1. KHOU-TV News (Houston) Covers the Melon Strike (June 3, 1966)
Throughout its long history, the US agricultural industry has consistently relied on the underpaid (or unpaid) labor of workers of color, toiling under brutal conditions for long hours. With particular implications for Texas, this history has been accented by periods of mass deportations targeting Mexican Americans, notably in the 1930s and again in the 1950s, as well moments of active recruitment, such as during World War II.
The New Deal, which established workers' rights and labor standards--and helped build the American middle class--also deliberately excluded agricultural workers.
In the 1960s, Starr County, Texas (west of McAllen along the US-Mexico border), whose population was 90% of Mexican descent, was one of the poorest counties in the United States--with an estimated 70% of families earning below the poverty line.
In June 1966, agricultural workers, who were paid between 40 and 85 cents per hour, went on strike, demanding that growers in the area’s multi-million dollar melon industry raise wages to $1.25, the federal minimum wage. The news story below is from the early days of the strike.
Courts, local and state police, and the county prosecutor (who was also an attorney for one of the farms) sided with the bosses—the wealthy growers, who refused the workers' demands. County officials also sprayed striking workers with pesticides.
On July 4, workers began a two-month, 490-mile march through South Texas, reaching Corpus Christi on July 31 and culminating in Austin on Labor Day with a rally by perhaps 15,000 people. At various points in the march, the farm workers were joined by Catholic priests, union members, student activists, Dr. Hector P. Garcia, and Cesar Chavez, among others.
KHOU-TV Houston, June 3, 1966
SOURCE:
“Valley Labor,” KHOU-TV (Houston, TX), June 3, 1966, Texas Archive of the Moving Image, https://texasarchive.org/2016_05917?b=196&e=537