Everyone understood the meaning of the colors picked by Chávez, who according to UFW lore picked black to represent the darkness of the farmworker’s plight and the white to mean hope, all set against a red that signified the sacrifice expected from union workers. It was worn on hats protecting marchers from the sun, used on picket signs, or stenciled on homemade serapes. The black eagle would be present at every meeting, every march, and every strike. To me, it looks like a strong, beautiful sign of hope.” “When people see it, they know it means dignity. It gives pride,” said Chávez, according to the UFW. The red, white, and black flag was unveiled at the NFWA's first convention in 1962, in a theater in Fresno, Calif. When the UFW began organizing lettuce and strawberry pickers in and around Salinas in the 1970s, women living in company housing turned their quarters into fabricas de banderas, or flag factories, to manufacture banners for the coming strike. The lines were so definite and simple that the skills of volunteer nonartists or trained printers working in art centers around the West could shape the symbol of their identity with a nationalistic vigor. When it needed to be printed, there would always be shops with PMS 185, a standard red, on hand. Andrew Zermeño, a graphic-artist friend of the family, interpreted the wings as an inverted pyramid.Īs a communication symbol used for posters and fliers, the mark wasn't compromised by limited resources. On a brown paper wrapper, as the legend goes, the first initial designs of an eagle with squared-off wings were created, and chosen, as has been recounted into UFW labor lore. A symbol was needed for the marches being planned, so César’s brother, Richard, and his cousin, Manuel, begin working on flag designs, borrowing the symbol of the eagle from the Aztecs, the indigenous people so many Mexican Americans identify with. The flag was conceived in 1962, when Chávez and Dolores Huerta founded the National Farmworkers Union, the predecessor of the United Farm Workers. Under the eagle, a labor movement was galvanized into a working-class community, and it helped introduce that community to a country that may or may not have been happy to count its members as compatriots. The image on that flag is still a banner for worker rights, but it’s also grown into a symbol of cultural pluralism. “It had to be easy for anyone to make.” After some small talk, I thanked him for taking a moment to address our shared history, though I already knew it. “I asked my brother, Richard, to make something up,” Chávez said. It’s a story we all should know, and how it happened.”Ĭhávez quietly nodded, gracefully treating the question like it was the first time someone brought it up.
After they met, I walked up to Chávez to shake his hand and began: “The flag. Chávez was in town for a meeting with Al Kovar, then-director of the Home of Neighborly Service. Cesar Chavez (Photo: Cathy Murphy/Getty Images)Ĭésar E.
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