California Farm Workers Films

The Harvesters

1960, 18 min., black/white, DVD

The Harvesters documents late 1950s farm labor conditions in California's fields when 14- to 16-hour days paid workers at eighty-five cents to a dollar per hour.

The film shows people working many different crops. It also exposes how the bracero program imported Mexican nationals to work at wages lower than the subminimum rates available to American workers. This film was used by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) and the United Packinghouse Workers Union as an organizing film.

Topics: Bracero Program, immigration, agricultural labor, farm worker organizing, agribusiness, 1950s, 1960s.

Other California Farm Workers films:

© Paul Richards
"Farm Workers Voices 1960" from The Harvesters

Photographs

Richards began still photography work in earnest during his trips to rural California in support of union organizing efforts among farm workers in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He continued taking still photos throughout his four film projects from 1959-1966. His still photography is available in photo galleries available on the Photography page.

Two strikers Japanese farmers in California's Central Valley 1958
Click for slideshow of
Farm Workers on strike 1962 - 66
Click for slideshow of
Portraits of Life and Work
in California Fields 1958
 
All photos © Paul Richards

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