Activist, labor scholar, and organizer Ernesto Galarza (1905-1984) was a
leading advocate for Mexican Americans and one of the most important
Mexican American scholars and activists after World War II. This volume
gathers Galarza's key writings, reflecting an intellectual rigor,
conceptual clarity, and a constructive concern for the working class in
the face of America's growing influence over Mexico's economic system.
Throughout his life, Galarza confronted and analyzed some of the most
momentous social transformations of the twentieth century. Inspired by
his youthful experience as a farm laborer in Sacramento, he dedicated
his life to the struggle for justice for farm workers and urban
working-class Latinos and helped build the first multiracial farm
workers union, setting the foundation for the emergence of the United
Farm Workers Union. He worked to change existing educational
philosophies and curricula in schools, and his civil rights legacy
includes the founding of the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund
(MALDEF) and the National Council of La Raza (NCLR). In 1979, Galarza
was the first U.S. Latino to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in
Literature, for works such as Strangers in Our Fields, Merchants of
Labor, Barrio Boy, and Tragedy at Chualar.