Delano Grape Strike / Michelangelo's David Unveiled - September 8th Flashback

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 there, history fans. We're off this week while I
complete a cross country move, but don't worry. We've got
plenty of classic shows to tide you over and be
sure to meet me back here next Monday for a
brand new episode.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome to This Day in History Class from HowStuffWorks 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, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and it's September eighth. The Delano

(00:35):
Grape Strike began on this day in nineteen sixty five.
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 under the United
States colonial rule. Men from the Philippines were allowed into

(00:55):
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 when work needed
to be done in the fields and the vineyards. And
most of them were also unmarried. Because of discriminatory anti
missagination laws, it was illegal for Filipino men to marry

(01:16):
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. Often there

(01:38):
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 cuts were

(01:59):
being threatened in the summer of nineteen sixty five, the
committee held a vote. That vote took place on September seventh,
and they voted to go on strike. The leaders of
this organization and a strike included Larry Itliong. They knew
that a strike would only be successful if they also
had the participation of Mexican agricultural workers in the area.

(02:19):
And this was because the growers 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,

(02:41):
and vice versa. So itlong went to Caesar Chavez, who
had founded the National farm Workers Association with the Lares
Squerta to organize Mexican workers. He asked the National farm Workers'
Association to join them in their strike. At first, Chavez
said Noational farm Workers Association was planning to do a strike,

(03:03):
but they were thinking about a couple of years down
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 nonviolent protests

(03:25):
and a hunger strike by Caesar Chavez. 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

(03:46):
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 Itlong and some of the
other Filipino leaders later left the United Farmworkers over concerns
that Filipino voices weren't being represented enough in the organization.

(04:11):
Thanks so much to Christopher Hasiotis for his research work
for today's episode, and thanks to Tari Harrison for her
audio work on this show. You can subscribe to This
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.

(04:37):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
Hi, I'm Eves, and welcome to This Day in History
class a show that uncovers history one day at a time.
The day was stept to a fifteen oh four, Michelangelo's

(05:03):
famous statue of David was unveiled in Florence, Italy and
the Piazza de la Signoria. 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

(05:23):
of the Florence Cathedral. Donatello made a sculpture of Joshua
and terra Cotta in fourteen ten. More than fifty years later,
in fourteen sixty four, the Opad II commissioned a sculpture
of David by Agostino di Buccio, but Agostino did not
finish the project. He only managed to sculpt some of

(05:44):
the legs, Torso and drapery out of a block of
Querrara marble before his involvement with the project ended. A
decade later, Antonio Rossellino was assigned to finish the task
of sculpting David, but to work on the project two
and the block of marble remained in the yard of
the cathedral workshop for years. It wasn't until the sixteenth

(06:09):
century when 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 oh 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

(06:33):
is depicted before 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 oh four, it
was determined that it would not be installed on the
roof of the Florence Cathedral. It weighed six tons and

(06:56):
lifting it would prove difficult, so a group Florentine artists
including Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, and Perugino, was brought
together to determine a more fitting location for David. After
months of debate, it was decided that David would be
placed in the Piazza de la Signoria in front of

(07:16):
the entrance to the city's town hall. The statue was
installed in June, replacing Donatello's bronze sculpture of Judas and Halafernes.
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 grease beams. David was installed

(07:40):
facing Rome on September eighth. 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 Acid Damia Gallery

(08:00):
of Florence. A replica of the sculpture was installed at
the piazza.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
In nineteen ten.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
David is one of Michelangelo's most recognizable artworks, and it's
considered a masterpiece of high Renaissance sculpture. In twenty ten,
a fiberglass reproduction of Michelangelo's David was placed on the
roofline of the Florence Cathedral for a day, I'm eave
deefcode and hopefully you know a little more about history

(08:28):
today than you did yesterday. We'll see you here in
the same place tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
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