other things, so i would -- i think it's -- it's a transformative moment to go back to your initial question for a lot of these folks, and it took -- you know, they only had to travel 3,000 miles here to do it. >> right. >> you say something that was interesting to me. you talk about seeing a struggle in coalition building across not just the various dimensions of race or class or gennady but it's not either/or, it's both and, and where does gender enter into your particular perspective, and i'm reminded of what maria said earlier this morning about what is -- what is the role of, you know, women in this particular, you know, set of coalitions that you guys are talking about? >> you know, great question. so in a lot of ways a poor's people campaign works as much as it does work because of the women that are there, and i think, you know, a lot of this is on display on solidarity day

where it is women that are the most prominent and focusing on -- i mean, i recall martha grass who is a native american or mother of 11 children in oklahoma. plays a prominent role in the solidarity day rally, and speaking about, you know, the challenges that she faces as a mom in the middle of the country and that poverty, you know, impacted women and children more than anybody else, right? and so in a lot of ways the campaign highlighted the -- it was -- it provided a space for women who did not see themselves as exactly part of the feminist movement which was unfairly or not seen as white and middle class so you see a lot of issues on display that african-american and chicano women, native american women with working

class and others are able to stress in this space of resurrection city and hawthorne school here in the capital. >> how does that jive with your recollection? >> no, absolutely. i remember, you know, the leader and organizer of poor working plants in chicano, working rights organization, we bonded and continued to work together. strong woman, you know, no college, but militant organizer and her daughter elishia and the other woman who was there and the other woman who was with us and also i did notice that anita gonzalez, the family and daughter, and i saw the difference with the wife and corky's wife were for quiet and submissive behind the scenes. get the food and the lodging and the younger woman, she was different and in it all the way,

but the younger women were being active, marching and wanted to speak and so there was this -- you know, that gender imbalance, and, you know, when we got back to l.a., alashia scolante wrote me and said she wrote the book before i came and found out i was coming. continued the long struggle of activism and then the brown berets that led to us challenging the leadership and you can't have a male dominated one guy running the show. we've got to have quality here, so -- so, yeah, but the young woman that marched with us on a daily basis, you know, i didn't cover a lot of it when i was speaking. >> one thing i would add is, that you know, the policy changes that did occur, a lot of that was due to the work of marion wright, sue to be marion wright edelman who then funds the children's defense fund a few years later. she's constantly working behind

the scenes and making connections with federal bureaucrats that in a way that wouldn't have happened otherwise. abernathy is in front of, you know, the cameras, behind the telephone and other folks in josefa williams and jesse jackson. folks like marion wright that was actually make some changes, at least policy-wise. >> i think what i'm going to ask is if we could actually get our microphone passer outers to pass out the old mike phones and turn the question and comments to the audience. like you said, a number of bheem have been involved in the struggle from the delta all the way over to the southwest and on to the west and, please, by all means, we really appreciate your comments and interventions. i know we've got a long afternoon ahead of us, but i wanted to get back to maria to talk to you if you had some times, wanted to say something about the land grants movement. would that be okay with you? >> put on the spot. >> put you on the spot.

>> or do you already have another question in mind. >> i think -- i was pretty critical. can you hear me with this? first of all, i didn't want to do this -- i already had been through stuff with the sclc. this thing about jesse turning everybody around. that's exactly what happened in selma. >> in selma. >> i didn't know that. >> exactly, and it was like i did not want to do this, but the folks i was working with, which was reyes and corky, they felt it was important so kind of like the way we did in snic, what people wanted is what we did and so i did go. and i didn't have like -- i think the most important thing that never was able to take off was the poor people's embassy. >> yes. >> can you explain that a little bit. >> which at some point i would

love you to explain, gordon. so here you are together and doing all this work but when it really gets down to the potential of being pretty effective here in d.c., over the long term, where people could continue then to lobby, because you -- you know, you know how congress is, this had great potential, and -- and it was a shame, and because you had -- i mean, anita -- ganz les corky's daughter was involved in it, and the idea was that the embassy would be here in d.c. and continue whatever people who returned back home wanted to continue to pressure congress for, that the poor people's embassy would do that. so could you explain it a little better, gordon, in terms of. >> yeah, this is definitely one of the -- had a lot of potential. a lot of folks after the resurrection city was knocked down in mid-july, you know, in late june of '68, by mid-july, this idea of a poor people's

embassy that emerged was we'll find an office space here. we will have a presence that will continue to lobby congress, and -- and, you know, they had written up several grant proposals, i mean, but as you said there was -- there was not a lot of interest by the foundations to support something led by reyes lupis and that was a key person in -- behind us. he really wanted to sustain this idea. anita jo gonzalez, one of corky's daughters was involved as well as several other folks, puerto rican, annabelle sullivan, and eventually what happened, and it seems obvious now. huge strategic blunders that they move the office to new york, and -- and in someone's apartment, and -- and didn't look legitimate, wasn't able to

get the funding for a variety of reasons, and then -- and so the idea of basically it just petered out by '69, but you see people meeting and trying to get this thing going as, you know, a -- a sustained presence here in the district here to lobby congress, and as i said, i mean, it was welfare rights activists who were involved with the national welfare rights organization as well as chicana rights activists like alicia scolante who were more successful because they were able to get the ear of bureaucrats who were still around, you know, after johnson administration left and the nixon administration began. they were more successful, and if you remember, president nixon actually embraced welfare reform, not the kind of welfare reform necessarily you saw in '96 under president clinton, but

something that did cut everybody a check who fell below a certain income. now, the devil's in the details. the details weren't particularly friendly to welfare recipients, but there was at least a conversation going on between this conservative republican administration and welfare rights activists, and a lot of that really comes out of the poor people's campaign moment. it doesn't succeed, of course, but, yeah, yeah, the poor people's embassy was a missed opportunity, and there's definitely some errors that were made in the process. >> yeah. thank you for that. >> carlos. >> what did i want to say overall is that there were some gains and victories that we got in the '60s out of that whole movement, and in terms of affirmative action, ethnic studies, you know. we supported bradley and his first mayor campaign, brown berets, oh, you know, and eventually won. so there were gains, you know, that the system, you know, gave. in california, you know, the welfare and education and the

food stamps and jobs, still blue collar jobs. they are all gone now, so we were able to move, make many gains in welfare, education, jobs, but -- but the other thing we faced was the repression, the counterintelligence program, the disruptions, people were killed, assassinate, forced to flee. hi to leave the country for seven years. i was on the run for seven years, and then the -- so then -- the system -- you remember the other thing the war on poverty program that a lot of people had jobs, and they were giving us all this money to keep us working and keep us from organizing, you know, because a lot of people got all these jobs and war on poverty and people running proposals and getting grants. man, you know, like -- so, you know, i -- anyway, we had some gains, but then we went back, right? >> that's certainly like part of the strategy behind, you know, rockefeller/ford foundations is

to provide money but for very particular -- for how they saw -- you know, they wanted to channel that energy in a particular way. >> we have a question. >> first off, thank you so much for your presentations, fantastic. my question has to do with the role of puerto ricans and the young lords and i'm wondering if you all can speak to their participationed in poor people's campaign. >> yeah. >> carlos. >> yeah. >> want me to start it out. that's where we met and would say what's up, you speak spanish, and a whole difference experience? i'm from mexico, east l.a., never left l.a. so the whole experience meeting all these people we related, you know, in a different level because they are spanish-speaking, right, even though -- you know, another blew my mind, but you're black and also latina, white or

latina, the culture and sals ann, and some into cumbia. purple berets, we had brown berets and black berets and the puerto rican, you know, all bonding, cultural bonding and political bonding and learning about the colony of the spanish-american war and it was all blew my mind, right? >> blowing my mind right now. >> so we went to new york, and we didn't want to get busted so we hung out in harlem, not just the young lords, other puerto rican organizations, so another long bond and we invited the young lords to come to l.a. and we'll go to new york so it gave us an historical perspective of imperialism, you know what i'm talking about, right? >> and becoming more radical, you know, and then so, you know,

che didn't look too bad at all. we were victims of red baiting, red, red, red, you know, bad, bad, bad, but after a while we said it's okay, you know. and the young lords helped with that as well as the panthers, you know. >> you want to talk about -- >> i would say great question. puerto ricans were definitely present in the poor people's campaign. much smaller numbers, but you had certainly a contingent from new york and chicago and philadelphia there. they had their own kind of separate rally rather than during solidarity days. solidarity day was during the middle of the week so puerto rican organizers in new york said, well, we can't come during the week, but we can come on weekend so they had their own sort of separate rally which i guess you could see the optics of it, were, you know, very

