In the late 1960s and early 1970s the grape and lettuce boycott impacted college campuses like the later anti-apartheid divestment movement of the 80s. I was lucky enough to be part of a group that brought Cesar Chavez to speak at my small Northwest Ohio college in 1973. He was a remarkable presence—calm, low-keyed, direct—who spoke more like a philosopher or minister than a fiery labor leader. Yet you could see that the man was filled with passion, strength, and love.
We’ve collected some great posters and other graphics featuring Chavez and the UFW boycott campaigns. The famous black eagle UFW logo was initially created by Cesar Chavez and a two family members, and then refined by graphic designer and cartoonist Andrew Zermeno.
For more information on Cesar Chavez, visit the Cesar Chavez Foundation.
And check out the Cesar Chavez bio movie which was released in March 2014, to coincide with his birthday,
(Above): United Farm Workers poster, 1960s. Source: Museum of California
Poster via Chicago Women’s Graphics Collective, circa 1978. Source: Library of Congress.
About the Artist:
Rosado was born in Barrio Chupacallos in the town of Ceiba, Puerto Rico to Simon Rosado and Petra Morales. Her father was a leader in the barrio and was often sought by the people of the barrio for his opinion on local matters regarding the community.
Rosado received her primary and secondary education in the public schools of the towns of Ceiba, Fajardo and Naguabo. Isabelita, as she was known, was only eighteen years old when she became a student at the University of Puerto Rico. There she earned her teacher's certificate. For years Rosado taught at the rural schools in the towns of Ceiba and Humacao.
On 21 March 1937, Rosado was listening to the radio, where she heard the events involving what is known as the Ponce massacre. That day the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party held a peaceful march in the city of Ponce, Puerto Rico, commemorating the ending of slavery in Puerto Rico by the governing Spanish National Assembly in 1873, and coinciding with a protest against the incarceration by the government of the United States of America government of nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos on sedition charges, The participants and innocent bystanders were fired upon by the Insular Police, resulting in the death of 17 unarmed civilians and two policemen, plus the wounding of some 235 civilians, including women and children. The Insular Police, a force somewhat resembling the National Guard, answered to orders of the U.S. appointed governor of Puerto Rico, General Blanton Winship.The outcome of the Ponce massacre served as an influential factor in her decision to join the Nationalist Party and to become a follower of Pedro Albizu Campos.
On 21 May 1948, a bill was introduced before the Puerto Rican Senate which would restrain the rights of the independence and nationalist movements in the island. The Senate at the time was controlled by the PPD and presided by Luis Munoz Marin approved the Bill. The Bill, also known as the "Ley de la Mordaza" (gag Law), made it illegal to display a Puerto Rican flag, to sing a patriotic tune, to talk of independence, and to fight for the liberation of the island. The Bill which resembled the anti-communist Smith Law passed in the United States, was signed and made into law on 10 June 1948, by the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico, Jesus T. Pinero and became known as "Ley 53" (Law 53). In accordance to the new law, it would be a crime to print, publish, sale, to exhibit or organize or to help anyone organize any society, group or assembly of people whose intentions are to paralyze or destroy the insular government. Anyone accused and found guilty of disobeying the law could be sentenced to ten years of prison, be fined $10,000 dollars (US) or both. According to Dr. Leopoldo Figueroa, a member of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives, the law was repressive and was in violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution which guarantees Freedom of Speech. He pointed out that the law as such was a violation of the civil rights of the people of Puerto Rico.
On 30 October 1950, Nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos ordered an uprising by the against United States Government rule of Puerto Rico and against the approval of the creation of the political status "Free Associated State" ("Estado Libre Associado") for Puerto Rico which was considered a colonial farce.
The uprisings occurred in various towns, among them Penuelas, Mayaguez, Naranjito, Arecibo and Ponce, of which the most notable occurrences being in Utuado, where the insurgents were massacred, Jayuya, the town where the "Free Republic of Puerto Rico" was declared, and which was heavily damaged by the military in response to the insurrection, and in San Juan where the Nationalists made an attempt against then-Governor Luis Munoz Marin at his residence "La Fortaleza".
Even though Rosado did not participate in the revolts, she was accused by the US Government in doing so. She was occupied in her job as a school social worker when the police came and arrested her. Rosado was sentenced to serve fifteen months in jail and fired from her job. Since she was unable to earn a living in the public school system, she obtained a position in a private school.
