jailed 29 times. Many Christians told him to obey the law. What do you think?

3. The civil rights leaders used peaceful resistance as a strategy. Why was it successful? In what ways was it not successful?  Why are people still critical of peaceful protests today?