Anne Draper
Anne Draper
Anne Draper (right) sitting at the table at Filipino Hall, Delano, ca. 1966. Photo by Emmon Clarke.
Anne Draper was one of the main labor leaders in California. She was a strong supporter of the farmworker movement and was known in Delano as “the favorite daughter of the Strike”. She was born in 1917 in New York, where her father was a volunteer organizer for the city’s window washers and where she graduated from Hunter College with a major in mathematics and economics. While studying she worked at the American Bankers’ Association, joining the New York Local Office Workers.
Anne Draper amongst supporters at a rally at the capitol during the march to Sacramento, Sacramento, CA, 1966
Anne Draper amongst supporters at a rally at the capitol during the march to Sacramento in Sacramento, California on April 10, 1966. She is holding a sign that reads “We support grape strike – Amalgamated Clothing.”
During the 1960s, Draper was a member of the group from Berkeley called Citizens for Farm Labor. It included Wendy Goepel, photographer George Ballis, César Chávez, Edward P. Dutton, Rev. Chris Hartmire, Paul Jacobs, Fred Ross, and others. From 1963 to 1966, the group published the journal Farm Labor—a unique source under the editorship of Henry Anderson. He published a mimeographed monthly journal with essays, reprints, newspaper accounts, letters, reports, testimonies, and photographs about farm labor and agricultural problems. Also, Draper wrote, with her husband, Hal Draper, a pamphlet titled, “The Dirt on California: Agribusiness and the University,” which provided detailed data on the University of California’s services to agriculture; research, water, pesticides, costs, etc. Between 1964 and 1972, she prepared weekly radio commentaries for Berkeley Pacifica radio station KPFA. She published numerous articles for the labor press and community newspapers, and she spoke throughout the western United States on behalf of the Delano grape strike and United Farm Worker boycotts.
In 1942, she moved to San Pedro, California, worked as a welder at Todd Shipyards, and she joined the Shipyard Workers Union. She became the Los Angeles local secretary, organizer, and delegate to the Los Angeles Council of the American Federation of Labor for the United Hatters, Cap, and Millinery Workers International Union where she conducted strikes and negotiated contracts. Draper went to New York in 1948 before returning to Oakland, California, ten years later.
In 1960, Draper became the West Coast Union Labor Director for the 400,000-member Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), AFL-CIO. She got more involved with the farmworker movement after taking a job as a research economist with the California Federation of Labor and studying the working and living conditions of agricultural workers. She was research director for the California Citizens Committee for Agricultural Labor and she testified for years before the Industrial Welfare Commission. She was a strong supporter of the farmworker movement and of the Delano Grape Strike in 1965-1967. She organized one of the first food and clothing caravans to Delano. By January 1966, she chaired the San Francisco Labor Council Delano Striker’s Aid Committee. She later founded the Labor Assembly for Peace, a group opposed to the Vietnam War, and Union W.A.G.E. (Women’s Alliance to Gain Equity), a women’s rights group. She died at age fifty-six in 1973.
César Chávez sitting with Anne Draper during a meeting, Delano, ca 1966. Photo by Emmon Clarke.
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