practical reasons for it but there's -- they are having their own rally that corky gonzalez and rea lopez. the chicano youth liberation conference in '69 in denver hosted by coaching gonzalez's organization, the crusade for justice, invited young lords so you had the young lords from chicago and young lords from new york again and in particular who went to that. yes. the issues are not quite the same. there's -- and the story in their history is not quite the same, but they were able to find some common ground, right? >> thank you. >> any other questions? >> i had one, and this is interesting because carlos, you're talking about, meeting up with other chicano activists and gordon you've elaborated beautifully in the book how class and race and all these

things come together and then you're talking very clearly against the notion of any hard and fast binary between black and white and all these other ways to complicate the question of solidarity. and you said something that struck me about this notion between urban rural because the whole notion of land rights didn't enter your consciousness at the beginning but then all of a sudden becomes very much part of the whole, you know, becomes critically important to you. is that -- can you talk about that? >> yes. growing up in l.a., the urban setting, the issues were education, police brutality, stop the drugs and then, you know, the military recruiting, but when they led the raid in june 7, '67 and they came to speak, raised the whole issue of the land so then we started studying, you know, and the first book i read on chicano studies history was north of mexico carrie mcwilliams and that again blew my mine.

think of a different term. raised my consciousness, right, so learned my real history, and, map, this is our lap. it was ripped off, and i remember why when we were little kids, showed the alamo and nobody clapped, right? we didn't know what was going on. didn't know that they would clap to that, right? you don't know, right, you know, but you sit in a room and it goes all dark. we ain't going to clap on this here. anyway, so the -- the land, it revolutionized us. it was a combination of the black liberation struggle, viatnamese struggle and then the raise the land question. not just a struggle for civil rights but a struggle for self-determination, declaration of human rights, u.n., what is dev determination, political power in a political economic control over your own land.

>> right. >> and then when he introduced me to the sheriff, they had their own little self-government, and i said why don't we -- you know, and then -- then, you know, the crusade for justice, the chicano youth liberation conference, we put out the plan where we called for our own nation. it was a little bit spiritual, but then later on when we started reading, there are struggles throughout the world where people want their own land, you know. puerto rico, how big is puerto rico and how many people live in puerto rico? how big is puerto rico, you know, and you look at whole southwest. >> right. >> the brown masses, you know. we have the right to self-determination, so it took us -- i still -- i still advocate and me of that, right to south determination. >> parallel to naft american struggles to reclaim ancient lands in the south and southwest and the southwest. okay. so i'm going to bring this to a close. >> can i get a photo op. can we get a photo. can you take a photo?

>> of course. >> whoever the photo guy is out there. >> i'll have to do it myself. >> is there a photo guy out there that can take a photo. >> i think we've taken photographs. >> i want one of my own. >> do my phone, please, please, please. >> all right. >> so while we're waiting for the photo-op to develop, i was going to say that we should try to -- thank you. we should try and make our way to lunch. we are about 10 to 15 minutes behind but we'll make it up, and we've got padding here and there to take care of our food needs for now and come back and be prepared to go for this afternoon's session. many of the themes and the comments that you've heard here which have been so brilliantly set up by maria and gordon and carlos montes -- another one? >> take a couple. all my friends told me take a lot of photos. >> i took like five. >> oh, thank you. >> while i was talking. >> there's a young lady.

>> just to remind people that several of the books written by our presenters are on sale outside. >> right. >> during the lunch period. they will also be on sale i believe during the break in the afternoon. and then you have some interviews. >> correct, and we're going to also -- we're going to come back -- when you come back from break, you can bring your lunch in here and eat, but eat neatly, if you would, and you can also watch right back on the monitor some of the chrp interviews. we're live with an online connection so come back and be prepared to go and i don't have a schedule. 1:15, yes, correct. so 45 minutes, be back and we'll start on time. thank you so much. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. the c-span cities tour takes cspan's-3-american history tv on the road. here's a feature from one offous recent trips across the country. >> delores huerta is a civil

rights activiswho along with cesar chavez co-founded the national farm workers association in 1962 which became the united farm workers of america. in 2012 president obama awarded miss huerta the medal of freedom for her life's work. >> i was born in dawson, new mexico, and moved to california when i was 6 years old. my parents divorce and my brother brought myself and my two brothers to california. as a teenager we were always harassed by the police, a lot of discrimination in high school against all of the kids of color and not only kids of color but the very poor kids, kids who were the okey kid, as they called them and also quited quite a bit of discrimination and you always had a sense of injustice happening all around you. stockton, california, i was raised as another agricultural community just like bakersfield is so you had a lot of the same dynamics going on there. a lot of people of color did

warm work and so it was always like trying to denigrate the people who did farm work and making them feel like they were lesser individuals and that kind of dynamic sort of permeated the whole community. started in 1942 i believe when we went into the car and they brought in many people from mexico to fulfill the needs of farm labor, and what happened is after the war ended, they kept bringing more and more people in and the local workers and domestic workers just dropped to 50 cents an hour and they would bring in others and not hire the local workers. i grew up in stockton, california. i grew up organizing farmers. i formed an association of local workers association as part of the afl-cio, but i left that organization because i felt that they were not doing the kind of organizing that was really going

to be successful and then -- and that's when i started the united farm workers. i moved to delaino when i started the united farm workers association. we organized from 1965 to 1968 for three years and we had thousands of workers that came out on strike. >> striking work vicars from delano began a 100-mile pilgrimage northward. >> that strike went on for five years. the strike started in 1965 and it didn't end until 1970. we don't win the strike because it kept arresting us and kept bringing in more and more strike breakers so what we did is started a national boycott of california table grapes and when the employers, saw that they can't sell their grey-bruce and they weren't making a profit anymore and that's when they decided that they would sign contracts with the union. basically what you learned and what you teach is that people have power, that you don't have to be rich or speak the english language or don't even have to be a u.s. citizen, that you do

have power and you can make changes. one of the big provisions we got for farm workers was the right to have toilets in the field and people don't realize that the drops that are picked in the fields go into the box and they go to the supermarket and they don't go through the car wash, right, so the way that those fruits and vegetables are put into that box as it goes to the supermarket, it's horrifying to think that farm workers didn't even have toilets in the field or cold drinking water or soap and handwashing facilities and yet all of that produce is going directly to the supermarket, so we were able -- we got that into our contracts with 1966. we finally got it as a state law, again, in 1975. did not become a national law until 1985 and so now we do have a national law that says employers have to have toilets in the field for their workers, separate, one more men and one for women and supposed to keep

them clean and when you think of all of the great things that came out of farmer movement in terms of legislation and in terms of leadership, i think that it's probably very few regrets but there's a lot of gains and a lot of wins. >> from day one when we started the community service organization and the united farm workers, we've always been engaged in helping people immigrate to the united states. it 1986 we were able to pass legislation where we got legalization for 1.4 million farm workers and our partner in the senate was ted kennedy who helped us get that long, along with peter rodina from new jersey, so immigrant rights have always been at top and we're still continuing that struggle right now because we have the immigrants rights legislation that's going through the congress. i don't believe that the guest worker program should be implemented at all when you have high unemployment, for instance, in kern county, 30% unemployment right now. we have a lot of people who don't have work and yet

employers continue to bring in people from other countries to do the work, and they keep saying, you know, ordinary people won't do this work. well, that's not true. that's not true at all. i mean, we look at "the grapes of wrath" you know when that was going on, people who came in here from other places. many people here in kern county many individuals in office and hold different positions in government. they were once farm workers. it isn't that people won't do farm would. it's that the employers don't want to pay enough money for them to do farm work and don't want to give them the kind of health benefits that they need. farm workers see their work as something that they do. they consider themselves professionals and they should be treated with dignity, and if you're not going to treat people with dignity and that's why they bring in people from other countries who don't know the labor laws and who are afraid to speak up because they are afraid they will be deported or sent out or that their contracts will be, you know, cut off if they

speak out and fight for their rights and so we should develop a local farm labor force like we had before. i get medal of freedom, but it actually represents the work of thousands of people that have worked, you know, to make a better life, for the farm workers and the farm workers movement and five farm workers that are killed and i get the medal of freedom but it comes on the backs of many other people that have fought for the rights of farm workers and women, you know, in the world. although we were able to make a lot of gains in northern california, we know there's pockets of california especially when they bring new immigrants and don't know their rights where farm workers are being mistreated and where employers are not following the laws in terms of providing them with the clean toilets or the drinking water or respirators or safety conditions, right, and that they are entitled to and the

