CATHOLIC LWORKER Subacription1 Vol. :xxxn No. 6 I FEBRUARY, 1966 25c Per Year Price le THE DELTA ORGANIZER ''INVASION" By DOROTHY DAY This month, one hundred and ten civil rights workers, Negro and "Workers of the World, unite. white, seized the deactivated Air You have nothing to lose but your Force barracks ("an economy chains!" This is one of ,those sti.r­ move") at Greenville, Mississippi. ring slogans oi the Marxists which It was the latest move in the non­ espeoia>lly appea1s to youth, nu violent revolution going on here . matter what kind of family t,hey and there around the country, side come from, upper, middle, or low­ by side with the violent war going er roiddle-ola.s.s'. U it does 11ot at­ on in Southeast Asia. The Negroes tract them to Marxism, it at least and their white sympathizers had gives them a sense cxf community and relatedness to other sufferers been crowding Strike City, an em_ergency tent colony set up in .and combats the sense of futility this rich Delta region of the and frustration which encompasses so many. Mississippi, where Negro farm workers have been evicted from Cesar Obavez is the leader of the plantations for striking for a the Dela-no California farm work­ living wage. There are a hundred ers who are on strike in an area and sixty Negroes living in the which stretches for four hundred tent city now, forming their own miles and includes thousands of "government", they say. Those ac ~ es of grapes, tomatoes, apricots, readers who picture the sunny cotton-all kinds of crops. This South should remember the zero • strike, which has been going on temperatures we have had this since last September, ,has an a.p­ past month all through that peal to all the poor cxf the United region. St; ,tes. Chavez uses the word eom­ mittment, a· word much i-n - style The Air Force base comprises now. But he combine$ it wi th the three hundred empty buildings on idea of necessity, the irrevocable. two thousand acres. Twenty-six "We are committed," be says. civilians live there as caretakers. "When you lose your car, then lose To carry out the eviction one your home, you do not become ttundred and fifty Air Police were less committed, but more. None of flown in from the Keesler Air us have anything more to lose." Force base, in Biloxi, from Lowery The agricultural workel'S cxf base, in Denver, from Chanute this country have long been !:'he base, in Illinois, and from Lack­ land and Randolph Air bases, in most abandoned and forgotten. They have been neglected in all San Antonio. The squatters had social-security egWatiol)- From brought in wood stoves for heat, <the first issue of the Catholic besidls .their bedding, and were Worker, down through the years, prepared to set up emergency we have wr itten about the Negroes housekeeping, perhaps with the working on the levees, about the hope that some gesture might be dispossessed sharecroppers of Ar­ made for them like the one made kansas and Oklahoma, ·the Mexi­ thfa month to the suffering of New cans in the onion fields of Ohio York, when Armories were opened '3nd Michigan, in sugar beets in up and cots and bedding provided, !the middle nol"thwest, about those not only during the transit strike, who work in the potato farms in but during the rent strikes In Maine, Long Island and New Jer­ Broo,)dyn, where tenants had been sey, in the tur pentine woolls Gf Li ving in subhuman conditions. the South, about the citrus pick·ers But no such hospitality was of Florida, the Delta Negroes now offered by the Federal Govern­ being dispossessed from the cot­ ment. The live-in was sponsored ton fields, and now the present by members of the Poor People's strikers in California. 'l1he Catho­ Conference, the Freedom Demo­ lic Worker has dealt wit!h these cratic Party and 'the Delta stories and I have personally vis­ minfatry, which is made up of Hed these fields of· struggle. When ministers of many faiths. Bishop the great acreage of farms con­ Paul Moore, Jr. suffragan Bishop trolled by the Campbell Soup peo­ of Washington, D.C. is chairman ple in New Jersey were folilowed of the Commission on the Delta by strike we urged boycott of min is try. Notwithstanding · the in Ca1ifornia in our January issue, fornia and worked in the fields, lettuce strike a.round El Centro these products and when the strike ugliness of the public image written by a young CW reader who drifting from crop to crop. and told of meeting a young had been won and the years evoked, the homeless were carried has been active tflhere. Bob Callagy, Ohavez himself only