On 1 March 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists, Lolita Lebron, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero, and Irvin Flores Rodriguez, shot 30 rounds from semi-automatic pistols from the Ladies' Gallery (a balcony for visitors) of the House of Representatives chamber in the United States Capitol.
On 6 March 1954, she was in the Nationalist office with the Nationalists Pepe Sotomayor, Doris Torresola Roura, Carmin Perez and Albizu Campos. The police arrived and raided the facilities. The following morning the police attacked the Nationalist headquarters in San Juan with tear gas. Albizu Campos was carried out unconscious and those in the building, including Rosado were arrested and imprisoned. Rosado was sentenced to serve eleven years in prison. She was released from prison in 1965, via a Habeas Corpus.
In 1979, Rosado participated in an ecumenical prayer service on Vieques naval territory. She was among a group of protestors against the occupation of the small island by the U.S. Navy. Rosado was handcuffed and taken to the police station by the local authorities. She was released soon after.
Unable to find a job, Rosado makes a living sewing and crocheting. She continues to be active in everything involving the pro-Puerto Rican independence movement.
A documentary was made called "Isabel Rosado: Nacionalista" was made with the intention of uncovering decades of unknown history of this island and encourage discussions on political repression, surveillance, and human rights violations.
Isabel Rosado Morales died of natural causes on 13 January 2015 at the age of 107 years, 69 days, at the Sagradas Misiones de la Misericordia (Sacred Missions of Mercy) hospice in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, where she resided.
About the Women's Graphics Collective, Chicago:
Women's Graphics Collective produced over 50 silk-screened posters that explored social and political issues from a feminist viewpoint. These large colorful posters decorated the offices and homes of feminists across North America, were printed by hand, sold for pennies, and found buyers by the tens of thousands during the rise of the Women's Liberation Movement in the 1970s and 80s.
The Chicago Women's Graphics Collective: An Introduction
A memoir by Estelle Carol
In 1973, we worked in an old run down second floor office on Belmont Ave that we shared with the main offices of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union. They call it New Town now, but in 1973, there wasn’t much new about it. We weren’t the only artists in the building though. Downstairs was a tattoo parlor.
Still it was better than having the studio located in my apartment on Newport Street where there were silkscreen tables in the dining room and a bathroom that doubled as a darkroom. My bedroom door opened directly into the dining room and usually reeked of the foul chemicals we used to make the posters. Just one OSHA inspection would have shut us down forever, but it was not until later that we learned about the dangers of long term exposure. On Newport Street, the Ravenswood El train was right next to the apartment and shook it like the aftershock of a California earthquake. But we were in the midst of a women’s revolution and our priorities were clear.
If you look at our posters you’ll rarely see a person’s name on it because we decided that modern art had been done all wrong by men. It was based on egotism and the cult of the individual-the "great men of art" syndrome. So we decided to throw all that out, and art now had to be a collective experience. So every poster that we created had to be done by committee. Every one.
We had a system where any member of the Collective would get a subject area or an idea, or a phrase or an image and decide to do a poster. They would ask two or three members of the collective to be their assistants and to help develop the idea. And then in little teams they would physically create the poster in silk screen.
And it had to be a collective process. There’s no way that one single woman could really do it because we were using very primitive reproduction methods and in silk screening we needed at least three people to run the silk screen. The silk screened ones were all hand printed. No machines.
If a poster was more than one color, it had to be handprinted for as many kinds of colors as we had, so it was very, very labor intensive. And we could only print at a maximum, two hundred at a time because that totally taxed our physical strength and our space. Eventually so many orders came in that we actually made a some money from the sale of them. We were then able to hire Salsedo Press, our favorite worker owned printshop, to offset print in larger quantities.
It was a very important part of the CWLU in general and helped give the organization a national presence. We were socialist feminists. Making women "equal" to men in an exploitative capitalist society was not our goal. So besides the clearly feminist posters, we did posters about healthcare, the Third World, labor and other issues. It gave people a lot of good feelings about what they were doing, and all the other work groups looked forward to the next poster coming out. The posters gave the CWLU a credibility, a presence and an image. I guess you’d call it marketing today, but back then that was a dirty word.