rights we got for farm workers, farm workers throughout the country still don't have the basic rights, and that's a tragedy. >> on the next "washington journal" dr. ron waldman of the group "save the children looks at how nonprofit groups are helping to fight the ebola outbreak in west africa. rob barnett of bloomberg discusses the recent decline in gas, oil and energy. plus your calls and facebook comments and tweets. that's all on "washington journal" at 7:00 a.m. eastern. this weekend on the c-span networks, saturday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern, a town hall meeting on the media's coverage of events in ferguson, missouri, as harris stow state university in st. louis and sunday night on "q&a" historian richard norton smith on his biography of nelson rockefeller. saturday night at 10:00 on book tv's "afterwards," author and xhep tator jake halperin on the

collection industry and the 2014 southern festival of books and saturday night at 8:00 on american history tv on c-span 3, the life and legacy of booker t. washington and sunday afternoon at 4:00 on real america from 1964 exercise delawar, a joint operation between u.s. and iran when the two countries were allies. find our television schedule at c-span.org and let us know what you think about the programs that you're watching. call us at 202-626-3400 and e-mail us at comment comments @c-span.org or send us a tweet at #c-spancomments. join the c-span conversation. like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. c-span campaign 2014 is bringing more than 100 debates for the control of congress. watch our coverage and join the conversation. follow us on twitter and like us

on facebook. american history tv continues with remarks from bill jennings, a former member of the black panther party on multi-racial coalitions during the civil rights coalition. we'll hear about why black activists worked with cesar chavez and the united farm workers union during the 1960s and '70s, american center hosted the symposium to mark national heritage month. it's about half an hour. good afternoon, and welcome back. this is our next panel in the afternoon session of this symposium organizing across the boundaries, strategies and coalitions and the struggle for the civil rights and social justice. before we get started, i just wanted to explain a little bit about the genesis of this panel or whole symposium and how it

came about. like a lot of great ideas that come about the library, came across this book just doing a search in the catalog, and this is many months ago. we were kind of thinking about what do we want to do for this public program series, and there's so many books that come out on the civil rights movement every year. we thought, well, let's focus on some that are kind of different and interesting that kind of change how we think about the movement, kind of upend our understanding of it, and so when we came across this one by lorne ariza we got excited, not just because it had such great cover art. we loved she was looking at these two different groups in an area that we don't often think about the civil rights movement, california, and how these two groups came together in their struggles. so the doctor will be our first speaker. she earned her phd from the university of california at berkeley, and she's now an

associate professor of history at denisson university in granville, ohio. she's taught there since 2007. this is her first book, "to march for others, the black freedom struggle and the united farm workers" and it was published just last year by the university of pennsylvania press. and our next speaker after her will be bill x. jennings who grew up in san diego, and he was just telling us this story earlier today which i thought was great which was his pe coach in middle school was tommy smith, and he had this wonderful inspiring moment when he saw him on tv at the 196 olympics after he had won the gold medal raising his fist up in the air, and that kind of inspired him to become an activist. also in 1968, he moved to oakland, and he joined the plaque panther party, and he helped out with a lot of programs for many years with the panthers, with free breakfast

programs and also uniting with mexican-american farm workers and canary workers and doing similar programs with them, too. and he's currently now the archivist and historian of the black panther program and started a website it's about time, that includes tons of images, manuscript items from the party that you can peruse online at home. after both of them speak we'll do a q&a up on the stage and the moderator for that will be catalina gomez who is a program coordinator in the hispanic division here who grew up in bogota, colombia, and she earned her b.a. from uc san diego and masters grow grow from the university of barcelona in spain. join me in welcoming our panelists starting with lauren ariza, thank you.

thank you. thank you for that kind introduction. i actually wondered how i came to be invited. i had no idea, so -- thank you all for coming. i also want to thank -- forward, okay? so i also want to thank the like riff congress for organize today's symposium on coalitions and the struggle for civil rights and justice part of their year long series on what's been termed the long self rights movement. today's symposium rectifies one of my major critiques of the study of social movements which is that each movement is usually studied in isolation, as if each move president was an island with no connection to other movements or as maria said earlier as a beach was a silo unto itself. examining coalitions between movements provides us with a

more nuanced, more complex and ultimately i argue more accurate depiction of social movements and the people and organizations that fought for social justice. quite simply, activists of this period didn't think of themselves as being part of individual move president. they didn't describe themselves as being part of the civil rights movement or the chicano movement or the red power movement. instead they envisioned themself and the struggles were part of the movement. the umbrella term for the various struggles for equality and social justice that unfolded in the 1960s and 1970s. so accordingly these movements were marked by continuous interaction and dynamic exchange between activists. sometimes the strategies, philosophies and accomplishments of up movement merely influenced others, but another instances movements physically intersected.

participants overland and resources were shared and efforts were merged to more effectively combat a shared enemy, but how do coalitions happen? how do we even get to this point? how do activists and organizations divided by race, ethnicity, geography, religion or language come together to fight for social justice when they each have their own struggles, they each have their own concerns? and what determines whether these coalitions will be successful? where do we get to the point people aren't just coming together but are actually accomplishing something so in my book "to march for others, the black freedom struggle and the united farm workers" i attempt to answer these questions by use the united farm workers as a lens to explore attitudes and multi-core racial building within the black struggle.

cesar chavez founded the dwf in 1962, then called the national farm workers association in order to organizing a cultural workers in california's central valley, many of whom were mexican-american. chavez and the other members of the ufw leadership believed that unionization would offer the best protection for workers who suffered from back-breaking labor, exposure to exteam temperatures and dangerous pesticides and low pay. farm workers were also vulnerable to such exploitive practices as child labor and sexual harassment. so in their struggles against the powerful forces behind california agribusiness, these were not just -- these were not family farms that these farm workers were engaged. in these were massive corporations that operated huge farms that were then backed by california politicians and law

enforcement, and so in their struggles against this powerful system, the ufw engaged in nonviolent direct tactic actions such as picket lines, marches and boycotts. all of which were rooted in labor activism but were also inspired by the civil rights move president. these protests attracted media attention, and eventually garner the farm worker's support from a wide array of swensies including members of other organizations, students, activists from the left, housewives, politician and celebrities. so among the ufw supporters were five major organizations of the black freedom struggle of the 1960s and 1970s. my book explores these relationships. i look at the student on violent coordinating committee, the naacp, the urban league, southern christian leadership conference an black panther party. what i wanted to know is why

such a diverse array of civil rights and black power organizations that really capture the scope of civil rights okaying during the era, from the very radical to the very conservative, i want to know why such an array of organizations chose to work with a union of mexican american farm workers in rural california. i also want to analyze the trajectories of these alliances, the level and type of support that each of these organizations gave the ufw varied, and so my book is a study of the factors that determine the viability of multi-racial coalition building. now in social movements, forming a coalition can make practical strategic sense. when you're fighting overall forces such as racism, poverty, exploit politation, disenfranzment, police brutality, one needs all the

help you can get. but even when working with an ally makes sense, coalition-building is a complicated undertaking, and it involves several factors. the inner play of these factors is really what determines whether an alliance is even possible. and so the coalitions that were formed between the black freedom struggle and the ufw were shaped by key facets of personal and group identity, race, class, region, gender, and by then aspects of each organization's organizational oitd, ideology, tactic, the historical context in which it operated, its leadership, all of these things were also instrumental in the development and outcome of coalitions. so for the purposes of today's symposium, i'm going to focus on the relationship between the ufw and black panther party which for some probably the most

surprising aspect of my -- of my book. so huey newton and bobby seal founded the plaque panther party in oakland, california in 1986 in response to overwhelming police brutality in that city. on the surface, as i said, this alliance surprises a lot of people because on the surface the ufw and the black panther party seem to be unlikely allies. panthers were african-american, militant, urban, socialist and therefore different in nearly every way from the largely mexican american, none violent, rural and catholic farm workers, but despite their differences, the ufw and the black panther party formed a highly successful coalition beginning in 1978 during the california boy crot of grapes. previously in the union's earlier strikes they would

target one grower at a time, and they would boycott that grower's contracts and when they got a union contract they would move on to the next buher. in 1967 they came up against one grower who was very stubborn and to undermine the boycott of its progress they convinced other grape growers in california to give other labels. so you might think you were buying grapes from a different grower but you were actually buying the grimara grapes and they put someone else's label on box. when it was discovered this was happening they went to chavez and said this is not going to work. we cannot do this boycott unless we boycott all california grapes. and i was like we're going.

