Easter Mass at Forty Acres
Easter Mass at Forty Acres
A crowd of farm workers celebrating Easter mass at sunrise, Forty Acres, Delano, CA, 1968. Photo by John Kouns.
Forty Acres, a 40-acre parcel purchased by the National Farm Worker Service Center (NFWCS) in 1967 on Garces Highway, served as the new UFW headquarters, near its former site at Arroyo Camp. By April 1968, when Emmon Clarke took these Easter mass photos, not all buildings were completed. The health clinic’s mobile facilities had moved to Forty Acres, and Richard Chávez had already constructed the farmworker coop gas station, using adobe bricks and a mission tile roof, a building that hosted Cesar Chavez’s 25-day Fast for Nonviolence in February and March of 1968. Construction for the new UFW office, funded by United Auto Workers and later named the Roy L. Reuther Memorial, began later in 1968, while the Roger Terronez Health Clinic, with adobe brick walls and a mission-style roof, opened in 1971.
Another building was later constructed, a 60-unit retirement village for elderly Filipinos, the Agbayani Village, which was dedicated in 1974. Most of the building construction was completed by volunteers, with LeRoy Chatfield, assigned by Chavez in 1965 to fund and establish farmworker cooperatives, raising the initial funds. “This farmworker movement assignment during my first hour in strike-torn Delano continues to amaze me,” wrote Chatfield in an essay titled Forty Acres Delano: United Farm Workers. “Chávez was committed to building something more than a union mostly concerned with wages and working conditions, he planned to empower communities of poor people – in this case, farmworkers – by involving them in economic self-help programs and teaching them how to work cooperatively together for the benefit of the entire community.”
A crowd of farm workers celebrating Easter mass at sunrise, Forty Acres, Delano, CA, 1968. Photo by John Kouns.
César Chávez and farm workers celebrating Easter mass at sunrise, Forty Acres, Delano, CA, 1968
César Chávez (wearing a plaid jacket) and farm workers celebrate Easter mass at sunrise at Forty Acres in Delano, California on April 14, 1968. They are at the Farm Workers Shrine, which though not yet built, was marked by a large cross. Mass and religious ceremonies were held at this location. In June 1968, vandals sawed down the cross after previous attempts of burning it.
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