Reel 42

Scope and Contents From the Collection: Consist of correspondence, reports, ledgers, legal documents, leaflets, printed material, photographs, and newspapers published by the union. These document the activities of the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union from its origins through its transformations into the National Farm Labor Union in 1946 and the National Agriculture Workers Union in 1952, and through its merger with the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union in 1960. The records also contain selected materials from the Socialist Party...

Scope and Contents On January 8, Mitchell met with George Meany, Walter Reuther, A. Philip Randolph, and Leon Schachter to formulate an AFL- CIO program for the organization of farm labor; the papers include a memorandum by Mitchell which gives a full account of the meeting (Jan. 8). On February 5 and 6, the National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor held widely-publicized hearings in Washington; the papers include statements by Mitchell, Galarza, NAWU organizers George Stith and Raul Aguilar, and California...

Scope and Contents On the new AFL-CIO campaign to organize California farm workers, see Mitchell's letters to Galarza (March 26, April 3) and the position paper issued by the AFL-CIO entitled "An AFL-CIO Program to End Nineteenth Century Poverty in Twentieth Century America" (n.d. [April]). On the proposed revision of BES regulations governing the recruitment of domestic farm labor, see the Advisory Committee reports on the "Current Situation Relating to Proposed Regulations" (March 3) and Mitchell's letter to...

Scope and Contents The AFL-CIO Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) began its work in California uner the direction of former UAW organizer Norman Smith. There is a great deal of information on the progress of the AWOC in Mitchell's correspondence with Smith and Galarza throughout the summer; see also the agreement between NAWU and UPWA on jurisdiction over the workers organized by AWOC (21), and the letters from Mitchell to various AFL-CIO state labor councils asking them to circulate petitions...

Scope and Contents On the AWOC, see the frequent exchange of correspondence between Mitchell and both AWOC Director Norman Smith and Ernesto Galarza, as well as the minutes of an AWOC meeting (14). Two of Mitchell's letters to Smith and Galarza contain considerable information on the progress of the NAWU attempt to interest the AFL-CIO in a similar organizing campaign in the East (8,11). There is a memorandum by Mitchell to Senator Harrison A. Williams, Jr. on extending social welfare legislation to farm...

Scope and Contents The AWOC organizing campaign continued in California; see Galarza's five-page mimeographed letter to the Director of the California State Department of Employment detailing his complaints with the Department (July 7), and two AWOC Research Papers on "The Future Disposition of Public Law 78" and "The Wages that Prevail" (July 30; Aug 19). There is an interesting exchange between Mitchell and the Secretary of Labor over the NAWU charge that various state farm placement services are corrupt...