it was easier and take the boycott nationwide. people are boycotting california groups so it's this moment that black panther party along with self other people in the country take notice of what the farm workers are doing and the panthers come to the union state immediately participate in rallies in support. the black panther newspaper regularly pushed articles explaining the great boycott and calling for its readers to join in the -- various members of the vfw told me was very effective because not only did they need bodies on the picket line -- panthers on picket line made it less like hi that they would be

harassed by the police. so -- and the panthers and the ufw -- the panthers weren't just helping the ufw. they were helping each other. they joined forces and this happens during the great boycott when both groups align against safeway grocery stores. safeway grocery stores, i believe they still are, but certainly they were at the time the largest grocery store change on west, and they refused to remove california grapes from the shelves. they also refused to donate to the black panther parties free breakfast for children program. the party ran this program to help underprivileged children of all races succeed in school by serving them a hot nutritious breakfast every morning and relied on locke rall businesses to make this happen and the panthers and the farm washingers

join forces. not only did they picket together. the panthers brought their particular know how. many of the panthers, including the panther leadership were veterans. a motor pool was formed for the black panther party to use, and he implemented that during the safeway boycott, so what happened was that in the evening when people get off work and go growsry shopping on their way home, panthers would recruit local children from the find to come man the picket line out in front of safeway, and then motor pool would be there, and the panthers would say to shoppers trying to come into the safeway store, please don't shop here. safeway is telling greats, dore

participate. and so we'll drive you in this car right here to lucky's. we'll right you while you shop and you don't have to carry those bags and chauffeur to the grocery store and by doing this the panthers are able to assist the farm workers in the star and the store meanwhile was shout dunn because of lack of customers because this motor pool was so successful. so following the uaw winning the first agricultural contract for farmers in the united states. the panthers and farmers continue to work together and their relationship grows and evolves. the panthers supported the ufw's production of iceberg lettuce. the ufw spoke out in defense of the black panther party when it

was subjected to violent repression by law enforcement and then -- an bill will be talking about this as well. their political interests coalesce, when california growers sponsor proposition 22 in 19727 where this proposition, had it pass, would have outlawed boycotts against agricultural products so it would have crippled bfw's organizing off the. this coincide when bobby seal was running for mayor of oakland. chavez and bfw endorse bobby seal's mayoral campaign. chavez goes door to door in oakland xanks on seal's behalf so this -- their we like evolves and grows and their interest, as

i said, continued to dovetail. what brought these organizations together in the first place and what made them look at each other against these gulfs of culture, of play, of identity, and reach out to each other? what makes this happen? so the first is a sense of cross-racial solidarity. there was a recommend in addition among both the panthers and the farm workers that both african-americans and mexican-americans suffered from similar patterns of racial discrimination, and this recognition of the shared -- the share repression is really the foundation for this -- for this alliance, and this is something that's misunderstood about the black panther party. while the black panther party certainly advocated for self-determination and black power, it also called for self-determination, political power, racial pride, economic

justice on behalf of all oppressed groups. not just african-americans, and it advocated multi-racial solidarity, and this is evidence in their slogan of all power to the people, right, so whereas other black power groups were wanting black acpower, black panthers did, that they also chanted all power to the people emphasizing this inclusiveness, this shared sense of power. this is later articulated by huey newton when he develops this philosophy of revolutionary incommunalism, this idea that oppressed people worldwide are united, that the national borders are inconsequential in the face of capitalism, but as i said, even before he articulates, that because he doesn't articulate that until '71, there's -- that foundation, that shared recognition of the plight of peoples of color is really foundational to the black

panther party ethos so they formed alliances with several organizations regardless of race, including the brown berets as carlos mentioned but also the young lords, the red guard, a radical chinese organization based in san francisco's chinatown, the young patriots, a group of young white afternoppan migrants in chicago. so in my book this is also very similar to what's happening with snic. snic also reached out to the farm workers on this recognition that mexican-american farm workers in california and african-american sharecroppers in the south were experiencing the same types of exploitation. and so there's this recognition of this cross-racial solidarity. so this is also by

place. the unique, one of the reasons the party imbrace this is multiracial solidarity is because of where it is. the unique of the american west often prompted, not just in the 1960s but earlier, we see in the 1940s where the naacp is working with latino and asian american organizations. and part of this is the diversity of california but then also part is because of the way segregation happens in the west. carlos alluded to this earlier where yes there was residential segregation but african americans and latinos were segregated to the same neighborhoods, especially in los angeles but also in oakland as well.

so panthers in oakland, or in los angeles as well, had grown up with latinos, with american indians, with asian americans. and so they shared the same experiences of residential segregation, inadequate education, police brutality. and so this shapes the party's development. and again, this is also characteristic of civil rights organizations in the west. civil rights organizations in the west tended to be more supportive of the ufw because they already have knowledge of mexican americans and their issues. so for example snic field secretaries in california, who were originally from california persuaded the rest of the organization to support the farm workers before the farm workers even national ly.

snic was working with the farm workers before even their first strike. this is how aware of whether the mexican american farm workers were experiencing in california. similar think naacp in the west had to fight new york to support the farm workers. so the contrasts are the southern based organization. in the 1960s and 1970s the south was still very much black and white. this changes in the 1980s with immigration reform. but in the south, as i said in the 60s and 70s, latino population was never more than about 4% of the population. so southern christian leadership conference for example wasn't aware of the struggles of latinos until the poor people's campaign in 1968 because they just weren't privy to it.

it wasn't what was happening in alabama and georgia and what have you. and so also later as black power organizations start to form in the south, again this makes sense. because it is coming from a place of strict black/white segregation. whereas the multiracial milieu of the san francisco bay area makes coalition building a more practical strategy for civil rights organizations. but also this relates to the -- the idea of place is not just about the regions of the count bry, it is also going back to rural versus urban, which the last panel addressed as well. the u of w is addressing not just farm workers but the system of inequality in rural agricultural areas. so civil rights activists who

had experience with agricultural labor, rural environments tended to be more supportive of the ufw. the black panther party, even though it was an urban organization, was largely composed even the leadership southern migrates themselves so or descended from the southern migrants. so the leadership of the party particularly had historical knowledge, they had family experience with rural inequality with agricultural labor. similarly snic conducted most of its organizing in rural areas. so they also -- oh really? see this is what happens when i try to like talk instead of [ laughter ] >> i was just telling somebody that if i don't just read i go over. so okay. so briefly, so two more points.

another thing that brings them together that enable this is coalition to form is class. again talking about this intersection of race and class and gender and place. panthers were the leadership e smeshl were socialist. so they saw the farm workers as fellow exploited workers. they believed that multi-racial cooperation against capitalism was more important than racial differences. and they were able to unite across race because they had this sense of class solidarity. snic also wiz was able to work with the panthers in this way. because again although not explicitly socialist, working with african american sharecroppers in the south gave them that experience of the ties between economic exploitation and racial discrimination.

and then finally leadership. even if an organization or even if two organizations have everything in common. they are in the same place. working at the same goals. the backgrounds of the members are similar, an alliance might not happen. because a coalition really is a relationship between individuals. so it takes someone to say hey this is important. i know we have this great big thing we're doing but what this other group is doing is really important and we need to work with them. so it takes a leader to make that step and make it happen. so the panthers that was bobby seal. bobby seal really spear head this is alliance that the rest of the part fully embraces. and he does so because his father had been a labor contractor. one of the things that farm workers were fighting against. he had an old school bus and he

would take farm workers out to the fields in california and then drive them home in the evening and he would charge the farm workers for the ride but then he would charge the farmers for bringing the workers. and bobby seal even as a child was outraged by this. he thought it was terrible. he wasn't comfortable wit. he would argue with his father about it. so when the government campaigns the use of labor contractors he's on board and says this is who we're going to work. same for snic, mike miller, head of the san francisco office, makes that relationship happen. leonard carter spear heads that alliance. so it takes a leader to say we're going to have this relationship. we're going to bridge these divides. so i'll just conclude by saying this relationship between the black panther party and the united farm workers are an example of the possibilities inherent in coalition building.

