As I travel around talking about "The Union of Their Dreams," I keep running into people who grew up boycotting grapes, lettuce and Gallo wine. "I still don't eat iceberg lettuce,'' one woman said in Amherst. I've been asked a few times if the grape boycott ever ended (it did -- many years ago). But for many people, particularly baby boomers on the East coast, the boycott is the primary association with Cesar Chavez and the UFW.
Even back during the height of the boycott, there was often a lot of confusion about just which produce UFW supporters were supposed to shun. No subsequent boycotts were as successful as the first grape boycott in the late 1960s, when the major supermarket chains were under so much pressure that they, in effect, forced the California table grape growers to sign contracts.
But at its height in 1975, more than 17 million people were refusing to buy table grapes, iceberg lettuce or Gallo wine, according to a Harris poll. It was a simple way for people "help the farmworkers." Many of the union's staff started out working on a boycott and ended up drawn into the movement.
One of the dramatic moments at the book launch last month at the National Steinbeck Center came when a man explained excitedly that he happened to be in Monterey on business, heard out about the event and rushed over. He said he had been a visiting German volunteer in the late 1960s helping with the grape boycott in Philadelphia. He met his future wife there, and they both ended up working for a time at the UFW headquarters in California.
Pete Beatty, an editor at Bloomsbury Press , came across these memorabilia -- UFW ads that Ramparts magazine ran for free during the Gallo boycott:
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