http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8qn6f1p No online items Finding aid to the Henry P. Anderson Papers Finding aid prepared by Eva Martinez with assistance from Angie Lin Mendoza and Krisbel Acevedo. Labor Archives and Research Center 2020 San Francisco State University J. Paul Leonard Library, Room 460 1630 Holloway Ave San Francisco 94132-1722 [email protected] URL: http://library.sfsu.edu/larc Finding aid to the Henry P. larc.ms.04222017/002 1 Anderson Papers Title: Henry P. Anderson papers Date (inclusive): 1944-2014 Creator: Henry Pope Anderson Estate Creator: Anderson, Henry P. (Henry Pope), 1927-2016 Physical Description: 40.92 Linear Feet(39 cartons, 1 oversize box with 5 folders, 4 oversize items in flat files) Collection number: larc.ms.0422 Accession number: 2017/002 Condition Description: Mold on some open reel sound recordings. These items have been removed from the collecton for remediation. Repository: Labor Archives and Research Center J. Paul Leonard Library, Room 460 San Francisco State University 1630 Holloway Ave San Francisco, CA 94132-1722 (415) 405-5571 [email protected] Abstract: This collection consists of the personal papers of researcher Henry P. Anderson. The materials generally relate to agricultural labor conditions; corporate agriculture and farm economy; pesticide use and effect on workers; agriculture-related legislation; farmer associations; labor, religious and political organizing efforts to improve the working conditions of farm workers. Includes extensive correspondence and news clippings, also includes Anderson's beginning research into the California Bracero program during his graduate program at U.C. Berkeley and documents his commitment to end the program, in addition to his life-long work in support of farm worker issues. Materials are stored offsite; requires advance notice. Languages: Languages represented in the collection: English. Availability Collection is open for research. Restrictions Some materials are in the public domain; transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. In addition, the reproduction of some materials may be restricted by terms of gift or purchase agreements, donor restrictions, privacy and publicity rights, licensing and trademarks. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user. Preferred Citation [Identification of item], Henry Pope Anderson Papers, larc.ms.0422, San Francisco State University J. Paul Leonard Library, Special Collections and Archives Acquisition Donated by Dorothy Anderson Rodriguez. Processing Information Collection was processed by Eva Martinez, Ann Galvan, Angie Lin Mendoza, Krisbel Acevedo and Marissa Friedman in 2019-2020. Arrangement The collection is arranged in the following 10 series: Series 1: Personal; Series 2: U.C. Berkeley; Series 3: Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC); Series 4: Citizens for Farm Labor (CFL); Series 5: Pesticides; Series 6: Publications; Series 7: Correspondence and Collaborations; Series 8: Photographs; Series 9: Sound Recordings; Series 10: Motion picture. Series 5: Pesticides is arranged in two sub-series: 1: Community Study on Pesticides; 2: Task Group on Occupational Exposure to Pesticides. Biographical / Historical Henry Pope Anderson was born on December 14, 1927, in Mexia, Texas, to Oscar Alban Anderson and Ethel Pope. When Anderson was a toddler, his family moved to Palo Alto, California. Finding aid to the Henry P. larc.ms.04222017/002 2 Anderson Papers After a freshman year at Pomona College, Anderson enlisted in the Army, serving at Fort Lewis, Washington, at the very end of World War II. During this period Anderson became aware of racial discrimination through the segregation of African American enlistees. Upon his return to Pomona College he became involved in the Student Federalists, an organization pushing for a federal world government. After graduating in 1949, Anderson entered a graduate program at the University of Hawaii where he completed a thesis on the world government movement. Upon returning to the mainland, Anderson began a doctoral program in the Department of Sociology at Stanford but he became disenchanted with becoming a professor and left Stanford and to work for the California Department of Health in San Francisco as a junior analyst. In 1954 he became a teaching associate at U.C. Berkeley for Dr. Edward Rogers who was creating a course called "Medical Sociology," to examine how attitudes affect health. Anderson also began a second graduate program in the School of Public Health. For his thesis, Anderson decided on studying Mexican farm workers and their attitudes toward traditional folk medicine versus the western-style medical practices they encountered in the United States. Anderson knew nothing about agricultural labor and thought all farm workers were here illegally. When his VISA request to do research in Mexico was denied, U.C. Berkeley Professor Paul Taylor, husband of photographer Dorothea Lange, informed him of the Bracero Program--an