that such divergent organizations as the ufw and the black panther party can come together and in an alliance that is truly productive -- you know, the farm workers win labor contracts or union contacts. they give visibility from the panthers giving them a platform in their newspaper in bobby seal's campaign. the panthers also benefit. they get help with the safeway boycott but they are also -- their image among latinos greatly improves because chavez is endorsing him. and thinking maybe they are reluctant about the panthers but when chavez gives the okay then all of a sudden they are embraced by more conservative elements of the latino community. so this shows what can happen when organizations look beyond their differences to find their commonalities.

thank you. [ applause ] >> bilinogenings. bi bill jennings. >> greetings everyone. my name is billy x. jennings. i'm glad to be here. former member of the black panther party. joined in 1968 and i stayed in the organization till 1974. the first person -- i'd like to give like a photo essay of my involvement in the black panther party and community work. because so many people have

talked about the black panther party today. so i was born in the south in anderson, alabama. we call it the scene of the crime. and my mother was very instrumental many my political consciousness. we were from alabama. my dad was in the service. he left -- my dad was in the military. so i'm from alabama and we was transferred to san diego, california. we made that journey in 1955 just as the montgomery boycott was starting in alabama. and so one of the first things we did when we got to california, my mother made my father buy a tv. because tvs was not a come thing in households at that time. so in order to keep one the

struggle in our home state in alabama my mother made my dad buy a tv and every day watch walter cronkite report what was going on in the south. and my mother used to get so emotional. so mad. because she seen bull conners. racist police. our people being hosed down and dogs being sicked on them just for trying to vote or attend a rally. my mother used to get so emotional. back in those days, later on i had nine other brothers and sisters but at the time i was the only child. and she would look at me and say boy don't you ever let nobody do that kind of stuff to you. so she just instilled that in to me. i went on with my life. and in my junior year, i was coming back from a track meet. i was on the track team for

lemore high school in san joaquin valley. i used to fight every day in junior high school. and he was my physical education teacher. and he would see me fighting every day because of somebody calling me a name or something like that. and he came uhm to me one day and said bills you can't fight everybody. you have to pick your moments. and that is exactly what he did in 1968. so when he went to olympics and won that gold medal and i seen him standing up there and put his fist up said this is what he's talking about. choosing your moments. so later on i'm still in california. we moved to -- we're still in san diego. and so the panthers go to sacramento in 1967 and i see them on tv. and i was so kpiepted about that. i woke my dad up. he hates to be woken up after

he's in his easy chair. and said dad look at this. and he was amazed to see black people was doing something like that. and these are the same brothers. bobby seal in the middle. emory douglas. these are the panthers that went to sacramento and changed history for black people in america. because they stood up and took a positions we're not going to take police brutality. and they started the organization to parole police officers in the black community. and did because huey newton was going to high scholaw school. and panthers would carry law book in their arms when they went to engage with the police. because the police at that time, they didn't -- they didn't take much to be a police officer. let me say that. it didn't take much. you didn't have to go to college. you didn't have to do any of that stuff. all you had to do was look tougher or know somebody. so a lot of these cops didn't even know the laws and we would

cite the laws to them but historically that lawbook has been dissected out of our arms. most people didn't even know we were doing that. we were citing laws. they didn't understand the miranda law. that was instituted in 1966 the same year the black panther party started and we were reciting to it people and they didn't even know what it was. cops like this, old-timers. bad attitude people we had to deal with in our community. so the black panther party not only dealt with police brutality. we dealt with -- we dealt with various types of discrimination, you know. so most people just know the black panther party from dealing with the police but black panther party had a ten point program. within that program we fought for fair housing, better living conditions. and what really attracted me was point six. we want all black men exempt

from military service. i was a i was 17 and they started had lottery. when i read that, i'm like yeah i'm against the draft too. and the thing about it was black people was recruited, drafted to go fight a what are for democracy. there was no democracy for black people. remember 1965 president johnson signed a bill called the voting right act. they were sending people before that. black representatives and chicago represe-- chick knoothes war. at the height of our existence we had 51 offices in 30 cities. international support. an embassy in algeria. when aldrich cleveland was ran

out of the country in 1969 he established an embassy in algeria. later on we got an embassy in sweden, a support committee in paris run by richard wright's daughter t author of "native son." we had support and north vietnamese, they gave us our embassy in algeria. because they were mooifing to a bigger one. and these are many of the rallies that happened during that time. and there's been a lot said about coalition building. when we had rallies -- just couple weeks ago, a reporter asked well wasn't the plaque pane -- black panther party a racist? i said you hadn't done your history. how could you say that.

they ran cleveland for president. sds. the biggest antiwar group going, white group. so we had that solidarity is in the black panther party's dna. i do a lot of -- today i do a lot of exhibits, displays, and this is one of them. it is a combination of -- i call it the early years. you know we was marching and rallying around certain issues. later on in 1969, this is something that people really don't look at or don't even know about the black panther party social programs. . we had something like twenty and the most known is the free breakfast for school children program. this is operated early in the morning and the reason why we started is because it opened young people -- opens level of poverty was below poverty level.

you had blacks and chicano kids going to school hungry. and so we started this social program to feed kids and it took off in oakland. the black panther party was the first organization do that. and just before i came here, i looked at the agriculture department and they claimed they feed 6.2 million kids a year. they call it their nutrition program. but it is the same thing the black panther party started. we embarrassed them into starting that program because at that time the government was busy shooting rockets to the moon. dogs and among keys to the moon when our people here were starving. so later on in 1971 they started had free breakfast program and feeding kids throughout the country. so we started doing that. also at the same time we took up

where snic left off. they had summer schools and we had liberation schools. early stages there was no black history classes. none taught anywhere except make a black college down south. but in metropolitan cities there was no history being taught. even i came up without even know the full potential of our people. and when you don't know that you are really lacking. so we took it as a very important thing to educate young people. and that was a whole focus. educating young people. feeding the kids. giving them a better chance of life than we had. free food program. we're known for that. at various stages of our organization we gave away tens of thousands of groceries. we'd give away food, register people to vote. this is the first time grown people had ever been asked to reg store to vote. black panther party did that.

we just can't do it in california. we did it throughout the country. we would give away 10,000 free bags of groceries, register people to vote and do sickle cell anemia testing. people didn't know what that was. doctors didn't know what that was, the government didn't know. until the black panther party made it known. even in 1972 richard mill house pig nixon brought up that in the state of union speech in 1972. and we have to do more to conquer sickle cell anemia. i wonder where he got that at. so we started these community centers throughout america. right? so in this particular picture you can see people from the community. we have a voter registration there. you see one guy with a big box of cereal he's taking home to his family. and there was a meeting place for people in the community. so we provided services 24 hours a day. and because we did this, a whole

purpose was to bring the social consciousness of people to a certain level so they could start to finding their own situation and start taking more stern action. so we got involved in rent control. we got control -- we also did a lot of protesting. because at that time in america it was very common for landlords to use lead-based paint in their apartments. and many young kids start chipping -- start eating that and got lead poisoning. so we protest against that, bad conditions. also black panther party was at the vanguard. women were 50% of our organization. women had just as much right as any male in our organization to be a leader or be in charge of

an office. we have a number of offices throughout america that was run by women. the boston office. you know the mount vernon office down in new york. we had different offices in memphis tennessee that was run by women. you know they were -- they were the word. not only that, during the course of the black panether party era we had like 14 free medical clini clinics. two still open to this day in seattle washington and portland oregon. and we provided services. we didn't ask your last name. is your mother and father's last name the same. we didn't ask how much money you made. we said if you have an ailment come down to the clinic. so we employed women as well. which is a very good image for young women.

now this is sickle cell anemia program in l.a. it was named after aapprentice bunchy carter who was murder in 1969. we talked about that earlier, i think carlos did. now, this right here, east 9th and 26th. called jingle town in oakland. like an undeveloped area. it's close proximity to a dell monty cannery. and back in 1969 a lot of migrant workers came through jingle town and were bringing their kids. and so we set up a free breakfast program at the mary's help for christian church. most of the kids were chicano but we didn't care because they were hungry. so in working with the local people there, a brown beret unit established itself in that area and started working with us on a daily basis at the free breakfast for school children program.

