California Story Fund
Field Disclosure: An Oral History
National Steinbeck Center
Salinas
Project Directors: Lori Wood and Deborah Silguero-Stahl
National Steinbeck Center to create documentary on the history of agriculture in the Salinas Valley from 1960 to 2000
The project will collect first-person observations from approximately 20 people who lived during the four decades of agricultural conflict in the Salinas Valley. The time period will span from the mid-1960s when the Bracero program that brought Mexican farmworkers to the area to harvest crops was winding down, to early organizing efforts, to the strike against California table grape growers in the mid-1960s, to economic and social issues for farmworkers and growers today.
This is a continuation of a project begun in 2004 to collect stories and create a documentary. The California Story Fund grant will allow the project to be completed.
Stories will be collected from farm laborers, growers and shippers, union leaders and the community at large.
The 20-minute documentary will have its premiere at the Steinbeck Center in summer 2008. The showing will be followed by audience discussion. The film will become part of an interpretive exhibit in the center’s agricultural wing.
“We hope that the film will create a conversation among the separate labor and community groups that were locked in bitter, divisive conflict during the last 40 years of the 20th century," said Project Co-director Lori Wood. “If a discussion can take place that can lead to better understanding by all sides, then the project will be an important success.”