In 1966, members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, an
African American civil rights group with Southern roots, joined Cesar
Chavez and the United Farm Workers union on its 250-mile march from
Delano to Sacramento, California, to protest the exploitation of
agricultural workers. SNCC was not the only black organization to
support the UFW: later on, the NAACP, the National Urban League, the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Black Panther Party
backed UFW strikes and boycotts against California agribusiness
throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s.
To March for Others explores the reasons why black activists,
who were committed to their own fight for equality during this
period, crossed racial, socioeconomic, geographic, and ideological
divides to align themselves with a union of predominantly Mexican
American farm workers in rural California. Lauren Araiza considers
the history, ideology, and political engagement of these five civil
rights organizations, representing a broad spectrum of African
American activism, and compares their attitudes and approaches to
multiracial coalitions. Through their various relationships with the
UFW, Araiza examines the dynamics of race, class, labor, and politics
in twentieth-century freedom movements. The lessons in this eloquent
and provocative study apply to a broader understanding of political
and ethnic coalition building in the contemporary United States.