so eventually within 6 months they were able to take that program over theirselveses which relieved us to go do other organizationing abilities. so we worked hand in hand with the brown beret, united farm workers, any group that was moving forward. moving up to 1972 people talked about bobby seal's campaign. i ran the main campaign office. and during the campaign there was talk about proposition 22. proposition 22 was a proposition that the growers wanted to put on the ballot. so i worked directly with united farm worker people because they would come to our office and i was sited and precincts to work in. so i they worked hand in hand with panther members. we might send six out to

precincts. three chicanos and three members of the black month panther party. during that campaign to me personally i thought it was the best thing to ever happen to oakland. we rescued tens of thousands of people. we gave away food. even though we didn't win the election, the fact we almost did. we got into a runoff. there were nine other candidates. some was city council. some was millionaires. we kicked all their butts and we got into a runoff and we scared the mess out of oakland. and so they ahead to come out real racist to us. they e shoed old time bobby seal with his .45. and showed -- with his robe on and said which do you want to be mayor? cold-blooded. but even though we lost the election it opened had door and swung the door wide open. and next election we had a black

mayor. we had chicanos on the city council. so there was a positive result behind that. so this is bobby and elaine during the campaign. the black panther party, the paper was very important. right here on the front cover is lettuce from the lettuce strike. and also during 1969 it was seven chicano brothers in san francisco that was arrested. they were called las iete. the organization grew so fast they can't have the personnel or equipment to mobilize people. so the black panther party newspaper, already a million seller, you know, on the back we decided to butt basti ya, and the panther paper until they were able to get their own

paper. which started i think in october 19 -- >> old it up again. >> basta ya. so working with different people with different interests was not anything new. now also this is a personal picture from our archives and caesar chavez. i was given a bunch of negatives from a former photographer before he died. and in the box was a negative. you see this chair in this negative. you go from frame to frame. and see this chair out in the field. they are having a rally out in the field. and you see this chair moving about each frame. and then the last frame you cc sar sitting in the chair. -- caesar sitting in the chair. this is the black panther party newspaper boycotting safeway. i still don't shop that safeway [ applause ] i still don't shop that safeway. and this is myself right here holding the united farm worker

sign. i always wear a straw hat. that's where my grand kids are able to find me in these pictures. also same time in 1968 there was a national strike of auto workers. gm and ford gone on strike to black panther party members supported them. they supported students on camps likes i was. growth street college. now in today's era we started a number of programs called black panther history month. and every october we have the speakers coast to coast. this is myself in chicago. this is myself and huey newton. straw hat again. that was my job 1971. the central committee t governing body of the party used to say to to this. whatever happen to huey, it better happen to you first.

so we had world connection with different groups. last year i went to australia and i was there with the aborigine panthers. i've been to portugal, london, all around the world. because we have panthers in the east [ cell phone ] we have panthers in all of those places because we were able to adopt our fraprogram to fit the needs. these are fallen members of the party. during course of the party 28 members were killed. there was a thing that the fbi started called co-intel pro. counterintelligent program. killed a lot of people. jald a lot of people. something like 19 political prisoners still in jail and one is this guy right here. he's not in jail. he got away and he's in african american for 40 years. but he has a lot of programs there as well. so there is a number of people who's done positive work.

even today, even the city are starting to pull up historical markers of what panthers had done work in the community. and this is our 45th year banner. you can see right under the free all political prisoners, there is a -- that is lettuce. that is let frtuce from the lete strike for the farm workers. so we always keep that in memory. i do a lot of speeches at the high schools and clenls and the -- colleges and these are some of the collages i've done. and in october 17th and 19th we're vig a big panther reunion down in kansas city. so i'm going to end it there. if you are any questions or suggestions you can come to our website. website is full of information. so i'd like to end it right now. our 50 years is coming up in 2016.

>> all right. thank you. [ applause ] >> so lauren, if you and kathleen would join us on stage. >> well it is such an honor to be with you two here today and thank you so much for your wonderful presentations lauren and bill. i think this first question, i had it planned, but i think carlos really inspired me to frame it the way i'm going to

frame it. i want to ask you what are the less lessons that were drown from these coalitions and efforts to reach across racial and cultural movements in the california area. okay, you, lauren, explain how -- you know, how the beginning of this coalition was inspired. the recognition of the shared repression. but i'm interested in the transformational process and the "blow my mind "mome" moments of union throughout the years. i think proposition 22 was one of those moments for sure. but what were the moments of a learning from each other, the discoveries i guess of this

union? >> well i could say that we -- we set the table for people to come after us. because we showed that this can actually work. you know, solidarity works. in 1971 we put the initiative on the ballot in berkeley called the community control the police. at that time berkeley was like a center for the activities. college kids and people from interest community beat up from the police. we 16,000 signatures and put that on the ballot. even though it lost. we had 38%, it showed that we could do that. that if we could concentrate a little bit harder we could bring people to the poles and get them to vote. and that whole effort is a learning effort. black panther party believed in revolution. and we knew that the way to do that is to raise people's political consciousness. and that is what we did.

and that's what the newspaper was about, the rallies, giving people information they didn't have before. in the black panther party we believe that information is the raw material for new ideas. so our whole agenda was to educate people to lift their political ideology so they can see the future, so they can see the contradictions that are before them. so by working with the united farm workers we showed people can work together. we can acrossline. we have common interest. because the black panther party saw the struggle not as a race struggle but as a class struggle. and based it on just what i heard today about the poor peoples march. in that same year the black panther party started a chant and it went black power to black people, red power to red people. brown power to brown people. yellow power to yellow people. people had never ever heard that before. that was like mind blowing.

you know, people actually said okay. you know, we should have this. so it is all about educating people and organizing. that is what people can walk away from today. they lift the conscious of each era in america or each generation to a higher level. so the other generation is not going to take what the generation took before. just like when i was 17 i wasn't going to take what my parents took. i'm not taking no beat down. if someone's going to get hurt i'm not going to be the only one. >> i was thinking something about gordon said earlier about, that even if -- uhm, it doesn't matter if these coalitions are fleeting. if it is around one campaign or if it's around one boycott, it is still important. and i definitely have had this critique from another historian friend actually. who was like, well, you know, the bobby seal campaign is one

year and the safeway boycott is this many months. is this really a coalition? i said yes. because it is still a moment of people coming together. it is still a moment of working together, producing a tangible outcome. so even if it's short-term, even if it is a handful of people it is still important. because it is still showing the possibilities of what can happen when people, again, you know, dig deeper. when they don't look at the differences that are an the surface but they uncover all the things they have in common that are much deeper than that. and what can happen. >> and it wasn't always that stable because i was reading that in the late '60s the black panther party there was a period of time you couldn't support the farm workers union because you were concerned with all these trials and you had to unite and the early '70s and proposition 22 and the mayoral campaigns and

united again. so can you talk about how this all sort of fluctuated. >> well i would say like -- when we go into the community to educate people. and that was our main focus, to educate people. it doesn't matter. we explained to them who their enemy was. you know, it is the average businessman, the lying politician and it is the armed part of the system t police department and military that is our oppressor. so we building on that. people already had bad experiences with the capitalists because they were the ones who were running the united farm workers were working against. so we had to identify who their friends and who their enemies are. so it's a whole educational process. just when we work with the farm workers, it wasn't just a year. it was every day thing. because the struggles are every day. you don't take a day off. so, you know, we learned from each other. we had first aid stations.

we had rest stations and stuff like that. so because of the black panther party being a revolutionary group we was attacked by the government. so a lot of our time was distracted from our work in the community because we had legal problems, you know. bobby seal, huey newton the whole leadership of the black panther party went to jail. but also in 1969, 400 members of the black panther party went to jail on various charges and the reason is because o a lot of them was bogus charge, harassment charges just so we could spend bail money to get the people out of jail. and they will be arrested for like selling the black panther party newspaper. and everybody knows you're supposed to have freedom of the press. but not us. so those kind of things were continuous every day struggle. and so united farm workers, the brown beret, and other organizations had to go through the same thing.

besides fighting the police departments we also daid a lot f political work. >> sure, what he's alluding to when i was doing my archival work i noticed in both the ufw papers are wayne state and detroit and huey newton papers are at stanford. and when i was looking at the letters between the ufw leadership and the black panther leadership there was a lull in the early seventies and i had to go back and look. and it's because everybody was in jail. and it was during -- so when the lettuce boycott begins, it is when bobby seal and erica huggins are on trial in connecticut. so every bit of the panther party's energy and resources were being directed to assisting with that trial. once they win the trial and they are released, then pretty much immediately they turned their

attention right back to the work that they had been doing. so like you were saying, like it is an every day struggle. there wasn't a timeout. but the focus for a little while had to be getting, you know, bobby and erica free. so once that happens they are able to put their resources back towards the lettuce boycott, which they do. >> and move beyond the lettuce boycott, during that same time, when bobby seal ran for mayor of oakland, he also initiated -- he brought up before the city council that we should have bilingual ballots and also the language on the ballot should be that other people could read it. and that was way before the system decided to do that. so the black panther party first suggested that because it was only the right thing to do, you know. and beside the bilingual ballots we worked in the community in

fruitville, which is the main chicano area. and we was able to get a lot of support from people because we were pushing the issue that was dear to their hearts. >> yeah. even goes beyond the farm workers that these election materials. it points out, this is before the voting rights act, the amendment in 1975 includes language but didn't in 1972 when the panthers brought this up. so it is really ahead of its time. and not only did bobby seal take this to city council but he explains it to the black leaderships and he says spanish is the first language of california and this is really important. so he's -- like bill's been saying it's about educating. not just educating other communities but educating their own community as well. and so really gets everybody behind this initiative.

