![]() ![]() The $250,000 project was financed by the Martin Luther King, Jr. Within the village were 60 apartment units, a large patio, lounge, dining room, arcade, a modern kitchen, and a courtyard with a fountain. Composed of Mexican-style wood frame buildings with adobe veneer and red tile roof, the total area of Agbayani Village was 23,000 square feet. By 1974, six interconnected buildings in the shape of a U on approximately two acres of land in Delano, California, had been completed. Architect Luis Pina from San Jose, California, drew up and donated the building plans for the village. ![]() ![]() Construction commenced in 1972 with volunteer help growing to more than 1,000 students, professionals, and grassroots supporters of the UFW over the next two years. Initial correspondence and meetings about the building of Agbayani Village began in early 1970. A complete history of the UFW, written by Philip Vera Cruz, is available as a handwritten document in the Philip Vera Cruz Papers. The strike came to an end in 1970 when the UFW finally succeeded in reaching a collective bargaining agreement with the table-grape growers which improved the wages and working conditions of over 10,000 farm workers. Eventually, over 2,000 farm workers became involved in the strike, and the movement gained national attention. In August of 1966 these two groups merged, forming the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFW). One week after the strike began, the AWOC was joined by the predominantly Mexican-American National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), led by Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Richard Chavez. The AWOC was led by Philip Vera Cruz, Larry Itliong, Benjamin Gines, and Pete Velasco. The strike began on Septemwhen 1,800 members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), who were mostly Filipino farm workers, walked off the farms of 33 local table-grape growers because they wanted better working conditions and their current wages to be raised to equal the federal minimum wage. The village was named in honor of Paulo Agbayani, a Filipino farm worker and UFW member who died of a heart attack while picketing the Pirelli-Minetti Winery in Delano, California in 1967 during the Delano Grape Strike, which lasted from 1965 to 1970. In order to ensure that these men would have somewhere to turn for assistance in their old age, the UFW organized the construction of Agbayani Village. Since most of the farm workers were single men, and very few Filipino women had migrated to the United States at the time, the majority of the workers were unable to establish families, and many of them were destitute and had no one to help them by the time they became elderly in the 1960s and 1970s. Due to racial discrimination in the form of anti-miscegenation laws, these migrant farm workers were prevented from marrying outside of their race. In 1974, the United Farm Workers Union (UFW), led by Cesar Chavez, opened Agbayani Village, a retirement complex for Filipino farm workers who had immigrated from the Philippines to California during the 1920s and 1930s. A few of her research interests include digital preservation, historical interpretation, local history, and American women’s history. Julia Teran is in the process of earning an MLIS, an MA in History, and an Archival Administration Certificate. In the Winter 2013 semester, the Reuther Library worked with students in the Graduate Certificate in Archival Administration program at the Wayne State School of Library and Information Science to produce a series of student-written, guest blog posts. ![]()
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