agreement between the United States and Mexican governments to import thousands of agricultural workers each year. During this time Anderson also met Father Thomas McCullough, a Catholic priest who worked with Spanish-speaking farm workers, and Ernesto Galarza, one of the first scholars and labor organizers to write about the problems in the Bracero Program, also known as Public Law 78. Anderson shifted his focus to braceros in the United States and their attitudes on health. The Bracero Program was managed by the U.S. Department of Labor. Anderson learned that it primarily served corporate agriculture. With a grant from the National Institutes of Health, Anderson hired Louis Tagaban as a bilingual interviewer. His goal was to interview 2,500 braceros as they came through the reception center in El Centro, Calif. Through his research and interviews Anderson saw how the program disempowered braceros while giving corporate farmers power to fend off local labor organizing efforts. In 1958 the American Friends Service Committee asked Anderson to speak to their executive board as they were deciding if they should take a stand on P.L. 78. They had heard from a farmer who supported the program and wanted someone from the other side. Unable to attend, Anderson wrote an eight-page document he titled "Social Justice and Foreign Contract Labor: A Statement of Opinion and Conscience," highlighting the problems in the program and that is was abusive to braceros. Without his approval, the AFSC sent copies of his statement to their mailing list, which included directors of the U.S. Dept. of Labor and California's Dept. of Employment, who managed the program and who became angered by Anderson's document. This event set into motion complaints that reached the Chancellor of the U.C. system who had Anderson's research shut down. Although his research and interviews were incomplete, Anderson was instructed to either leave the university or re-write his thesis and remove several controversial chapters. Anderson choose to submit what he called a "sanitized" version in order to complete his graduate degree. From 1958 to 1962 Anderson moved to Stockton with his family to serve as the director of research for the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), a farm worker organizing effort funded by the AFL-CIO. He wrote numerous research newsletters, testified at public hearings, coordinated surveys of agricultural workers, and collected extensive research files relating to farm workers and agriculture-related issues. After he was let go by AWOC director Al Green, Anderson became a co-founder and director of Citizens for Farm Labor, a farm worker advocacy organization which published a quarterly journal. The organization ran from 1962 t0 1974. From 1968 to 1974, Anderson also served as a research assistant on two committees examining agricultural pesticide use. The Community Study on Pesticides was followed by the Task Group on Occupational Exposure to Pesticides, which was charged with making recommendations to the Federal Working Group on Pest Management, especially in regard to re-entry periods after a field was sprayed with pesticides. Anderson threatened to quit the latter when he felt the focus of the group had swhifted from worker safety toward the hardship felt by growers who had to keep their workers out of fields. Anderson was a prolific writer and authored many published works over his lifetime. His thesis, the Bracero Program in California, was re-published by Arno Press in the late 1970s with an extensive introduction by Anderson explaining what had happened at U.C. Berkeley. He also authored Fields of Bondage (1963); Harvest of Loneliness (1964); and So Shall Ye Reap, which he co-authored with Joan London in 1971. In addition, he wrote numerous pamphlets and submitted essays to various publications. He had an ongoing 15-minute commentary on KPFA in the 1960s during which he spoke about farm labor issues, academic freedom and other social issues. Politicized by his early research of the Bracero Program and the events that happened at U.C. Berkeley in the 1950s, Anderson became a life-long supporter of farm workers and their organizing efforts. Finding aid to the Henry P. larc.ms.04222017/002 3 Anderson Papers Anderson died on October 24, 2016, in Oakland, California. Content Description This collection consists of the personal papers of researcher Henry P. Anderson. The materials generally relate to agricultural labor conditions; corporate agriculture and farm economy; pesticide use and effect on workers; agriculture-related legislation; farmer associations; labor, religious and political organizing efforts to improve the working conditions of farm workers. Includes extensive correspondence and news clippings, also includes Anderson's beginning research into the California Bracero program during his graduate program at U.C. Berkeley and documents his commitment to end the program, in addition to his life-long work in support of farm worker issues. Series 2: U.C.