An Organizer's Tale: Speeches

by Cesar Chavez, Ilan Stavans (Editor), Ilan Stavans (Introduction)

Overview

The first major collection of writings by civil rights leader Cesar Chavez

One of the most important civil rights leaders in American history, Cesar Chavez was a firm believer in the principles of nonviolence, and he effectively employed peaceful tactics to further his cause. Through his efforts, he helped achieve dignity, fair wages, benefits, and humane working conditions for hundreds of thousands of farm workers. This extensive collection of Chavez's speeches and writings chronicles his progression and development as a leader, and includes previously unpublished material. From speeches to spread the word of the Delano Grape Strike to testimony before the House of Representatives about the hazards of pesticides, Chavez communicated in clear, direct language and motivated people everywhere with an unflagging commitment to his ideals.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101201558
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/29/2008
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	577 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Cesar Chavez was a civil rights and labor leader, a farmworker, a crusader for nonviolent social change, and an environmentalist and consumer advocate. He was born on March 31, 1927, near his family's farm in Yuma, Arizona. His family lost their farm in the Great Depression and later became migrant farmworkers when Chavez was ten. Throughout his youth and into his adulthood, Chavez migrated across the American Southwest, laboring in the fields and vineyards where he was exposed to the injustices of farmworker life. After achieving only an eighth-grade education, Chavez left school to support his family. Chavez's life as a community organizer began in 1952, when he joined the Community Service Organization (CSO), a prominent Latino civil rights group. While with the CSO, he coordinated voter registration drives and conducted campaigns against racial and economic discrimination primarily in urban areas. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Chavez served as the CSO's national director. Chavez died in 1993 at the age of 66.

Ilan Stavans is the author of numerous short stories and more than 15 works of nonfiction, including Quixote: The Novel and the World and Resurrecting Hebrew. His many awards and honors include an Emmy nomination, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Pablo Neruda Medal, and the National Jewish Book Award (for his anthology The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature). He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture and the Five College Fortieth Anniversary Professor at Amherst College.

Table of Contents

Introduction   Ilan Stavans     vii
Suggestions for Further Reading     xxxiii
Chronology     xxxvii
A Note on the Text     xliii
An Organizer's Tale
We Shall Overcome     1
On the NFWA     3
A Penitential Procession     10
The Plan of Delano     12
An Organizer's Tale     16
Recapping the Mission     27
Marcher     40
An Age of Miracles     42
Chicanos and the Church     46
After the Fast     47
Before the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare     49
Good Friday Letter     60
Creative Nonviolence     64
Before the House of Representatives     65
The Union and the Strike     75
Sharing the Wealth     77
No More Cathedrals     84
At Harvard     88
Jesus's Friendship     93
An Assortment of Responses     97
Forty Acres     102
Twenty Days in Jail     106
Nothing Has Changed     109
At Riverside Church     112
At Exposition Park     119
On Money     122
Why Delano     132
To Be a Man Is to Suffer for Others     134
Do We Exist?     136
Regaining the Strength     139
Nan Freeman     141
Juan de la Cruz     142
In Coachella     144
After a Bus Accident     146
Before the Automobile Workers     149
Martin Luther King Jr. I     159
Martin Luther King Jr. II     162
Rufino Contreras     167
What Is Democracy?     169
Rene Lopez     175
Before the 7th UFWA Constitutional Convention     178
At the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco     184
Wrath of Grapes     193
At Pacific Lutheran University     198
On Public Schools     211
Sal Si Puedes     213
Juana Estrada Chavez     220
Fred Ross     225
Aphorisms     235

What People are Saying About This

Robert F. Kennedy

[Cesar Chavez is] one of the heroic figures of our time.