We had a a distribution network that was fairly extensive. We shipped them out to organizations, political bookstores and women’s groups all over the world, sometimes as many as 20,000 posters. Some of them were physically really big, so when people put them up on walls, they were hard to miss.
Of course collective art had its high points and its low points. We’d have these "Grumpy Sessions" where we’d get our gripes out in the open. When we were feeling positive about each other other we’d call it giving each other "warm fuzzies". When we were feeling negative toward one another, we’d call it giving each other "cold pricklies". I know it sounds like ridiculous psychobabble, but somehow visualizing our interactions helped to get us through a lot of the inevitable conflicts. In a story that Linda Winer of the Chicago Tribune did about us, Tibby, who was one of the most active members, said,"Criticism is so much easier to take when the poster is not one person’s creation." She was right.
It’s been a while, but I still remember some of the women from the Belmont Ave days. Tibby was my best friend then. She gave me the emotional Prozac I needed when I was too wound up, which was often. She would always tell me,"Estelle, never tell people 'You need to' ,'You ought to', or 'You should '." I tended to be very outer directed and task oriented. Ok, I was very bossy, but I tried to do it in a sweet way. I like to think I was successful most of the time.
Wendy was also my roommate and taught me yoga. She was very nice, but her earnest efforts to turn me into a lesbian ended in abysmal failure. Susan had come from Jane, the underground illegal abortion group. She had faced a possible 110 years in prison because of her abortion activities. After the charges were dropped, I guess she really needed to do something different. Barbara was the serious one under the big floppy hippie hats that she wore more or less constantly. Actually we were all a bunch of hippie artists. Except for Leslie. Leslie had a real apartment, with real furniture, a real husband, and a real kid. She also had real talent. Leslie did some of our most beautiful posters, like the Maternity Center one and the Farmworkers poster.
Of the posters I directed, my all time favorite is "Sisterhood is Blooming". This was a very common feeling at the time, because it expressed the love we tried to feel for one another and to some extent, actually did. I think it was this attitude that was undermined towards the middle of the 1970’s. And when this kind of attitude was undermined, that’s when a lot of the women’s movement began to fall apart.
Sisterhood is powerful, but sisters do fight. We didn’t know how to fight and have that make us come out stronger rather than weaker. Many of us were getting real power for the first time and we didn’t always handle it well. People were very suspicious of leaders, probably because they thought leaders would just reproduce the same old sick male power structure, only with women in charge. We had tensions over sexual orientation, race, and social class. We had honest, but often bitter divisions over political strategies. Considering the odds against us, I think we did pretty well keeping things together as long as we did.
We eventually moved out of the Belmont Ave building and into an old corner store on Southport Ave, with a full kitchen in the back. It was a much a bigger space and had the advantage of a wonderful German bakery across the street. We didn’t obsess about diets back then. Things were ok for a while, but by 1975, I was feeling very uncomfortable in the group.
The people who had started the Collective with me had largely moved on. We had always tried to reflect the diversity of the women’s movement, but the newer people coming in seemed to have a narrower focus. I felt an uncomfortable pressure on me because I was not a separatist. Female separatism had become a growing force in the women's movement and the Graphics Collective was no exception. Meetings became tense. Except for one woman who had a visceral dislike for me, nobody trashed me or anything like that, but it was clear that my socialist feminist vision was now in a minority of one.
I was physically exhausted from the sheer effort required in silkscreening and I had begun to fear that the chemicals we used might be damaging my health. Leaving the Graphics Collective was one of the most painful and wrenching experiences of my life, but I did it.
The Collective continued until 1983 and did some stunning posters that are among my most treasured possessions. I am so grateful to former coordinator Julie Zolot who recently gave me copies of the artwork that had been created after my departure.
Today I am a graphic artist, a cartoonist and an illustrator. I love doing work for the labor movement and for various non-profit human service groups. I illustrate children’s books and work on a magazine for gay parents. About a year ago I decided that the history of the women’s liberation movement in Chicago needed to be shared with a new generation and I helped organize the Chicago Women’s Herstory Project. I taught myself enough about the Internet to become the site designer.
I want to communicate the excitement of that period so that young women today have a foundation upon which to wage the struggles they need to wage. I am hopeful that a new women’s liberation movement will arise to finish the job that we worked so hard on, and if it does, I have every intention of becoming a part of it. And if the movement wants some new posters...