Photo Essay: California Farmworker – Father Daughter
FACES OF U.S. LABOR APARTHEID
Photo by Jon Lewis (c.1966)
Labor apartheid began in the United States in 1935 when farmworkers and domestic workers were excluded from the protections of national labor legislation.
Industrial workers were guaranteed labor rights, farmworkers and domestic workers were denied labor rights. The basis for this national exclusion was to preserve the status quo of racial segregation in the Southern States, and to provide an enormous subsidy in the form of cheap labor to agricultural industries in all the states. And so it remains today.
This photo of farmworker and his child is a portrait of the victims of U.S. labor apartheid.