Professor Mabalon Recalls Legacy of Delano Grape Strike, 50 Years Later

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- California’s politics have changed profoundly in the years since. Delano’s mayor is a Filipino — unthinkable in 1965, when growers treated the town as a plantation. But a mythology has hidden the history of how and why the strike started, especially its connection to some of the most radical movements in the country’s labor history. Dawn Mabalon, a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University, has documented the radical career of Larry Itliong, who headed the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, one of the two organizations that carried out the 1965 strike.