>> i'm also interested in having you talk a little bit about this tension between the non violence and militancy. well it was mostly in the black panther party but i was reading at some point the -- you know, the farm workers struggle. so there was some people within the movement that, you know, started, you know, getting tired of the non violence. and was the union between the black panther party and the farm workers union, did this effect -- did the union effect this sort of tension between non violence and violence? did it decrease it? did it increase it? i don't know. >> well let me say, black panther party was based on -- philosophy was based on malcolm x. we called ourselves the children

of malcolm x and he didn't believe in non violence. that was the main contradiction between malcolm x and martin luther king. so as children of malcolm we took that position. and they also brought up the fact me, most of us came from the south. i came from aniston. and we could not take a non violent posture in a light of what was happening on a nationwide level. we were all from the south. we saw what was happening in memphis and stuff like that. so my mother was not a non violent person. she believed in self defense and taught all of her kids, all ten of us to do that. so that philosophy was permanent in the black panther party but did not stop us from working with other groups. because we worked with church groups. we had 90% of our breakfast programs at churches. so even though we believed in self defense, that just because

someone was non violent or thought their method was different from ours, as long as we got together on the strategy and what direction to go, it didn't matter. >> within the farm workers, non violence -- i mean it was really chavez's thing. so he studied gandhi. he was deeply committed to non violence, not just on a tactical level but a deeply philosophical level but doesn't mean the rest of the farm workers were. so in the early days of the ufw chavez realizes the rest of the farmers really aren't on board with this. and he invites members of snic and core to delano to teach classes. because the others aren't really going along with. this then the panthers relationship and the farm workers are kind of questioning. wait this whole effort to be non

violent and then we're working with the panthers. and then other unions, because remember the farm workers while fighting discrimination they are a union and in the aflcio. so one of the documents i found was a letter from a man in another aflcio yunion who was like how can you work with the panthers? how can you do this? and chavez was look, they are oppressed so we're going to help them. and it didn't matter. the difference between chavez and some other practitioners of non violence was chavez knew that for him non violence was the way but he knew that it wasn't necessarily the way for everyone. and so in fact one of the more surprising documents i found in my research, there is an interview with caesar chavez at the jacques levy collection at yale where he's very critical of the martin luther king. non violence is fine but you

shouldn't force it on other people. you know, it's not for everyone. so he didn't feel there is any contradiction in working with the party at all. he says like they are oppressed, they are dealing with the same things we are. therefore we are going to work together. >> but he took it very seriously. i mean he even fasted sometimes, right? >> but for him it was always deeply personal. right. so he wasn't expecting everyone else to be that way. he was committed to it on a level that he knew that other people weren't, you know, willing to do. but that didn't stop him from working with others. >> yeah. i'm going clear up b one point. even though we had different philosophies and non violent was not our philosophy. didn't mean that the black panther party was violent. black panther party stood for self defense. that means if you start trouble with us you better look out. we don't go to the police department and shoot at the police department. we don't go at 4:00 in the morning and start trouble with

them. or anything like that. but if you come to our neighborhood and do that, you got trouble. that is called self defense. because no one here is going to let anyone walk up -- to them and insult them or slap them around. nobody here will let that happen to them. the as self defense mechanism that everybody has. and this is what we had as a people. we was not going to take that no more. >> okay. i'm going to move on to -- i'm going to ask bill about your -- the archive that you are building and the exhibits that you have put together, which is wonderful work. what is your main goal in collecting all of this and building this archive and producing these exhibits? what is your main hope? >> educate people. because the concept of the black panther party has been miscon screwed. the legacy of the people is all over the place. people think the black panther party was racist and blah blah

blah. so what i've done -- and i've been a collector all my life. only time i wasn't collecting stuff was when i was in the black panther party. before that as a kid i had super man comic books dating back to 1947. every moral spiderman, i had all those. baseball collections, i had coin collections. even a stamp collection. i even have the first stamp that ghana produced. the first independent state in africa, i collected that. i was 10 years old. so that had always stayed with me. and when i got -- actually i was listening to bobby seal. and bobby seal was saying something that was incorrect. i was like wait no that ain't right. and so -- and not only that all he had was the huey p. newton and the archive starts only after he gets out of jail in 1970 so the things before are

not even documented. so that was my energy to tell the story of the reconciled. not the leadership that everybody knows about. but the reconciled party members. right? so i started collecting panther papers. i -- party put out 510 issues of the paper. i have 475. i have a lot of them on the website. taken fliers from different rallies to put them on. i have a massive collection of underground newspapers, sds left notes. write ones. detroit free press, the l.a. free press. the brown beret t united farm workers newspapers. i try to take samps les of thos and put them on the website and show what the media was saying about these people. so a person going to the website is saying what this -- were saying and what we were say so they can make they are oin

judgment. it's au all about educating peoo have the correct information. >> i've been instructed they need to open it for questions to the audience. does anyone have any questions? and i'm going to give this -- microphone. >> so if we could fast forward to 2014 when i think the leading cause of death in minority men is violence. and in looking at the organizations that have taken hold of some of the communities in l.a., the bgf, marasa dies y o choe. what is it going to take to.

>> black people started organizing these young men. and in chicago the oldest gang in america is black stone nation or black peace stone nation. fred hampton, a former member of the naacp started organizing those around the black paneth ert party program. they started changing the way they process the information. why are we tearing off our community. why are we treating kids like this? and made them look at that and same thing with john huggins and bunchy carter in l.a. they started changing the gangs around because that he had revolutionary idea to help the community. and what it is going to take is revolutionaries who go back in the community and reteach and reorganize people. because what they have done, we take one step forward and two steps back. we had different organizations and groups. like the slawsons for instance.

when bunchy carter got of the prison. he had learned through the process of being in prison what it took to make change. so he took the ideology of the black panther party down to l.a. and said we're not going to be the slawsons no more. we are now the black panther party and all you o who don't want to be in our group you can leave. that was the kind of the down fall of gangs at that time. the era between 1968 and 74 you don't hear too much about gang activity. as a matter of fact the juvenile delinquency rate in all those communities went down. do you know why? because they have a new model. they have a new image in the community. they have a guy or sister in the community who are educated who, one, feeding them breakfast in the morning. two we had a senior escort

service. we used to escort seniors to get their checks cashed at the first of the month. do you know why? because there was no such thing as direct deposit in those days and every criminal and low natured person. so there was a lot of assaults on senior citizens and stuff like that. so we took those negative things and turned them into a positive. even the crooks and the gangsters realized this is a good thing. because they had mothers too. and they didn't want those things to happen to their mothers. so it is going to take a philosophy and someone strong enough and respectful enough to get these gang's attention for that to happen. and it is going to take a process. it might not happen in you or me lifetime but it is going to be hard. >> anymore more questions? >> i wondered if you had an opinion about occupy? >> who me?

