A two-sided 8 ½ x 11 flyer issued by the Grape Strike Support Committee calls for a rally on the Washington Monument grounds and a march to Arlington Cemetery September 7, 1969 on the fourth anniversary of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee strike against California grape growers.
National Liturgical Conference -Washington Lay Association coordinated the event.
The actual march was changed to L’Enfant Plaza because of the ban on political demonstrations at Arlington Cemetery. The demonstration was also honoring Robert F. Kennedy who before his death had been a prominent supporter of the union and the strike.
More than 500 would gather at the Sylvan Theater on the Monument grounds to hear speeches by U.S. Rep. James O’Hara (D-MI), J.C. Turner, president of the D.C. Central Labor Council and chair of the local strike support committee, among others.
Turner called on the Nixon administration to stop buying grapes for troops abroad. The Defense Department had recently increased the number of table grapes it was purchasing.
Rev. Richard McSorley of Georgetown led the service at L’Enfant Plaza.
The United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) union would reach a three-year contract with major grape growers in 1970 after years of struggle and a nationwide grape boycott. They also expanded into the lettuce fields and into the Florida fruit groves and vegetable fields and became the United Farmworkers Union.
The union was forged out of unity between Filipino-American and Mexican-American farm workers in the great 1965-1970 strike against the grape growers in Delano, California, the UFWOC won the public to the cause of agricultural labor through a nation-wide consumer boycott of table grapes and exposure of pesticide use.
The United Farm Workers Organizing Committee was chartered in 1966 by the AFL-CIO in the afterglow of the historic farm worker "Pilgrimage to Sacramento" led by Cesar Chavez. Other principals include Dolores Huerta and Larry Itliong.
For a PDF of this two-sided 8 ½ x 11 flyer, see washingtonareaspark.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/1969-0...
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsjtqzjEB
Original held in the Bonnie Atwood papers, 1965-2005, Collection, Special Collections and Archives, James Branch Cabell Library, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA.
