Labor Acknowledgment – Honored Groups 

The wealth and correlating international political and economic influence of the United States was built on race-based exploitive and forced uncompensated labor of African men, women, and children stolen from their homeland and kept under the dehumanizing and barbaric conditions of chattel slavery for more than two centuries. African Americans, the descendants of those enslaved Africans, continued to suffer racial violence and unjust economic, social, and political policies and practices under the segregation laws of Jim Crow that dictated every aspect of African American life, from education to housing, from employment to leisure.

Systems and institutions that were designed to maintain white supremacy were first challenged by Black Americans through regional movements in the South in the late 1940s, which grew into a national Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. While many advances in racial equity have since occurred, we acknowledge that the violence against and dehumanization of African Americans have not been cured, and the reverberations throughout the generations can still be felt and witnessed today. We are indebted to them not only for their labor and unrecognized contributions but also for their incredible sacrifice.

More than 50,000 Chinese immigrants lived in California in the late 1850s and were the primary labor force for the Central Pacific Railroad. The grueling and dangerous work and disregard for worker health and safety necessitated the demand for more laborers, and tens of thousands of Chinese men were brought to the West Coast as a dehumanized workforce. Race-based fear and propaganda against the Chinese culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred Chinese immigration and denied US citizenship to Chinese nationals and was not repealed until 1943.

We recognize and honor the sacrifice and bravery of Chinese people whose labor connected our country in commerce and culture.

Filipino farm workers, known as ‘manongs,’ a name that is a term of respect for elderly Filipino men, faced the same systems and policies of racial discrimination and unfair labor practices suffered by Chinese immigrants and Mexican migrants. Recognizing the rising tide of the Civil Rights Movement and the increasing strength of labor unions, Larry Itiong, activist and leader of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee in collaboration with the Farm Workers of America, called for a strike against grape growers in Delano, CA, and a national boycott of California table grapes. The strike and boycott garnered national attention and support from political figures and labor unions from other industries.

We recognize and celebrate the spirit of resistance of the manongs who bravely stood against the wealth and political power of farm owners to demand better working conditions, and the collaborative efforts to work together across racial groups to achieve the common goals of fair wages and humane working conditions.

In California, Indigenous peoples were first exploited for their labor by Franciscan missionaries in the 18th century and then by European immigrants in the 19th century. Despite entering the union as a free state in 1850, the California legislature legalized Native/Indigenous slavery through brutal systemic policies that outlined various acts that could earn indentured servitude where Natives did not have to be paid and were not free to leave. Native children could be declared an “apprentice” without any involvement of their parents or relatives and forced to apprentice until they were between 25 and 30 years old. These apprenticeship laws were repealed by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, although, much like African enslavement, the impact of the legacy continued for decades. We honor the sacrifice and contributions of the Native peoples and their descendants.

The Bracero Program was a series of agreements between Mexico and the US that allowed millions of Mexicans to come to the US to work short-term, primarily in agriculture, between 1942 and 1964. This controversial program exploited Mexican nationals desperate for work who were willing to take arduous jobs at extremely low wages and subjected them to racial violence and discrimination. Although labor groups such as the National Farm Labor Union and the American Federation of Labor staged successful strikes in the 1950s, attempts to resist the financial and political backing of the Bracero Program did not improve the working conditions for farmworkers.

Joining the tide of the growing Civil Rights Movement, organizations such as the Mexican American Political Association and the Community Service Organization played a significant role in the fight for farmworkers' rights in California. In 1962, activists Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Gilbert Padilla, and others organized a convention in Fresno, CA to formalize the Farm Workers Association, later known as the United Farm Workers.

We honor and uplift the indomitable spirit of the Mexican people whose toil and labor to this day uphold a multibillion-dollar industry from which they do not profit or benefit. We acknowledge that the history of injustice in labor and human rights for farm workers reverberates today.