On the day after
Thanksgiving in 1960, “CBS Reports” aired a documentary presented by broadcast
journalist Edward R. Murrow. Called “Harvest of Shame,” it was the first such
program to bring to public attention the horrible conditions of migrant
agricultural workers in the US.
Five years
later, thousands of impoverished men and women, led by an agricultural worker named
César Chávez, walked off their jobs in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley,
leaving huge fields of grapes to rot. Krull’s picture book, Harvesting Hope, focuses on the National
Farm Workers Association’s 340-mile march—from the grape fields of Delano to Sacramento—to
gain public support for their strike against the Delano grape growers.
The result of this
effort—the longest protest march and the first agricultural strike in US
history—was stunning. As Krull writes, “Some of the wealthiest people in the country
had been forced to recognize some of the poorest as human beings.”
In Harvesting Hope, Krull embeds the struggle
of the California agricultural workers into a biography of its leader—from his
idyllic boyhood with his large family in Arizona, to the drought that forced
them to migrate to California, to the racism he experienced in school, to the
backbreaking work and grinding poverty in the fields, to his development as an
organizer, to the founding of the National Farm Workers Association and finally,
to the walkout and massive march to Sacramento. Krull is a good writer, and
young readers will empathize with young César and the struggle he led.
But Morales’
gorgeous mural-like paintings, in acrylics and computer-created cutouts on a
lush jeweled palette of mostly earth tones, will draw them into César Chávez’s
world. Here is young César in school, wearing a sign that says, “I am a
clown. I speak Spanish.” His eyes are downcast in humiliation, and the other
children are looking on, a mixture of fear and shame on their faces. Here are
the farmworkers, stooped over the crops. The physical pain is palpable. Here
are the people—women with babies, men holding tools—marching out of the fields.
Here is César at the head of a line of marchers, confronting the Delano police
force. And here are the jubilant workers and their supporters, celebrating
their victory. Highly recommended.
—Beverly Slapin
(published 4/4/13)
(published 4/4/13)
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