Poverty in the Valley of Plenty: The National Farm Labor Union, DiGiorgio Farms, and Suppression of Documentary Photography in California, 1947–66

Abstract

Seeking to establish a base for organizing California farmworkers, the National Farm Labor Union (NFLU) between 1948 and 1950 led a strike against DiGiorgio Fruit Corporation, the state's preeminent farming operation. Featuring several new developments—among them huge car and truck caravans of strikers that were described as ‘the world's longest picket line’ and a secondary boycott of DiGiorgio products that inaugurated a tactic that would later become a cornerstone of the farmworker movement—the strike was the first substantial challenge to California growers since the collapse of the farmworker movement a decade earlier. While these aspects are often mentioned by historians, there is another less understood but more profound dimension to the strike that revolves around a documentary film Poverty in the Valley of Plenty. Angered by its portrayal in the film, DiGiorgio won a libel case against the NFLU, suppressed the film, forced the union to withdraw and destroy all surviving prints, and for the next generation sued anyone caught showing Poverty in the Valley of Plenty. A watershed in labor and legal history, this tactic extended the law of libel from printed words to images. Presenting a fuller and more complete exploration of this critical chapter in the evolving relationship between photography, farmworkers, and labor organizing, this essay explores the way DiGiorgio eliminated unfavorable visual information, curbed First Amendment rights of free speech, augmented vigilante raids and accusations of communism as tactics of farmworker union smashing, undercut the NFLU's boycott, and substituted an entirely fictitious and benign picture of life and labor at its Bear Mountain ranch. Not until the Delano grape strike 25 years later did farmworkers succeed in finally getting their picture across to the public and using it to develop a boycott that turned the tables on California agriculture.