went as far Halian priest whose family were passed, Hisa:ve 'Xamamoto, who bodily out of the Air Force base. oif •the Oakfand CathoMc Worker as the eigMh grade but read landowners, and the beginning of lived with us on the Peter Maurin Greenville is on the Mississippi, Farm for years, went back to the group, an<i number of other young widely, biog·raphies and history his interest in the problems of the families, are busy trucking food about two hundred miles down .area to interview her fellow Japa­ as well as the Bible. He discovered, workers. I wrote, too, of the C.I.O . river from Memphis, in the heart and clothing to the strikers. he says, "that Paul was .a great nese who were by then working auto worke11s' attempts to organize of the rich delta country. The under greatly improved cond·itions. So this continuation of the story orgatnizer who would go out and around Stockitpn, and of Hank Catholic Worker has had reports talk to the people right in their is to call attention to Cesar Cha­ Anderson and Henry Van Dyke, in past years from this section of It is a struggle through all the homes and be- one of them." He vez himself, an<l the interview I whose reports showed vision for Mississippi and in an account years of our lives which has to do was doubtless impressed too with aH of California. w~th Factories in the Fields (the am basing it on is by Lisa Hobb5, some six years ago we noted that • the fact that St. P.aul was . a Now Chavez has organized his •title of a book of a ·generation the San Fr.ancisco Examiner and in C 1 eve I and, Mississippi; 240 worker, who earned his living by Na.tional Fa;rm Workers Associa­ past, written by Carey McWil­ Chronicle' of January 16th. Negro families were evicted from weaving tents from goat hair. liams, present editor of the Na­ tion, which seems able to work the R. M. Dedkins plantation of Cha,.vez is thirty-seven years old When Chavez was in his mid­ side by side with the existing tion, whioh can still be found in and was born in Texas. His gl'land­ 20,000 ·acres. "Scores of other the libraries.) M is a struggle twenties his organizing ability was unions in the field. Since the strike plantations in Tallahatchie, Sun­ f a t h e r had homesteaded near recognized by the Community started a bulletin h'3s been pub­ which involves fjbe food problem Yuma in 1889 and had very rich flower, Bolivar and 6ther counties of the world and the be.st way to Service Organization, a statewide lished, attractively illustrated by are getting thousands of Negroes land just off the Colorado River. group supported by voluntary con­ MeX'ican worker a11tists which may handle it. It involves discussion of Cesar and his four brothers and off the plantation, with the com­ tributions to assist the Mexica~ be received by writing to El ithe population problem, and so sisters were brought up there. ing of the machine, and the civil encompasses the all-absorbing American in citizenship and legal Malcrlado, Box 894, Delano, Calif., rights movement. Some 50,000 They were taught t·he Ca·th.olic problems. He served as statewide for $2.00 a year. In the bulletin needs of food and sex. It employs faith by their grandmother, the Negroes voluntarily leave yearly every nationality on West and organizer and after seven year&' one finds indications of the larger in search of better living." A re­ only member of the family who experience was appointed execu­ purpose which Cesar Chavez has in East coas·ts, -from f.ar-off India and could read or write. cent Mississippi State University Pakistan, southeast Asia, as well tive director of the Los Angeles mind. The insistence on non­ study of conditions stated that as the Caribbean. It involves our When the Depression came, crop headquarters. After ten years of violence, tihe emphasis on the 114,460 Negroes le,ft the state In own NegFo and white Americans. prices failed, and taxes were this ~ind of work, he went back religious an<f mol'lal aspects of the the fifties from 14 Delta Counties Over <111 these years there have raised (to care for the people put to work in the fields and to organ­ strike, and the expression of hope alone. Even while the present dra­ been sporadic outbreaks among off the land a'nd set to wandering ize. His . wife Helen, mother of and faith animated by love, make matic eviction was going on, other rural workers from coast ,to coast. with the crops or living in the eight children, was born in Delano this strike different from any Negroes were climbing under the It i.s only now tlha;t ·tile nationwide cities}.