"In Common Struggle against a Common Oppression": The United Farm Workers and the Black Panther Party, 1968-1973

Abstract

The Safeway grocery store at 27th and West Streets in Oakland, California, was closed. The parking lot was devoid of cars, except for that of the manager who probably marveled at the turn of events. Robert Magowan, CEO of Safeway Stores, Inc., had been given fair warning. Cesar Chavez, president of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFW). wrote Magowan in February 1969, Blacks, Filipinos, and members of all minorities will express their solidarity against all oppression by joining their neighbors in supermarkets other than And yet Magowan ignored Chavez's warning, or maybe he just didn't believe that the UFW, with little funds and less political power, could defeat a behemoth like Safeway. But what the UFW lacked in money or might, the union made up for with supporters who were ready lend their assistance the farm workers at a moment's notice. Indeed, Magowan's tragic mistake was that he had not figured on the involvement of the Black Panther Party (BPP), the UFW's strongest ally in Oakland. And now just four months after Chavez's warning, the picket lines--composed of farm workers, UFW organizers, Black Panthers, children, and members of the community had succeeded in closing the Safeway store for the foreseeable future. (1) In opposing both the UFW and the BPP, Safeway unwittingly brought together two groups that, in the popular American imagination, appear be unlikely allies. After all, the Black Panther Party was African American, militant, urban, and socialist and therefore differed in nearly every way from the largely Mexican American, nonviolent, rural, and Catholic UFW. But despite their differences, Cesar Chavez and the UFW welcomed the support of the BPP and its leaders, and supported them in turn, beginning in 1968. Over the years, the two organizations came together because they saw each other as commonly oppressed victims of the capitalist ruling class. It was this willingness and ability find class-based commonalities across racial lines that enabled the UFW and the BPP form a successful, mutually beneficial alliance. In the past, scholars of both the UFW and the BPP have overlooked this alliance. While recent scholarship on the Black Panthers in particular has expanded and complicated our understanding of their aims, tactics, programs, membership, and coalition-building, for the most part the focus has been on the relations with radical organizations. For example, in his essay Rainbow Radicalism: The Rise of the Radical Ethnic Nationalism, Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar examined the linkages between the Panthers and the Brown Berets, the Chicano nationalist organization. Of the recent scholarship on the party's coalitions, only Laura Pulido in her larger study of radical ethnic nationalism in Los Angeles mentioned, but provided no details on, the relationship between the BPP and the UFW. The literature on Cesar Chavez and the UFW has been dominated by journalistic accounts directed at a popular audience. Scholarly studies of the UFW have focused on Chavez's rhetoric, leadership style, and use of nonviolence. While the scholarship on the UFW has continued develop and expand, the union's relationship the Black Panthers and other African American organizations has escaped thorough analysis. (2) BITTER DOG: THE MAKING OF RACIAL AND LABOR SOLIDARITY Shortly after the party's founding, the Black Panthers were attracted the cause of the United Farm Workers. Founded in Oakland, California, in October 1966, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton organized the group in effort confront the rampant police brutality in that city, and soon afterward expanded its aims include issues of poverty, employment, education, housing, and legal rights. While the BPP's 'Ten-Point Program demanded the right to determine the destiny of our Black Community, and an end the robbery by the capitalists of our Black Community, the party from its inception addressed these issues on behalf of all oppressed groups, not just African Americans, and advocated multi-racial solidarity. …