Delano Grape Strike Began / Michelangelo's David unveiled in Florence - September 8

The Delano Grape Strike began on this day in 1965. / On this day in 1504, Michelangelo's David was unveiled to the public.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, it's Eves. I just wanted to let you
know that you'll be hearing an episode from me and
an episode from Tracy V. Wilson today. I hope you
enjoyed the show. Welcome to this Day in History Class
from how Stuff Works dot com and from the desk
of Stuff you Missed in History Class. It's the show
where we explore the past one day at a time
with a quick look at what happened today in history. Hello,

(00:25):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and
it's September eight. The Delano Grape Strike began on this
day in nineteen. The story goes back to immigration from
the Philippines to the mainland United States during the nineteen
twenties and thirties. At that time, most immigration to the
United States from Asia was banned, but the Philippines was

(00:46):
under United States colonial rule. Men from the Philippines were
allowed into the United States, but they could not become
full US citizens. Most of these men worked as migrant
farm laborers. They moved from place to place according to
win work needed to be done in the fields and
the vineyards, and most of them were also unmarried because
of discriminatory anti missagenation laws. It was illegal for Filipino

(01:10):
men to marry women who weren't also from the Philippines,
But when most of these men were coming to the
United States, immigration for Filipino women was restricted, and that
didn't change until the nineteen sixties. By the time this
strike happened, many of the Filipino men who were working
in the fields were in their fifties and sixties, and
conditions for them were not good. The pay was very poor.

(01:32):
Often there was nowhere to use the bathroom, and when
there was, the conditions were not sanitary. The sources of
drinking water during the day also tended to be next
to these unsanitary bathrooms. So Filipino workers had been advocating
for better pay and better working conditions for years. They
had formed the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, and when pay

(01:53):
cuts were being threatened in the summer of nineteen sixty five,
the committee held a vote. That vote took place on
septewn Ver seven, and they voted to go on strike.
The leaders of this organization and a strike included Larry
it Leong. They knew that a strike would only be
successful if they also had the participation of Mexican agricultural
workers in the area. And this was because the growers

(02:16):
in California had been pitting the Filipino and the Mexican
workers against each other for years, knowing that divided neither
group could really make a stand. They couldn't really advocate
for better treatment and better pay. If there was a
labor dispute with the Mexican workers, the growers would hire
Filipino workers in their place, and vice versa. So it

(02:39):
Leong went to Caesar Chavez, who had founded the National
farm Workers Association with the Loria S. Whereta to organize
Mexican workers. He asked the National farm Workers Association to
join them in their strike. At first, Chavez said no,
the National farm Workers Association was planning to do a strike,
but they were thinking about a couple of years down

(03:00):
the road, not in the immediate future. But about two
weeks later, the Mexican workers joined the Delano strike. This
led to five years of ongoing strikes and an international
boycott of table grapes that started in nineteen sixty eight.
It also involved marches and demonstrations and other non violent protests,

(03:20):
and a hunger strike by Caesar shadows. The National farm
Workers Association and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee combined in
nineteen sixty six to form the United farm Workers Organizing Committee,
which later became known as just the United farm Workers.
The table grape growers in California finally signed contracts with

(03:41):
the United farm Workers in nineteen seventy the Delano Grape Strike,
and this cooperation between Mexican and Filipino farm workers was
the start of a much bigger movement for labor rights
in American agriculture, although Larry it Loong and some of
the other Filipino leaders later left the United our Workers
over concerns that Filipino voices weren't being represented enough in

(04:05):
the organization. Thanks so much to Christopher Hasciotis for his
research work for today's episode, and thanks to Tari Harrison
for her audio work on this show. You can subscribe
to The Day in History Class on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,
and wherever else you get your podcasts. Tomorrow, we will
have an uprising that stemmed from and affected conditions behind bars. Hi,

(04:34):
I'm Eves, and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that uncovers history one day at a time.
The day was September eighth, four. Michelangelo's famous statue of

(04:56):
David was unveiled in Florence, Italy, in the Piazza day Senoria.
In the early fifteenth century, the overseers of the Office
of Works of the Duomo Florence's Cathedral Church commissioned twelve
sculptures of figures from the Old Testament. The sculptures would
be placed on the buttresses of the Florence Cathedral. Don

(05:18):
Tello made a sculpture of Joshua in terra cotta in
fourteen ten. More than fifty years later, in fourteen sixty four,
the Open Eye commissioned a sculpture of David by Agostino
di Duccio, but Augustino did not finish the project. He
only managed to sculpt some of the legs, torso and
drapery out of a block of Guerrara marble before his

(05:41):
involvement with the project ended. A decade later, Antonio Rossellino
was assigned to finish the task of sculpting David, but
he ceased to work on the project too, and the
block of marble remained in the yard of the cathedral
workshop for years. It isn't until the sixteenth century, when

(06:02):
the Open Eye would find someone who would finish the sculpture,
It commissioned the job to twenty six year old Michelangelo
in August of fifteen o one. The next month he
began creating the statue, and for more than two years,
Michelangelo worked on the sculpture of David. The statue is
seventeen feet or five meters tall. David is depicted before

(06:26):
his battle with Goliath, standing in contrapasto and holding a
sling draped over his left shoulder. His hands and head
are disproportionately large, but as the statue was nearing its
completion in early fifteen o four, it was determined that
it would not be installed on the roof of the
Florence Cathedral. It weighed six tons and lifting it would

(06:49):
prove difficult, so a group of Florentine artists, including Leonardo
da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, and Perugino, was brought together to
determine a more fit location for David. After months of debate,
it was decided that David would be placed in the
Piazza de la Signoria, in front of the entrance to

(07:09):
the city's town hall. The statue was installed in June,
replacing Donatello's bronze sculpture of Judas and Holofernes. It took
four days for the statue to be moved the half
Mouth from its courtyard to its spot at the piazza.
It was suspended from ropes in a wooden cage and
pulled along on greased beams. David was installed facing Rome

(07:34):
on September eight. The statue was unveiled to the public.
Though a religious statue, David became a civic symbol for
Florence's struggle against the powerful Medici family. In eighteen seventy three,
David was removed from the Piazza for protection from damage
and put inside the Academia Gallery of Florence. A replica

(07:55):
of the sculpture was installed at the piazza in nineteen ten.
David is one of Michelangelo's most recognizable artworks, and it's
considered a masterpiece of high Renaissance sculpture. In a fabric
glass reproduction of michel Angelo's David was placed on the
roofline of the Florence Cathedral. For a day, I'm each

(08:17):
decode and hopefully you know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday, and if you're so inclined,
you can follow us at T D i h C
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in the same place tomorrow. For more podcasts from I

(08:55):
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