It began with 70 strikers.
On March 17, 1966 after a stand-off with the Delano police, Cesar Chavez led La Peregrinacíon (The Pilgrimage), a march of Delano grape strikers and volunteers onto the highway en route to Sacramento. Their goal was to meet with the governor of California to protest the hazardous working conditions of farm workers and to call attention to their struggle for union recognition. They walked nearly 340 miles in 25 days.
By Easter Sunday, the march reached Sacramento and the crowd had swelled to more than 10,000 supporters.
In this presentation of The Library Channel, The UC San Diego Library announces the purchase of the Farmworker Movement Documentation Project, an online archive containing thousands of documents related to the history of the United Farm Workers’ union and related events. A short video on the historic March to Sacramento in 1966 is shown followed by a discussion with two participants in the march: Roberto Bustos and LeRoy Chatfield, key advisors to Cesar Chávez.