Jon Lewis: Photographs of the California Grape Strike

by Richard Steven Street

Overview

Before the film, César Chavez, Chavez's life was depicted in photographs by his confidant, Jon Lewis.

In the winter of 1966, twenty-eight-year-old ex-marine Jon Lewis visited Delano, California, the center of the California grape strike. He thought he might stay awhile, then resume studying photography at San Francisco State University. He stayed for two years, becoming the United Farm Workers Union’s semiofficial photographer and a close confidant of farmworker leader César Chávez.

Surviving on a picket’s wage of five dollars a week, Lewis photographed twenty-four hours a day and created an insider’s view of the historic and sometimes violent confrontations, mass marches, fasts, picket lines, and boycotts that forced the table-grape industry to sign the first contracts with a farm workers union. Though some of his images were published contemporaneously, most remained unseen. Historian and photographer Richard Steven Street rescues Lewis from obscurity, allowing us for the first time to see a pivotal moment in civil rights history through the lens of a passionate photographer.

A masterpiece of social documentary, this work is at once the biography of a photographer, an exposé of poverty and injustice, and a celebration of the human spirit.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803230484
Publisher:	Nebraska
Publication date:	10/01/2013
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	7.40(w) x 10.26(h) x 1.63(d)

About the Author

Richard Steven Street is the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in the Department of American Studies, Princeton University. His photo essays explore the U.S.-Mexico border, homelessness, rural life, and the modern farmworker movement. His award-winning books include Beasts of the Fields, Photographing Farmworkers in California, and Everyone Had Cameras.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction 1

1 Epicenter 9

2 Memory 15

3 Predecessors 23

4 Obscurity 29

5 Marine 33

6 Ganz 39

7 Cornucopia 42

8 Steinbeck 46

9 Power 51

10 Fanatics 55

11 Flies 61

12 Dispossessed 64

13 Braceros 66

14 Pancho 70

15 Mordida 75

16 Unions 79

17 AWOC 82

18 AFL-CIO 85

19 Chávez 89

20 Organizing 93

21 Huelga! 96

22 Delano 101

23 Growers 105

24 Poverty 108

25 Welcome 115

26 Slaves 121

27 Friendships 125

28 Photographers 130

29 Witness 133

30 Advocates 137

31 Boycott 145

32 Zoo 150

33 Darkroom 154

34 Routine 159

35 Lessons 164

36 Doubts 171

37 Exhaustion 177

38 Kennedy 185

39 The March 193

40 Participating 196

41 La Causa 205

42 Blisters 215

43 Sacrifice 221

44 St. Mary's 227

45 Sacramento 235

46 Alone 243

47 Participant 248

48 DiGiorgio 251

49 Sweetheart 255

50 Harvest 258

51 Altar 262

52 Fraud 269

53 Prints 275

54 Violence 282

55 Chavarria 288

56 Rallies 294

57 Voting 299

58 August 304

59 Peoples 306

60 Departure 313

61 Hock 319

62 Giumarra 324

63 School 330

64 Fast 334

65 Stranded 341

66 Book 344

67 Voice 349

68 Film 355

69 Contract 359

70 Broke 364

71 Redemption 368

72 Ubiquitous 370

73 Impact 373

74 Decide 377

75 Parting 383

Notes 389

Index 427

What People are Saying About This

Richard A. Walker

“Jon Lewis’s magnificent photographs of the farmworker revolution in California evoke comparisons with the work of Dorothea Lange. They bend time past all forgetting to an era of struggle that stands on a par with Selma and Freedom Summer—the bitter fight to dignify Mexican and Filipino labor in the fields. Richard Street, who brought Lewis and his archive back into the light, provides a piercing account that honors both the brilliance of this photographer and the memory of a singular time and place.”—Richard A. Walker, professor of geography at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of The Conquest of Bread: 150 Years of California Agribusiness

Steven Pitti

“With characteristic erudition, historian Richard Steven Street brings to life the incredible work of Jon Lewis, one of the foremost labor and civil rights photographers of the twentieth century. This book simultaneously captures agricultural California’s most pressing political struggles and the vision of a major, if unrecognized, artist.”—Stephen Pitti, professor of history at Yale University and author of The Devil in Silicon Valley: Northern California, Race, and Mexican Americans

Editorial Reviews

“With characteristic erudition, historian Richard Steven Street brings to life the incredible work of Jon Lewis, one of the foremost labor and civil rights photographers of the twentieth century. This book simultaneously captures agricultural California’s most pressing political struggles and the vision of a major, if unrecognized, artist.”—Stephen Pitti, professor of history at Yale University and author of The Devil in Silicon Valley: Northern California, Race, and Mexican Americans

Steven Pitti

“Jon Lewis’s magnificent photographs of the farmworker revolution in California evoke comparisons with the work of Dorothea Lange. They bend time past all forgetting to an era of struggle that stands on a par with Selma and Freedom Summer—the bitter fight to dignify Mexican and Filipino labor in the fields. Richard Street, who brought Lewis and his archive back into the light, provides a piercing account that honors both the brilliance of this photographer and the memory of a singular time and place.”—Richard A. Walker, professor of geography at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of The Conquest of Bread: 150 Years of California Agribusiness

Richard A. Walker