>> yeah. >> oh. occupy. occupy was cool with me. they were kind of short range as far as their ideoloa ologology i was glad to see people mobilizing. and being from oakland who where they had the strongest vanguard or occupy people, you know, they invited us down to speak at least once a week. some party members were talking about some of the experience they had about being in the party because they wanted to know what it took. so we would come down and have political education classes with occupy. the only problem i had with occupy is they didn't -- they didn't see the full picture. they wanted too much democracy and not enough activity. [ laughter ] >> i think i have one last question for lauren. about your research and about your research methods. outside of archival and primary

sources and secondary sources, you also did a lot of interviews. and you interviewed bill in 2005, i think. >> probably. >> sure. >> around. >> -- >> and i interviewed maria as well i think back in 2000 i interviewed you the first time. yeah. >> do you want to talk a little bit about, you know, what the process of an interview. >> sure. i did quite a bit of archival work. but a lot of my work is based on oral histories. you know, i have the good fortune of a lot of these activists being with us. and also i went to graduate school at berkeley, and so a lot of them live nearby. so that was nice. so -- but -- but also, as i pointed out, coalitions are really about people. coalitions don't stwartart with memo. they don't start with a newspaper article. they start by a visit, a

conversation. so mike miller the head of the snic office in industriessan fr caesar chavez shows up and asks him to cook him breakfast. and skd asks for his help organizing a boycott of this lig liquor company. when bobby seal wants chavez's endorsement when he's running for mayor, actually bill told me to call big man over big man howard. so i called big man -- there is a reason he's called big man. huge. i called bigman and we meet and he tells me a story that is not recorded anywhere. where basically some volunteer gets a crop duster and flies big man and bobby seal to la paz and they immediate with chavez in the union hall. and they have dinner together and then bobby asks for chavez's

endorsement. chavez says yes and they get back on the plane and fly back to oakland. and big man was terrified the entire time. this little rickety crop duster hovering over the fields. it's windy in the central valley all the time. but that is a story that is not written anywhere. and chavez is no longer with us. and bobby's memory isn't what it was. [ laughter ] -- well? >> that's true. >> you know, so -- yeah i talked to big man. and then i talked to one of chavez's son-in-laws who was also his body guard who was also there to find out about this conversation that's not recorded anywhere. and then also again because coalition is really about people working together.

and you are only going to get the real story of coalition if you talk to those people. >> okay. anymore questions? >> carlos has a question. >> i know you are up in oakland, right. but, you know, in l.a. we had a strong working relationship with the party. the free huey newton rally at the sports arena. did you go to that one? >> no. but there's pictures of that. >> yeah. you know, stokely spoke, ron, teherana and elvis cleaver grew up in east l.a. so when he got out of joint and a lot of the guys in the joint got us together and we met him and kathleen. and we had a forum in east l.a. where tejerena spoke and you know when the [ expletive ] hit the fan and the shootings and

everything and bobby. we had to break with us with the whole thing of the killing of the bunchy carter and john huggins. have you seen the movie "the raid on central street" the big raid. >> they used some of our photos from archiving. >> when we got busted they would come support us and we had funerals we would be there. so that is another story. >> but at the same time in terms of history, in southern california was one of our biggest supporters. southern california's chapter ran from bakersfield to texas to louisiana. so the brothers from l.a. not only had southern california. they organized in sanita ana, sn diego, houston chapter, the dallas chapter, chapters all along the southern plains. so the southern chapter of the black panther party was a very strong chapter and all the work they did with the young -- with

hasn't been documented but i would love to collaborate with someone because i'm doing oral mists myself. so -- >> i think there was one last question over here. >> again, in the interest of bringing it forward some, and i apologize i was not here at the beginning of the program, i may have missed something, but i'm thinking about the southern farmers cooperative and then currently an organization, the rural coalition which does work to bring farm workers together across all groups. did any of those activities begin to come in to the research because i don't know, lauren, when your research ended, but in terms of thinking about what we do today, what groups we look to support and become a part of. >> right. i'm really definitely -- it doesn't come in to play, my book

ends about '73, '74. even though you have black and white my grant farm workers in the south at this time you only get an influx of latino my grant farm workers starting in the mid-'80s. i'm encouraged by the groups that are forming now in the south around -- again modern day multiracial coalition building around labor and there's quite a few groups that you pointed out that are working together. the only southern farm worker group that i really talked about was the one in mississippi which is an off shoot of the mississippi freedom democratic party. there's an attempt to unionize share croppers. i only talk about them briefly because they are not able to harness support from local civil rights groups at the time, for example they reach out to clc and clc is not terribly interested. they are turning their attention to urban areas at the time.

so they are ultimately not successful. but i definitely look at the groups that are forming now and having quite a bit of success and seeing that and realize that as an extension of some of the multiracial coalition building that you see with the united farm workers. the way it's articulated is very similar. mine stopped in '73-'74. i don't address these minor groups. but i believe -- i know there are others who have done quite a bit of work on this. i believe, gordon, does max work on some of these southern unions? okay. yeah. right. right. [ inaudible ] >> in the mississippi valley, so there were some mexican-american workers in the south before the 1970s and '80s and there's a

book out there that i'm forgetting the name of right now that looks at that. but, yes. so there's some attempts, but it's a -- much of it is not very successful. >> right. >> i have a footnote. footnote to this conversation or as johnny would say, sidebar. that there's a lot of information on this subject in a newspaper called "the southern patriot." it was put out -- the group used to be in new orleans, they left and moved to kentucky/tennessee. but their paper was out for sma ib years and has a lot of information in it. >> i'm sorry. >> thank you very much. [ applause ] >> the c-span cities tour takes c-span 3 american history tv on the road.

here's a feature from one of our recent trips across the country. [ bell tolding ] >> san miguel chapel is known as the oldest chapel in the united states most likely because it's built before 1300. so parts of it are still there. in fact, if you go to the altar, you can see the original steps to the first sacristy that dates back to 1300. the indians are said to have built san miguel mission. they came in here in search of riches or they came in search of better land so that could grow their crops, but with all of that, because of their devotion

to catholicism, they needed some place to worship. and so that became san miguel chapel. at the time it was san miguel mission. it's been noted as several different things, san miguel chapel or san miguel mission, but that's probably why they came here. they needed some place to worship. this church actually has been built and rebuilt several different times due to different types of destruction. but originally, they came here and built a small chapel. and it's probably because they were just devout catholics and they needed some place to worship. the building is basically made of adobe by which is mud. in this day, they used mud, clay and straw. back in the 1600s, they used mud, manure, and straw. and that's how they built it. adobe is made and sun baked for several, several days before it is able to be stacked to form a wall. and depending on how they stack the adobe, determines the depth of the wall.

san miguel statue is at the center bottom of the altar and san miguel is the patron of the mission church. it dates from the 1600s. it was carved in old mexico by missionaries and then brought to santa fe. above san miguel is christ of nazarene and the typical art bork was first discovered by the archaeologists in 1955, found beneath the large wooden -- the painting was sent to the taylor museum of art in colorado springs. their artists worked at cleaning and restoring it and as you see it today. the bell of san miguel dates back to 1356. this bell was brought to us and it was actually on a three-tiered tower that fell at one point, and landed on top of the cemetery in front of the chapel.

so now we just -- we keep it in the church. santa fe is very significant as being the holy city of faith. and generations of peoples have come here to worship in san miguel chapel. so since its inception, its had a continuous serving mass. we continually have mass at 2:00 in latin, and at 5:00 in english. so i believe that there's just a spiritual feeling that you get about coming here. it's not a museum. it's a place of worship and a place -- it's very, very spiritual to many people. not only because of what has happened many years past, but what you can gain from what is happening today. i often ask people to take a step back, come in, take their time and absorb what may have happened so many hundreds of years ago. and get a feel for what the

people were that came here back then, lived through and went through. and continue to remember that we all came from somewhere. whether it be devastation or privilege, but faith and commitment is what's most important in life. >> the c-span city's tour takes book tv and american history tv on the road. this weekend we partnered with time warner cable for a visit to green bay, wisconsin. >> wisconsin is known as america's dairyland because we make the most cheese but also the best cheese. the industry developed in

wisconsin from what was homestead cheese where everybody, each farm family made cheese for their own use, it was recognized that we had an ideal environment for raising dairy cow and cheese was really just a way to take that perishable product before refrigeration would last only three days. if you make cheese, cheddar cheese can last for a decade. this was late 1880s when the industry got started in wisconsin. generally farmers in the neighborhood would form a cooperative. they would build a cheese factory and they would hire cheese maker and the cheese maker would work for the cooperative on shares. the cheese makers tended to move around a lot. there were thousands. in 1930 over 2,000 cheese plants in wisconsin. it has transportation and a road system improved there was consolidation among the smaller plants and that continued up

until about 1990 when there were only about 200 cheese factories in wisconsin. >> watch all of your own events 1970s. watch us in hd, like us in facebook and follow us on twitter. >> and now on cspan 3, it's american history tv, first up a panel discussion on minority activism leading up to the 198 election. african-american and -- we'll hear from panelists on how people from different races work together and why the movement was largely remembered as being dominated by african-americans. this event was part of a symposium to mark national hispanic heritage month. it's an hour and 20 minutes.