Breaking Barriers: United Farm Workers

This collection brings together EDSITEment and Smithsonian resources to support the initial research into a project for National History Day 2020, "Breaking Barriers in History."

These resources—including photographs, objects, portraits, lesson plans, and articles—explore how the United Farm Workers, and leaders Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Larry Itliong, organized for worker and civil rights during the 1960s and 70s. Resources address how groups and individuals sought to bring attention to the mistreatment of farmers—particularly Chicano and Filipino workers—the barriers they sought to break, and the reforms they fought to establish through artistic expression, as well as organized boycotts and strikes. The second resource of this collection contains questions to help with the analysis of a chosen topic alongside photograph, document, artwork, portrait, and object resources. 

By no means is this collection comprehensive; instead, it provides a launching point for further research.

This collection was created in collaboration with the Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access.

Share your National History Day collections and let us know what you think! Write to us on Twitter: @EDSITEment and @SmithsonianLab, #NHD2020. If you publish a collection on your National History Day topic, be sure to enter #NHD2020 in the description!

Tags: UFW, Latino, Hispanic, California, Fred Ross, art, grapes, lettuce, farmers, immigration, citizenship, labor, laborers, workers, unions, protest, twentieth century, 20th, #NHD