Description
Book SynopsisA masterpiece of social documentary, this work is at once the biography of a photographer, an expose of poverty and injustice, and a celebration of the human spirit.
Trade Review“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
“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
Table of ContentsContents
Introduction
1. Epicenter
2. Memory
3. Predecessors
4. Obscurity
5. Marine
6. Ganz
7. Cornucopia
8. Steinbeck
9. Power
10. Fanatics
11. Flies
12. Dispossessed
13. Braceros
14. Pancho
15. Mordida
16. Unions
17. AWOC
18. AFL-CIO
19. Chávez
20. Organizing
21. Huelga!
22. Delano
23. Growers
24. Poverty
25. Welcome
26. Slaves
27. Friendships
28. Photographers
29. Witness
30. Advocates
31. Boycott
32. Zoo
33. Darkroom
34. Routine
35. Lessons
36. Doubts
37. Exhaustion
38. Kennedy
39. March
40. Participating
41. La Causa
42. Blisters
43. Sacrifice
44. St. Mary’s
45. Sacramento
46. Alone
47. Participant
48. DiGiorgio
49. Sweetheart
50. Harvest
51. Altar
52. Fraud
53. Prints
54. Violence
55 Chavarria
56. Rallies
57. Voting
58. August
59. People’s
60. Departure
61. Hock
62. Giumarra
63. School
64. Fast
65. Stranded
66. Book
67. Voice
68. Film
69. Contract
70. Broke
71. Redemption
72. Ubiquitous
73. Impact
74. Decide
75. Parting
Acknowledgements
Notes
