When Esperanza and Mama are forced to flee to the bountiful region of Aguascalientes, Mexico, to a Mexican farm labor camp in California, they must adjust to a life without the fancy dresses and servants they were accustomed to on Rancho de las Rosas. Now they must confront the challenges of hard work, acceptance by their own people, and economic difficulties brought on by the Great Depression. When Mama falls ill and a strike for better working conditions...

"The hill people and the Mexicans arrived on the same day. It was a Wednesday, early in September 1952. The Cardinals were five games behind the Dodgers with three weeks to go, and the season looked hopeless. The cotton, however, was waist-high to my father, over my head, and he and my grandfather could be heard before supper whispering words that were seldom heard. It could be a 'good crop'." Thus begins from author John Grisham, a story inspired...

This work tells the story of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers' groundbreaking victory, drawing important lessons from this dramatic tale. Since the 1900s, large scale agricultural enterprises relied on migrant labor, a cheap, unorganized, and powerless workforce. In 1965, when some 800 Filipino grape workers began to strike under the aegis of the AFL-CIO, the UFW soon joined the action with 2,000 Mexican workers and turned the strike into...

At the age of fourteen, Francisco Jiménez, together with his older brother Roberto and his mother, are caught by la migra. Forced to leave their home, the entire family travels all night for twenty hours by bus, arriving at the U.S. and Mexican border in Nogales, Arizona. In the months and years that follow, Francisco, his mother and father, and his seven brothers and sister not only struggle to keep their family together, but also face crushing...

"Vividly revealing the challenges faced by a group of migrant workers who eventually farmed the multiracial town of Randolph, Arizona, Not All Okies Are White is a celebration of the resilience and adaptability of people too often ignored by history texts." "Not All Okies Are White recaptures the ways of life for black migrant workers, as well as Hispanics and Native Americans, in the first half of the century through richly detailed interviews of...

A history of Cesar Chavez and the farm workers movement. In 1965, as the grapes in California?s Coachella Valley were ready to harvest, migrant Filipino American workers?who picked and readied the crop for shipping?negotiated a wage of $1.40 per hour, the same wage growers had agreed to pay guest workers from Mexico. But when the Filipino grape pickers moved north to Delano, in the Central Valley, and again asked for $1.40 an hour, the growers refused....

Explains the clothing, tools, and work of farmhands. Did you know that families operate about 97 percent of all farms in the United States? Farmhands help farmers grow food. Many farmhands live at the farms to ensure they are available when needed. Discover more facinating facts in "Farmhand," a Dirty Jobs book. --